Posted by nato on December 18, 2007 at 5:57pm
Fluid is a worldwide collaborative project to help improve the usability and accessibility of community open source projects with a focus on academic software for universities. We are developing and will freely distribute a library of sharable customizable user interfaces designed to improve the user experience of web applications.
http://fluidproject.org/
Fluid plans to build its site and UX component/design pattern library in Drupal, and thus might be a valuable collaboration group for folks focused on Drupal UX.
Fluid is funded by the Mellon Foundation.
Comments
This sounds very
This sounds very interesting. How does this relate to this discussion? http://groups.drupal.org/node/7294
Can you provide more detail on what when who why and how? Are there any specific goals you are seeking to achieve?
Bevan/
My first observation would
My first observation would be that http://ui-patterns.com/ seems to be providing ONLY design patterns, and http://fluidproject.org/ is gathering patterns AND code to enact best practice patterns.
Second, Fluid is dedicated to resources specifically for open source technologies, based on existing open source best practices/tools (eg, jquery).
Third, because Fluid is planning to build its repository in Drupal, they will likely be closely connected to Drupal in their thinking and practices. We in Drupal have an opportunity to augment our own UX work with that of some smart, like-minded folks.
However, I'm not really the one to speak for Fluid, as I only just found out about it myself ;) I just wanted to make the connection between Drupal and Fluid so the folks that are focused on UX in both projects might start a collaboration. I'm happy to provide direct introductions if anyone wants.
As my Season of Usability
As my Season of Usability project http://groups.drupal.org/node/7554 I am thinking about researching and designing UI patterns and writing accompanying guidelines, for use in drupal core and contrib with the goal of improving usability in drupal in the long term. I'd like to see how I can co-operate with Fluid's efforts so as to maximise work-efficiency. Who should I speak to? Thanks! :)
Bevan/
I have invited the Fluid
I have invited the Fluid folk to join in this thread...
GPL
"they will likely be closely connected to Drupal in their thinking and practices."
If this is the case they might consider releasing their code under Drupal's license, which is GPLv2. Currently it's dual licensed under the BSD and an educational license.
Open Source Design Pattern Library
Hi there,
I'm Allison Bloodworth, and I'm the lead on the Fluid Project for the Open Source Design Pattern Library (see http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Design+Patterns for more info on this project). This will be a design pattern library for the higher ed open source projects in our community (see www.fluidproject.org for more info), and potentially down the road a place for anyone to open source their design patterns. I've worked with some folks a bit at Berkeley on a new iteration of the Berkeley Web Pattern Library (http://groups.ischool.berkeley.edu/ui_designpatterns/webpatterns2/webpat...), and hope to base the new OSDP Library on this. We've added some tagging and ratings features to the new that you won't see at the above URL, however.
Feel free to get in touch with me Bevan if you'd like to be involved in our pattern discussions, talk about contributing patterns to the library once it's up and running, or even collaborate on building the library. UI Patterns are definitely an interesting topic! :)
Gaele, thanks for your recommendation on a license. Currently Fluid content is available under this Creative Commons license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/ca/, and our code is dual-licensed under both the BSD and Educational Community License 2.0. We'll be sure to use the GPL license as appropriate for anything related to Drupal.
One of the major deliverables from Fluid will be a set of usable and accessible components (see http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Components)...in our 0.1 release (http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Downloads), we included a (general) Reorderer component, as well as a Lightbox component (which is an implementation of the Reorderer, used to reorder images in an Image Gallery) along with design patterns which help designers and developers determine how best to use them. It may be that Drupal modules may want to include our components, which we'd be delighted about!
Cheers,
Allison
Thanks
Thanks Allison, I signed up on the wiki and the bug tracker. I left a few comments and points on the wiki. I'd like to see how Drupal and the OSDP can help each other, although currently I can only see large technical block to actually sharing code.
I think there will likely be significant overlap in Fluid's work and my work through the Season of Usability; http://groups.drupal.org/season-usability depending on what goals I/we choose to eventually work on.
Bevan/
Season of Usability & Open Source Design Pattern Library
Hi Bevan,
I just checked out your page and your project sounds very interesting and extremely worthwhile. :) We should definitely talk about whether there are ways we could collaborate, help or advise each other. Feel free to get in contact with me at abloodworth@berkeley.edu.
I'm not entirely sure what you mean about the "large technical block" to actually sharing code...would you explain a little more about what you mean? I'd like to package up our Drupal customizations in an installation profile (and perhaps theme) and give them back to the community, so if it doesn't make sense to put your Drupal patterns in the OSDP Library (I'm not sure we'd be ready for you yet), perhaps you could use it to create a Drupal pattern library? I'd really love to build the whole thing based in XML to make it easier for pattern libraries to share their patterns in XML, something we did for my UC Berkeley Calendar Network project (the end product of which you can see at http://events.berkeley.edu), but I'm not quite at this point how I'd approach this in Drupal.
Cheers,
Allison