Hooks Order & Public Order

[Ocean West]

currently there is just ONE big list of HOOKS that a user may have installed and the order of these hooks may or may not have an effect on the front end of the site.

Is there some way to create a much better interface for ordering elements ( like side blocks board index ) other then this general list of all hooks. ( rhetorical currently it doesn't)

my suggestion is to come up with a new method for UI - to organize the front site.

[Michael]

There are hundreds of potential hook points, though, the sidebar is just one of those, albeit one of the most popular ones. If you're installing so many hooks that it becomes too much of a hassle to use the current UI, I'd say you need to reconsider which hooks are actually necessary.

[Ocean West]

i am not saying i have too many - i am saying the style of UX is flawed - Some hooks are order dependent others are not, and you have do visual acrobatics to determine how it will appear on the front of the site.

If there were a third tab - Enabled | Disabled | Layout

the third tab would ONLY contain the hooks that have public side order dependency.

[NiftyWolfie]

But which "layout" would you use ?

sidebar?

board index?

global ?

The way I do it, I know roughly were on my skins the hooks I installed appear and try to keep them in the order of : "top-sidebar-bottom-topics-doesn't matter"

It's easy to work out which hooks require being in a sequence and which don't, just takes time on your side to work the sequence out and write it down for next time you alter it

[bfarber]

Actually, the order matters for ALL hooks as it controls what order they are executed in. This may or may not not have a visual impact for you as an end user, but it doesn't mean that the order doesn't matter.

[Dmacleo]

would like ability to segrate in ACP somehow.

there are ones that dragging in acp does nothing, would be nice if those had their own tab in acp hooks section.

[NiftyWolfie]

As the order does matter, how do we as end user's know which hook is supposed to come first as such?

Is there some sort of guidelines or documents explaining this?

I would like to know more about this if you can point me in the right direction :)

Cheers

NiftyWolfie

[Wolfie]

If there were a third tab - Enabled | Disabled | Layout

You missed Michael's point. There are hundreds of hook points in the front end alone. On the board index page, there are at least a dozen easy, and that's without going to count them. How do you propose the layout tab be handled? By template bit? Look at the number of template bits there are. That would be more hassle than it's worth. By type of page view? Again, more hassle than it's worth because the some pages can have so many variations to it. Board index only? What about other page views? You would be hard pressed to come up with a reasonable solution.

You must also keep in mind that some hook use multiple files that use different hook points. One might use the sidebar of the board index. Should that appear in the layout view or the 'Enabled' view or both? If both then that could confuse people.

would like ability to segrate in ACP somehow.

there are ones that dragging in acp does nothing, would be nice if those had their own tab in acp hooks section.

You lost me on this...

As the order does matter, how do we as end user's know which hook is supposed to come first as such?

In most circumstances, I don't think the order really matters, except when multiple hooks are using the same hook point. Then it matters as it can affect the order they are displayed in.

I do have a suggestion that might help somewhat with what the OP is looking for, but not sure how feasible it would be. When viewing the list of hooks, have ones that hook into the global template or the board index to have an icon with them. If the OP is wanting to know which ones appear on the sidebar, the board index icon would suit their needs and they could juggle it that way. Then the admin could either group them together (global, both, board index, neither) or whatever else of their choose.

[stoo2000]

You missed Michael's point. There are hundreds of hook points in the front end alone. On the board index page, there are at least a dozen easy, and that's without going to count them. How do you propose the layout tab be handled? By template bit? Look at the number of template bits there are. That would be more hassle than it's worth. By type of page view? Again, more hassle than it's worth because the some pages can have so many variations to it. Board index only? What about other page views? You would be hard pressed to come up with a reasonable solution.

You must also keep in mind that some hook use multiple files that use different hook points. One might use the sidebar of the board index. Should that appear in the layout view or the 'Enabled' view or both? If both then that could confuse people.

You lost me on this...

