Time for another update – not the weekly one but just about the catalog manager refactoring.

The last few days I finally had a serious stab at getting this to work and I think I’ve got the basics done (screenshot at the end).
Things do not look spectacularly different from the old code, so don’t expect too much right now. However, it looks like we’ll be able to get the main layout done properly in the next week or two.

Finally, I’ve just added the task ‘Create standalone admin installer’ to my list and I’d like to mention that to hopefully get some feedback on that.

Since the new admin UI is completely separate, it is absolutely possible to run that without any other storefront/templating code. I wonder if that would be attractive as a first step to migrate to ZenMagick (should someone wish to do so). Also, no matter what, the more the merrier, so even if people would just use the admin app it would mean a lot more exposure (and finding bugs

It’s good to finally see some light at the end of the tunnel. The trip is far from being over, but at least there is now a degree of certainty about whether things will work or not.

Once the admin is stable (not complete, just everything working) it will be a lot easier to work on adding features, etc. Also, at that point there will be some more changes to the store code to catch up with all the good stuff that got created to make admin (and the MVC code in general) better.

And, once all that is done it really is time for a 1.0 release! Way to go, but it doesn’t look as impossible as, say, 6 month ago.

I just found out that, in its latest incarnation, jstree supports jquery themeroller – just what I needed! The tree is coming along nicely now, although a lot now depends on creating a proper theme…

Things have, again, been revolving around the new admin UI. I’ve made substantiel progress with the nagivation, although it is not final. Also, there is no actual design applied yet which means unless elements are created by jquery there isn’t much style at all.

On the plus side it looks like it might be possible to style most of the UI using the jquery themeroller.

As usual there have been some improvements and additions to core and store code along the way, however nothing substantial this week with perhaps one exception: I’ve added support for user based authorization. That means it is now possible to control access to admin pages by granting permission to a role (group) or individual users. (Still no UI to manage this, sorry).

As far as UI content is concerned I’ve done lots of small improvements and prepared almost all content for translation.

The biggest chunk of work this week was spend on providing a way to manage all zencart configuration options in the new admin UI. As it turned out, using widgets to render the form elements was really as easy as I had hoped! That means no need to load additional zencart code at all. For the technically inclined, the code parses the set function value and then it’s more or less just a switch to select and populate the appropriate form widget.

Finally, because I am a bit proud a nice new screenshot: