AJAX
So, while the core development of CMS Made Simple is undergoing some interesting (and pervasive) updates as we head towards a 1.0 release, I’ve been fixing modules to work correctly under PHP 4.4 and 5.0.5. Obviously, my understanding of references was weak, and I’m paying the price now. Damn, I wrote a lot of wrong code.
But now I’m playing with making an alternate Admin interface for CMS Made Simple using some of the fine AJAX and Javascript libraries out there.
I’m using xajax to marshall up objects and submit them nicely to PHP, and I’m using the script.aculo.us Web 2.0 and its underlying Prototype library for User Interface and special effects.
Some of it’s silly, like making the login box shake if you incorrectly enter your username or password (imitating Mac OS X login). But some of it is really slick — adding users to groups is now as simple as dragging’n’dropping items between lists. It could use a way of multi-selecting that worked with dragging, but an “add all” and “remove all” button mitigate that somewhat. Of course, the original interface will remain for non-Javascript users or people who prefer it.
I plan to do the same for assigning permissions to users. But the real challenge will be drag’n’drop content reordering. This will require a draggable tree. I haven’t yet found code to make this easy; even with all these great libraries, I have to be careful to select features that work equally well under the Evil of Internet Explorer, as well as Gecko-based browsers and Opera…