[pmwiki-users] Re: question about view concept

[chr at home.se]

On Thu, 11 Aug 2005, Patrick R. Michaud wrote:

> Views are different from authorizations.  Authorization determines what
> a user is _allowed_ to perform, while views are a way of selecting or
> customizing a skin based on the types of actions the user _wants_ to
> perform.
> 
> Thus, an administrator (authorized to perform any action)  could select
> different views of a page depending on the tasks of interest.  In browse
> mode the administrator might want to see none of the page controls (to
> get an idea of how the page looks to non-authors), in authoring mode
> they would want to see edit controls, and in admin mode they might see
> actions for approving urls, performing reference counts, expiring page
> histories, renaming pages, etc.
> 
> FWIW, I'm not entirely comfortable with the name "views" for this
> capability -- it doesn't seem to flow well when trying to describe what
> it does.  This often means it should be called something else.

What did you think of my suggestion about referring to a "UI mode" 
instead? The explanation above would then go like this:

> UI modes are different from authorizations.  Authorization determines
> what a user is _allowed_ to perform, while UI modes are a way of
> selecting or customizing a skin based on the types of actions the user
> _wants_ to perform.
> 
> Thus, an administrator (authorized to perform any action)  could select
> different UI modes of a page depending on the tasks of interest. In
> browse mode the administrator might want to see none of the page
> controls (to get an idea of how the page looks to non-authors), in
> authoring mode they would want to see edit controls, and in admin mode
> they might see actions for approving urls, performing reference counts,
> expiring page histories, renaming pages, etc.

Does that feel better?

/Christian

-- 
Christian Ridderström, +46-8-768 39 44               http://www.md.kth.se/~chr