Of those of you who used (or still use) WebSphere stuff, some will
remember one nifty application called the Universal Test Client, or
UTC. I have lots of good memories from using it - felt like using a GUI
version of a JUnit testcase. It's developer-friendly, and, with some
changes, could get very user-friendly too. Here's a screenshot:
I like it's look - even being a web application embedded into a
WebSphere Studio window, it looks and kinda behaves like any other WSS
window. It's use is very simple: get a reference to an object at the
left, choose a method, set up parameters, invoke, work with resulting
object, repeat until done.
Now, what do you think - if I take away the techie stuff (hashCodes,
fully qualified class names, etc) and stick to the objects in the
system, and try to make it as user-friendly and dumb-proof as I can,
will this be a good administration interface for Inectis, a content
management system?
I know, CMSs have a huge need for funky, flashy, WYSIWYG interfaces. I
think that things can't get more visual than this - you're seeing all
the objects you have access in the system, you click on them, fiddle
with them, and you're done.
Maybe, later, a good idea would be to support the automation of
repetitive tasks using scripting, for example, changing the permissions
of a whole content tree, or changing a theme on a site area. The user
would select a script to run from a menu, or the right pane, and would
work with it just as he does with normal methods on objects.
Any comments on this would be greatly appreciated :)
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