WARNING: This page consists of some rough proppsals / brainstorms on a future direction for the DSpace User Interface(s). |
Before deciding on a future direction for the DSpace UI(s), we have to face up to the "elephant in the room". We currently are building, maintaining and supporting two UIs (JSPUI & XMLUI) under a single Committers group.
Therefore, in order to move forward, we must make a decision on whether this direction is the best one for DSpace. As such, here's some pros/cons to multiple vs single UIs...(feel free to add your own)
Given the benefits and disadvantages above, one thing seems abundantly obvious: We cannot reasonably expect to continue supporting two UIs with a single Committers team. Or to restate that, it is unreasonable to expect any Committer (who are all volunteers, working at their own jobs) to be well versed enough to support, maintain, develop and review fixes for multiple UIs simultaneously. This is an obvious misuse of the volunteer resources provided. Each institution has already made their own personal decision on which UI they wish to use, yet we are essentially forcing some institution's developers (e.g. Committers) to also be knowledgable on the other UI (which they never use on a day to day basis).
Given this, it only seems reasonable to also conclude:
The following is a list of features/needs which we feel would make a good User Interface / User Interface framework. Since not all of these features/needs would have the same importance, we've categorized some as "required", "recommended" or "optional".
Here's a few possible UI frameworks which we may wish to analyze for a single future UI. A much larger listing of various web application frameworks appears on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_web_application_frameworks
Please feel free to add more that you feel would be worth analyzing for DSpace!
UI Framework | Languages / Technologies | Widely Adopted? | Ease of Customization | Responsive web design support | HTML5 support | REST-friendly | Faceted/Filtered Search/Browse friendly | Rapid Development friendly | Third-party plugin ecosystem | Notes |
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Existing DSpace XMLUI | Java, Apache Cocoon, XSLT | No | Not really (except maybe at Bootstrap level with Mirage2) | Mirage 2 theme = Yes Other themes = No | No | No | Yes | No | No | |
Personal opinions on DSpace XMLUI:
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Existing DSpace JSPUI | Java, JSPs | No | Not really (again, except maybe at Bootstrap level with Mirage2) | Yes | A few areas (e.g .HTML5 upload), but not overall | No | Yes | No | No | |
Personal opinions on DSpace JSPUI:
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Play! Framework | Java, Scala | Yes, some major sites use it according to Wikipedia | Yes, can be used with Bootstrap | Yes | Yes, has a modules repository | |||||
Personal opinions on Play Framework:
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Spring Boot | Java | |||||||||
Personal opinions on Spring Boot:
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Ruby on Rails | Ruby | Yes | Yes, has a Rails Bootstrap app, plus many gems | Yes | Yes, in form of Rails plugins & Ruby gems | |||||
Personal opinions on Ruby on Rails:
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Hydra Framework | Ruby on Rails, Fedora, Blacklight | Not worldwide, but has a growing following in libraries, etc. The base technology, Ruby on Rails is widely adopted | Yes (well, Sufia uses Bootstrap) | Yes (uses REST to communicate with Fedora) | Yes (Blacklight) | Yes | Yes, because it's Ruby on Rails, you often can use Rails plugins and/or Ruby gems | Hydra doesn't currently "work" with DSpace. However, if we decided on the former (create a DSpace-like Hydra Head), there are members of the Hydra Community who are currently striving to do that same thing. | ||
Personal opinions on Hydra: | ||||||||||
Grails | Groovy (based on Java) | Yes, large number of sites using Grails listed on website | Yes, has several Bootstrap plugins | Yes | Yes, has a plugins repository | |||||
Personal opinions on Grails:
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JQuery UI | Javascript | Yes | Yes, e.g. there is a JQuery UI theme for Bootstrap | Yes | Yes, has a plugin repository | |||||
Personal opinions on JQuery UI: | ||||||||||
(Javascript with RESTful JSON interface & Model-View-Presenter) | Javascript | Yes, large number of major sites listed on Wikipedia & their homepage | Yes, or at least you can use it in conjunction with Bootstrap. | Yes | Yes | Yes, has plugins and extensions | Designed for developing "single page web applications". It could prove difficult to use with DSpace because of the complexity of a repository system. | |||
Personal opinions on Backbone.js:
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(Client-side Javascript web application using MVC) | Javascript | Yes, see their list of users on website | Yes, can use in conjunction with Bootstrap, e.g. https://indexiatech.github.io/ember-components/#/overview | Yes | Yes | Yes, there's an "addon" repository | Uses Grunt, Bower, NPM (all of which are also in use by Mirage 2 theme) | |||
Personal opinions on Ember.js:
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