[FELIX-3769] Improve the way Web Console UI manages growing number of plugins.

• Type: New Feature
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Minor
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: webconsole-4.0.0
• Fix Version/s: webconsole-4.2.0
• Component/s: Web Console
• Assignee: Felix Meschberger
• Reporter: Henry Saginor
• Created: 21/Nov/12 01:36
• Updated: 06/Jun/13 15:34
• Resolved: 28/Dec/12 15:32

Description

Something needs to be done about growing number of web console plugins. Currently the UI displays a tab for each plugin. This makes the UI cluttered as more and more plugins are added. To address the tabs should be replaced with a tree structure or a drop-down menu.

Felix Meschberger has proposed the following on the dev list to implement this.

"* Plugins registered as services may have a "felix.webconsole.category" property
indicating the category. Plugins not registering this property will be placed in
the default category

• AbstractWebConsolePlugin is ammended with a getCategory() method, which may
  overwritten by implementations. The default implementation in the
  AbstractWebConsolePlugin class returns the default category
• A default category can be configured
• Categories are simple strings such as "OSGi" or relative paths such as
  "Sling/Main". Relative paths define multi-level trees. I think in general a
  single level is probably enough. Maybe we can start with just supporting a
  single level (so just plain strings).
• Translation of categories is such that each segment in the path (or the
  complete string if there is no sub-categories) is converted into a translation
  label by prefixing with "category.". So the translation for the "OSGi" category
  would be found with the translation string "category.OSGi".
• The plugin navigation is refactored to move it to the left and render it as a
  tree structure (I assume we can use the JQuery treetable plugin)."

Issue Links

• depends upon: FELIX-3770 Upgrade jquery-ui to 1.9.1
• relates to: FELIX-3800 Support Category Translation
• relates to: FELIX-3798 Make default category configurable
• relates to: FELIX-3799 Sort plugin plugin links by title
• relates to: FELIX-3833 Consider backwards compatibility break with label map due to Categories