There are two things on my mind right now that seem to be my greastest concern for the next 2 weeks. The first thing is my grades. I just told Nikki that I plan on calculating out expected grade, maximum achievable, and worst possible in all 4 of my classes. I would really like to see me turn it around here at the end (not that they are horribly bad to begin with). Other things I need to do tonight to insure this drastic improvement at the end is to finish my math and stats homework for tomorrow, get my calculator setup for math test tomorrow, and last but not least, make a physics cheat sheet for tomorrow’s rather unexpected quiz. It’s going to be a busy 24 hours.
During all of this though, my second greatest concern (who knows why) is design theory. I’m really trying to make this SMRC design so modular that all I have to do is apply different designs to it, and wha-la, you have a new site. Think about how much time that would save me when it comes to building new sites for people. Completely dynamic, Completely user updatable… All I have to do is design.
The problem right now seems to be in a simplistic implementation of templates. I’ve been thinking about it most of this morning, and it would really help if I had a notebook to write down some of my ideas. I think I’ll write down some of them here:
Template design means the ability to add and remove sections. These sections must understand what type they are. The question is how to do this such that you can always easily add a new ‘module type’ later. This brings up the next idea..
Modules must be installed. All modules that can be inserted must be installed, and be able to install themselves. To explain a little more detailed: A module must install itself into the system, the system would give it an ID as a module, such that, the sections would then associate with this ID. It would have to setup it’s tables for global generation, as well as be able to create new tables for every section it’s being used in. IE: a module for a just a basic text layout should probably create a global table that keeps track of the page ID and content, where as, A module that acts as file database should great a global table for itself that contains the categories, and then a table for the files, but needs to be able to create tables with different names if persay, the user wants to have two different sorts of file browsing IE: a midi and a wav section.
Modules must add themselves to the Admin. Or is it the Admin should see them and allow access. We know they have to have their own admin panels, which should integrate.
Modules must follow the CSS standard setup by the CSS file. Names should be friendly and easy to use such that people other than myself could use the code and be able to read it. Alex‘s idea of using the word gladbag might no longer hold. Then again, Alex could possibly use this, and since the elite crew that will be using this code already follow’s Alex‘s lead on the CSS issue… Well.. Maybe it will stay :-).
Documentation must be written as we go and included in the admin file. I want the users to be able to get good instructions about what each admin control does.
All modules must follow standards for both CSS and XHTML. This will make sure the content stays pure and unaffected by layout. It might also be a good idea that whenever the user is allowed to enter text or html, that it automatically fixes some common mistakes… Like for example, closing an LI or BR tag. Standards… They are what will matter.
That’s all the idea’s I feel like coming up with at this point. If you have any ideas, (and I’m sure people like Dan do) post them in the ISMS or email them to me. I want this to be clean. I want this to work. This is my coding project for the year.
I wonder if I could do this as my writeup for 3081W or if I have to do what is assigned to me… Oh well, that’s a month away… I want to do this now.
Other than that.. I don’t know. Let’s see…. Nope, no ideas. Got to go though. Later.