Startpage redesign

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yorik
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Startpage redesign

Post by yorik »

I had a try this WE at redesigning the start center. What would you guys think of something like this?
Screenshot from 2017-05-22 21-36-29.png
Screenshot from 2017-05-22 21-36-29.png (136.55 KiB) Viewed 3995 times
You can play with it here:

http://yorik.uncreated.net/startpage/new.html

It is made to be pretty configurable. There would be a preference page that allows to chage the colors and background image, or even use a completely different HTML template:
Screenshot from 2017-05-22 21-31-01.png
Screenshot from 2017-05-22 21-31-01.png (31.67 KiB) Viewed 3995 times
The HTML template would be a normal HTML file, with some placeholder (like %freecadVersion% or %backgroundColor% ) that the start WB would replace by the correct value when loading it... This would allow for example, schools or companies to make a start page specific for them.

What do you think? Ideas? Improvements?
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NormandC
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Re: Startpage redesign

Post by NormandC »

I like it!!! :)

It reminds me of what Kurt posted some time ago...

It's a pity though that for Windows users, it's not possible to get thumbnails without a hack that most end users wouldn't know how to do.

Okay my previous comment was just after looking at your Documents tab screenshot. I just now saw your link with the other tabs... Awesome!!! The "Workbench help" section of the Help tab is a great idea!

But this brings a question: can this be translated, by which I mean could this automatically show the translated wiki links based on the end user's locale?
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Kunda1
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Re: Startpage redesign

Post by Kunda1 »

I dig it!
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Kunda1
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Re: Startpage redesign

Post by Kunda1 »

Addendum
Possibilities to add:
* a box showing the activity in the bugtracker with a short explanation on how to submit bug reports
* a box describing all current FreeCAD-addons and links to each one
* a link to useful YouTube tutorials
* a link to the PDF for beginners https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic. ... 34#p153850
* a link for volunteers to contribute documentation, code, macros, etc...
* a box linking users to the FreeCAD-library
* FreeCAD on social media

Edit: apologies, some of these already exist under the Help tab
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PrzemoF
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Re: Startpage redesign

Post by PrzemoF »

@yourik, very good idea! I like it much more than the current one.
triplus
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Re: Startpage redesign

Post by triplus »

A lot of ideas from the previous discussion thread got in. The result looks good.

P.S. If there would be about 10 to 20% of the actual work done by other members in community. That i guess would raise the bar even higher. But how to get to there i don't know. I feel its a process and we need to figure it out. Likely it will involve more direct engagement of the community (by the lead person behind the effort) in the process of WIP phase. And disclaimer made in a way lists of features are welcomed but pull requests is what we are really after in WIP phase.
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saso
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Re: Startpage redesign

Post by saso »

yorik wrote:I had a try this WE at redesigning the start center. What would you guys think of something like this?
Do it! :)
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yorik
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Re: Startpage redesign

Post by yorik »

Thanks for the comments guys!
NormandC wrote:But this brings a question: can this be translated, by which I mean could this automatically show the translated wiki links based on the end user's locale?
There is one easy path: The HTML template can be fully translated. However, there are some parts (the list of installed workbenches, etc) that will not be inside the template but generated by freeCAD at runtime. And this will include some wiki links... Maybe we could do something with what Renato has been working on the wiki (create empty /fr, /pt, /ru... pages), and, for example, if we use the russian template, add /ru to all the wiki links? To be discussed further.
Kunda1 wrote:* a box showing the activity in the bugtracker with a short explanation on how to submit bug reports
* a box describing all current FreeCAD-addons and links to each one
* a link to useful YouTube tutorials
* a link to the PDF for beginners https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic. ... 34#p153850
* a link for volunteers to contribute documentation, code, macros, etc...
* a box linking users to the FreeCAD-library
* FreeCAD on social media
Great! If anyone else has more ideas of these "content boxes", keep them coming. It's also easy to add more tabs (I was thinking about a "customize" one).

One detail I don't know how to solve yet. To make the loading of the start page fast, it cannot "wait" for web content to be loaded. It must first load without any web content, then anything from the web must be fetched after the page loaded, that is, by pure javascript. However, javascript is apparently forbidden to load contents from other domains than the one it is running from. That prevents from fetching stuff from the tracker or forum. The only exception is when using the JSON format, which AFAICS none of our webapps supports, only Github (that's why I was able to fetch the commits from github).

If any of you webgurus has an idea to remove that barrier, then we can do much more interesting stuff :)
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saso
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Re: Startpage redesign

Post by saso »

yorik wrote:However, javascript is apparently forbidden to load contents from other domains than the one it is running from. That prevents from fetching stuff from the tracker or forum. The only exception is when using the JSON format, which AFAICS none of our webapps supports, only Github (that's why I was able to fetch the commits from github).

If any of you webgurus has an idea to remove that barrier, then we can do much more interesting stuff :)
It is possible that some of the security flags for the website that we have set up recently are blocking this https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic. ... 78#p174779 , we can test this by adding a hash (#) in front of individual flags to disable them, for example:

Code: Select all

#Header always set Content-Security-Policy "frame-ancestors 'none'"
#Header always set X-Frame-Options "deny"
Personally however, from security point of view, I don't really like putting all this web functionality in to FC. We are potentially giving users a very unsafe "browser" to access and browse the web with. IMO there are some possible real dangers here. IMO it is better if users browse the web from their hopefully updated browsers.
Last edited by saso on Tue May 23, 2017 3:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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pablogil
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Re: Startpage redesign

Post by pablogil »

Nice job @yorik! I like it a lot.

I just suggest to make the "link object" the full box with the thumbnail and info, not just the thumbnail ;)

BTW, FC thumbnails do work on macOS?
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