CCK/Form Comparison document

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Oleg Nesterov on October 13, 2009 at 10:52am

FYI, we are going to create a project dedicated to extensions comparison. I think this discussion might be interesting to you: http://www.alltogetherasawhole.org/forum/topics/developers-extensions

Permalink Reply by Amy Stephen on October 13, 2009 at 11:04am

Thanks for sharing that link. Trying to get the discussions for groups moved into the groups, so that's why I asked Rob to post here. Also pinged Peter, who is busy at the moment, to come in and help facilitate.

Permalink Reply by Amy Stephen on October 13, 2009 at 11:10am

I asked Rob if he would be willing to share his work with the community in hopes that we can involve all of the developers with CCK/Form like products in this activity of defining the options available. That interaction should help us get started on finding areas we can reuse and improve our work.

Rob graciously agreed to share his matrix and let folks participate. If we can get one successful effort, it could serve as a model for the other, similar efforts.

I'm going to try to get the other developers involved and encourage everyone to post in and share their ideas and concerns.

The goal would be to start learning how to blow our own horn and promote our good work, and to do so in a way that HELPS users make informed choices with access to open information that they can trust. That means everyone has to be able to join in - the process should be transparent - and the results should be able to be used by anyone (unchanged, of course.)

Thanks Rob - pinged Peter who is also going to help guide this important effort along. He's busy at the moment by will be here soon. Jump in folks, the waters warm!

Permalink Reply by Peter van Westen (NoNumber) on October 13, 2009 at 12:01pm

Thank you Rob for sharing.

You probably have seen Alledia's comparison of the CCK's:
http://www.alledia.com/blog/product-reviews/joomla-goes-cckrazy/

What would be interesting for many is the initial question:
What is a CCK?

Alledia has attempted to answer this:
Its not easy to define exactly what CCK means, but for the purposes of this post, I'll say:

* any extension which allows to move beyond the text and title options provided by Joomla's com_content, and choose your own fields and options
* any extension which also moves beyond the Section / Category hierachy of Joomla 1.0 and 1.5

Any thoughts on this?

Permalink Reply by Peter van Westen (NoNumber) on October 13, 2009 at 12:12pm

Maybe it is only a small difference in approach. But I think it would be good to do comparisons of extensions based on "the need" and not the "extension groups".

I mean: try to give an answer to questions like:
"I want to make forms in my website, what extensions can/should I use?"
"I want to create nested category content, what extensions can/should I use?"
"I want a pulldown menu, what extensions can/should I use?"

So, instead of comparing all extensions that fit in an abstract group name, compare extensions that answer a users need.

As I said, may this is only a minor difference and maybe boils down to exactly the same thing. But worth a thought...