In most circumstances, I don't think the order really matters, except when multiple hooks are using the same hook point. Then it matters as it can affect the order they are displayed in.

I do have a suggestion that might help somewhat with what the OP is looking for, but not sure how feasible it would be. When viewing the list of hooks, have ones that hook into the global template or the board index to have an icon with them. If the OP is wanting to know which ones appear on the sidebar, the board index icon would suit their needs and they could juggle it that way. Then the admin could either group them together (global, both, board index, neither) or whatever else of their choose.

What about hooks that hook into multiple places and in many different ways?

[Wolfie]

What about hooks that hook into multiple places and in many different ways?

Already covered. :P Use global and board index as they are two of the most popular items (board index because of the sidebar). Also, it was to give an idea of something that might do what the OP is looking for.

[stoo2000]

Already covered. :tongue: Use global and board index as they are two of the most popular items (board index because of the sidebar). Also, it was to give an idea of something that might do what the OP is looking for.

Point is that a single hook could use many many many hook points, so putting an icon on it wouldn't make sense...

[Wolfie]

Point is that a single hook could use many many many hook points, so putting an icon on it wouldn't make sense...

I know that (read what you quoted, I pointed that out). An icon would make sense as it would just be an indication that the hook makes uses a hook point in one (or both) of those locations. It would be that it only uses those locations, just that at least one of the hook files does.

[Dmacleo]

You lost me on this...

many hooks are related to apps or are for items not related to board index display at all.

so if they don't show on board index having them in there is a pita, if items that don't affect anything on the index had there own (pseudo/virtual)tab to clean up the listing that actually does affect the index it would be cleaner.

heres 11 that can be dragged anywheres w/o doing anything.

and if I separated better I could get screenshot of more.

[Marcher Technologies]

that screenshot just illustrates how difficult it is to logically group them in any way. :unsure:

1 has a library hook adding html into the acp, and another adding a method to ccsFunctions(media) 2 others add to/replace the primary navigation, at least one is a data hook solely, several are multiple hook files.

A hook can add templates, language strings, css, tasks, and settings without *actually* touching an actual hook file.... and a hook file does not immediately mean it will appear anywhere, much low-level functionality(update comment count an immediate example) produces no output directly.

How exactly do you categorize hooks by what they do or where they appear when the fact of it is there is not much they can't do, and may 'appear' in several places, or none? :unsure:

Serious question, I'm all ears, because I do not like managing a list of my demo's(and many client's) size.

[Cyrem]

You could make it an option where the developer chooses the type of hook it is: e.g Sidebar, Post, Index, Internal, Admin, Other etc..

Then on the hooks page, you can have two buttons "Show by Order" and "Show by Type".

Obviously, order would be the only way to adjust the execution order, but type would I guess... just be a neater way to see what is installed.

If you wanted to take type one step further, you could allow dragging on whole groups in Type view.

[Marcher Technologies]

.... can I eat crow?

2 things would help.

A: allow us to filter hooks by what they add... command hooks, data hooks, templates, so-on, it would definitely help in finding x hook to disable/enable, you do not need to allow re-ordering in such a filtered result, but say I have 10 board index hooks among many and I have a need to see what is parsing there.... that data is available now, just needs to be filterable by it.

B: user-categorization in the ACP, and collapse-able 'categories'. the dev would not need nor want to specify such, is merely end-user relief.

[Marcher Technologies]

You could make it an option where the developer chooses the type of hook it is: e.g Sidebar, Post, Index, Internal, Admin, Other etc..

Then on the hooks page, you can have two buttons "Show by Order" and "Show by Type".

Obviously, order would be the only way to adjust the execution order, but type would I guess... just be a neater way to see what is installed.

If you wanted to take type one step further, you could allow dragging on whole groups in Type view.

That would be great except many many hooks would end up in Other due to landing in many types. :tongue:

Needs to be rather flexible imo, and not requiring the dev define or be locked into what 'type' it is(I can only name a very few that would not end up in 'other' due to being admin+internal, or admin+frontend+internal), due to the sheer flexibility of hooks themselves.

