Favorites

Favorites is an in-development, one might say kind of radical feature.  It is being developed out loud and in public (mostly) on feature branches.  Adopters of uPortal 4.1 / Respondr will not be required to use this feature.

This feature is being developed (primarily?) by UW-Madison for use in the redesigned UW-Madison portal.

Favorites is a different way of interacting with layout.

Instead of thinking about tabs and organization of portlets within columns on tabs (a dashboard-centric view), favorites thinks about favoriting individual portlets and collections of portlets (a one-portlet-at-a-time-maximized-centric view).

Instead of adding portlets to one's layout, with Favorites, users add a portlet to their favorites.

Talk is cheap, where's the code?

Feature branch for favorites portlet: https://github.com/Jasig/uPortal/tree/UP-3896

Feature branch off of the favorites branch, implementing un-favoriting: https://github.com/Jasig/uPortal/tree/unfavorite_from_favorites_portlet

Got mockups / screenshots?

Design

Where are favorites stored?

Favorites are stored in a DLM fragment of type="favorites".  Since it's a goofy non-regular type, it won't be rendered in traditional spots in the layout (it's not a tab).

Viewing

Edit UI lists favorites.

Editing

Edit UI lists all favorites, collections first then portlets.

Items with deleteAllowed=true (DLM) are hyperlinks to ActionUrls deleting the node.  Trash glyph.

Items with deleteAllowed=false (DLM) are not hyperlinks and have tool tips explaining they are not deleteable.  Lock glyph.

Edit controller checks if signaled nodeId is deletable.  Adds errorMessage render parameter if needed.  Adds successMessage render parameter if success.