A new admin interface for OFN

Tech Wishlist
21

I haven’t checked Tabler but although I’d love to build a good-looking UI that provides top-notch UX, it’s something we can’t really afford in the midterm IMO. I would lean towards adoptiong an existing solution.

It’s been just now that we’ve got design input and guidelines but the resources are very scarce on that end. We want to increase them but I don’t think we’ll have the capacity to develop a UI from scratch. In terms of dev, we would also need a bit more expertise, although I have no doubt we would learn along the way.

“Owning” Tabler or whatever other pre-cooked UI seems a far safer bet than it was with Spree. I agree. I wonder how feasible it would look to work on top of it for someone like Yuko or @Mario. Thoughts?

22

Thanks for looping me in :slight_smile: My 2 cents on this
I’m personally a fan of using frameworks over reinventing the wheel, unless it’s strictly necessary or the product requires really new technology, so for me having a framework that allows to go custom when necessary is usually a good choice.
Specifically for OFN, I consider the admin side as a functional tool, where efficiency and ease of use are primary. It’s a table-based software, and I guess it’s going to stay like that in the future.
Neither bootstrap nor foundation have advanced table patterns. I spent a bit of time looking at separate libraries for table mgmt but couldn’t find anything as advanced as vuetify. What I like about it is that is based on Material Design, which is a design system with some solid thinking behind it, and a huge user base, familiar with its components and look and feel. And obviously, given the website has a massive amount of interactive examples, it makes it easier for a contributor to explore its modules, play with them and assess which are more suitable. Mobile is extremely well supported too.

I guess Vuetify can only be used with vue.js. Not sure if stack decisions should be driven by a UI framework though ahah.

I can do a proper analysis spike on different frameworks for us to assess them properly, if needed.

For the front shop website, I am not entirely sure. Thinking out lout, I’m a bit worried that adopting a framework might limit the potential to explore ways of designing the most appropriate interface for the final users, and result in just a bunch of components assembled together, and less of a cohesive experience.
But I’m not too familiar with it, Yuko is definitely the best person to provide inputs to that.

One question I have is internationalization, alphabets support and overall accessibility and inclusion. As OFN grows, hopefully we’ll be able to support a even more diverse range of people, with different needs, languages and ways of using technology, so finding a framework that has good foundations for that might be relevant.

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