[Ocean West]

My primary imputus is to present a more informed interface to the admin who probably has to jump in and change something quickly perhaps to a setting that has't been visited in quite awhile.

If the HOOK has a VISUAL front end appearance presentation and there is some positional Element (ORDER) to where this hook will be presented on the Index page, or some other area of the site then a good example of this is -

Social Groups - Front end management:

For applications that HAVE hooks the HOOKS should also be visible from with in the APPLICATION itself part of the settings of that application and should have some indication that it has a front end visual Order appearance and it's status (active|disabled) - if you click on the item perhaps a visual popup window with the ability to use the drag & Drop to position the element as needed. (accounting for current site settings)

Example Nexus Donation Sidebar, this should be visible when working within the Nexus app - and from there you should be visually decide where in the side bar it should be seen.

Then again other Hooks have no positional element for front end display. So they can just be seen there from within the app.

Perhaps have a way to FILTER & SORT the list of Hooks by author, state , status - for easy ACP management.

What always seemed frustrating is once you install a hook you have to navigate to the "settings" then figure out what tab it got inserted into. - yes i realize that you can hit the drop down to use the Edit "settings". There is just something i can't put my finger on.

I have to have more caffeine to better articulate this - please keep in mind I am only trying to foster a conversation - a think tank as to how to collaboratively and creatively and visually make IPS better.

[Cyrem]

You can't do drag and drop for visually placing hooks (I guess if multiple hooks hook the same hook point, you can move the order up or down... but thats it). Hook's "hook" on to a particular point in the template specified by the developer(then there is code position after that), changing them dynamically would cause chaos.

The entire hooking system would need to be re-written, and even then, this is going to cause some difficulties.

[Marcher Technologies]

You can't do drag and drop for visually placing hooks (I guess if multiple hooks hook the same hook point, you can move the order up or down... but thats it). Hook's "hook" on to a particular point in the template specified by the developer(then there is code position after that), changing them dynamically would cause chaos.

The entire hooking system would need to be re-written, and even then, this is going to cause some difficulties.

if only that was all.

Hooks can completely change the way the core works in a specified area with no output, add entire areas to the community, replace HTML at need.

Simply put..... Ocean.... that type of interface simply cannot work... where would the hooks not related to any app go? You expect every application to have an area for this, how does that even work? The cache could very easily go completely haywire on re-order, for a start.

http://www.invisionpower.com/support/guides/_/advanced-and-developers/hooks/

please.... I would have hoped with all the hooks you have you would have a general idea of how hooks work, and what they can do.

If you really are dead set focusing on Template hooks alone, see the bottom of this article

Just because it is the same hook 'point', does not mean that it is the same hook 'position', you could have three pre.if, and 5 post.if, and the results of reordering would not be logical at all in such a preview.

I am not discounting the need for better management of mass hook count, am simply trying to give information to help articulate your thoughts.

[Pieter K]

While you can't really separate them into different sections, you can make fake hooks to use as spacers. I do this myself, and it helps remove most of the clutter from the list.

[Marcher Technologies]

While you can't really separate them into different sections, you can make fake hooks to use as spacers. I do this myself, and it helps remove most of the clutter from the list.

make 'spacer' blue bg/white text, add a collapse/expand button for minimizing the hooks listed below it... and generally that's what I meant (visually) with user categorization. :smile:

[Dmacleo]

While you can't really separate them into different sections, you can make fake hooks to use as spacers. I do this myself, and it helps remove most of the clutter from the list.

that actually would help a lot.

[Wolfie]

Maybe IPS could create four category views, with default names that could be edited, and making those collapsible (as MT said).

Default names/sections could include header, body, footer, misc. Then rename and reorganize as desired. And with respect to hooks with multiple files and such, yeah I know about that, but the idea would be to show grouping and the admin of a site could sort it however they wanted.