7184 - What are the sidebar configurable items

Status: VERIFIED WORKSFORME

(SeaMonkey :: Sidebar, defect, P3)

Description

[bijals (gone)]

Need to get a list of sidebar customizations.  Need to determine which ones will
be exposed in the CCK UI or only through the CCK Administrator's guide.

Comment 1

[selmer (gone)]

Send it back when you have a list.

Comment 2

[bijals (gone)]

John,

Can you or one of the side bar engineers help with tracking down sidebar prefs
for CCK customizations when the time is appropriate.  I would like to have a
list of sidebar prefs, the possible pref values, and the default pref value.

Thanks, Bij

Comment 3

[robinf]

Adding Tina to cc: list, since she's documenting manual customizations and prefs
for the sidebar.

Comment 4

[selmer (gone)]

guestimating tfv, please verify

Comment 5

[johng]

This is basically a question of what functionality of the Sidebar will be
configurable in prefs, either exposed or not.  I believe this is tbd.
Reassigning to Steve Lamm, ccing selmer.

Comment 6

[selmer (gone)]

Adding to CCK external dependency list.

Comment 7

[selmer (gone)]

This has been languishing under the wrong product.  Changing to "browser".

This bug is a simple request for information.  If we still do not have the
information, please set the TFV to reflect when we expect to have the info.

Thanks,

Steve

Comment 8

[Steve Lamm]

There are no preferences that control the sidebar (or plans for any). There is a
file, sidebar.rdf, that can be edited to change the panels in the sidebar.

The open/close state and the show/hide states are remembered through rdf/xul
persistence, not through the preferences.

Comment 9

[bijals (gone)]

Okay.  Even without preferences, do we want to put a chapter in the CCK guide on
customizing Sidebar or this a more general XUL customization issue?

Comment 10

[Steve Lamm]

The only things that is special about the sidebar customization is the list of
panels that are put in there. The rest of the look and layout is customizable
throught the usual XUL ways.

Comment 11

[selmer (gone)]

How are the panels managed?  Is it just an URL for each panel?  If so, could we
move the specification of the URL to a DTD file to make it simpler to modify?

It seems like the final CCK product should have a simple way to modify the
panels that show up in the sidebar.  We need to figure out an implementation
that supports changing them from the CCK Wizard.

Comment 12

[Steve Lamm]

Panels have several attributes including a url, a title, a customize, link,
prefered height.
Putting everything in a DTD file would be rather unelegant. The sidebar
customization is done in the client. The client customization dialog makes it
easy to delete or reorder panels. Panels are added from a list at Netcenter. If
CCK customers would like to add their own panels, they could either use that
interface, or edit the file directly. The file format is a fairly simple text
file,

http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/xpfe/components/sidebar/resources/sidebar.rdf

I am not sure how this would integrate with the CCK Wizard.

Comment 13

[Steve Lamm]

Are there any other questions I can answer? Are we done with this bug?

Comment 14

[bijals (gone)]

Steve Elmer needs to be comfortable with this option.

Comment 15

[selmer (gone)]

So, a distributor could just use the browser to create a new one?  That's how we
handle bookmarks too, so it's OK if a bit clunky.

Why is it inelegant to use DTD files to contain strings?  Everyone is doing that
so I18N and L10N work.  How will these things work in non-English?

Comment 16

[Steve Lamm]

The browser could be used to edit the membership. However, if the panels that
they want to add are not in our list of available panels, they will need to
either add them from javascript, or edit the file by hand.

The sidebar does use DTD files for localizable strings, but we have not put urls
in there to date.

Comment 17

[Steve Lamm]

Not sure what else you need from me on this bug. Marking worksforme.

Comment 18

[Keyser Sose]

Works for me:
Platform: PC
OS: Windows 98
Mozilla Build: 2000101020 M18 Trunk Build