Future Silex Developments

Here is a document that I wrote formalizing some of the discussions we’re having about Silex.

Introduction

The aim of this development is to: -       Increase performance

-       Start evolving towards platform independence. This means that soon Silex will be able to render sites in AS2, AS3, JS, or pure static HTML and that this development must lay some of the groundwork for that.

-       Make integration of third party components as easy as possible

-       Remove functionality from the core to make it lighter and push it towards plugins

-       Supercomponents. This is a separate development so it will not be specified here, but its future integration must be taken into account

  •       Library of components in one swf file should be possible
Current state of things, and what the problems are
-       A page is what you see at a url, for example yoursite.com/welcome/contact. This is rendered in Silex as pile of Layouts that contain Layers that contain media and components. Containers that are in a “Layer Skin” render Media, for example images and sound. Components are special SWFs that are loaded independently. It would be simpler and better to speak of Layers, SubLayers, and only components, not media.

-       Layouts are described in cumbersome XML files that no longer fit our needs and that are long to parse and manipulate. Furthermore the component properties are very linked to the virtual machine DOM. For example they contain “_x”, that is only x in AS2. There is therefore no way forward to work with AS3 or JS. The file format/system needs to be changed.

-       All components in Silex currently need to inherit the UiBase AS2 class. UiBase contains the arrays where the components and their properties are described. This is bad for performance, forces all components to be visual whereas there are now many non-visual components, and makes integration of third party functionality very difficult. We need to get rid of this dependence on UiBase and find another mechanism to describe components.

Proposal

Changes to the user experience

As mentioned above, a page will now be rendered as a pile of Layers that contain SubLayers. LayerSkins will be destroyed, and be replaced by a system where there is a mapping between the file extension of the media being used and the corresponding container component. For example, all files ending with “jpg”, ”png”, and “swf” can be rendered in the same way by the same container component that is responsible for static visual media. It could be called “ImageDisplay”. The current library will be enhanced with a separation between media and components. To add an image, the user will therefore have 2 possibilities: either add an “ImageDisplay” and configure it, or simply choose to insert the image and use the associated component. If by chance there are 2 components available to render the same file extension, the UI could offer a choice.  The only way for components that do not match a media type to be added is now through the component menu.

Changes in the architecture

The current layer skin players are moved to a plugin called “base_components”. This plugin contains the current renderers each in their own swf (or one single librairy ?), and one or more php files for the plugin integration.

A description of these components and how they can be used, configured etc. must be made available when editing the site, but not be necessary just to render them. Furthermore, the layer description file(s) should be useable to render the layer without a server and be planned for the multiplatform evolution.

The following data formats are to be applied: Layers are described in one file per platform, using the following naming scheme: ..xml. For example: start.as2.xml. The structure of all of these files is the same down to component description, where the description of the component properties is specific to the DOM of the platform. For example the as2 file will contain _x if necessary, and the as3 file will contain x.

So for example:

<subLayer id=”under”> <component url=”/plugins/base_components/imagedisplay.swf” _x=”34” … more properties, >......more properties...</component> … more components </subLayer> … more subLayers

Here is the content of the class ComponentDescriptor: -       As2Url, as3Url, jsUrl: urls to the file to load when using it, depending on the platform. url relative to the root of the server. This information is used to see what platforms are supported.

-       Class: Name of the class contained in the file, where relevant

-       Name: A localized name to show in the components menu

-       Description: A localized description to show in the components

-       MediaTypes: an array of strings each containing an extension that is supported by the component. For example [“swf”, “png”, “jpg”]

-       Properties: An array of properties. See below.

  •       getHtmlEquivalent which returns an html equivalent for the component (seo). Takes as input: the component id, the context (values for accessors, i.e. all layers data for the current page + publication config)

Events and methods and whatever other meta data we need can be added later.

Here is the content of the class PropertyDescriptor: -       Name: Localized name

-       Description: Localized description

-       As2Name, as3Name, jsName
The matching property in each platform (e.g. _x / x / left )

-       Default: default value

-       Category: a category to use to sort the properties. TODO Could be replaced by tags, maybe.

-       isRegistered:  true/false should this be saved?

-       Miscellaneous meta data such as type, min/max values, min/max length etc.

Events and methods are not currently used, so they can be described later.

Furthermore, it must be easy to inherit descriptors. For example, the image renderer and the video renderer will have shared properties because they are both visual components. So a possible class inheritance structure would be
ComponentDescriptorBase -> VisualComponentDescriptor-> ImageDescriptor and VideoDescriptor.

It makes sense to make ComponentDescriptorBase and VisualComponentDescriptor part of the basic framework so that components in other plugins such as OOF can use them to build their descriptors. ComponentDescriptorBase should handle localization using a standard yet to be defined. Each of these descriptor classes is defined in its own PHP file.

These components descriptors are only used by the wysiwyg, so they can be queried using a new service called component_descriptor_service. The method is called getDescriptors. It returns all available component descriptors.

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