[thredds] TDS's OPeNDAP Form problem and a suggestion

[Ethan Davis]

Hi Jerry,

The OPeNDAP Access Form page is handled by the Java OPeNDAP library so 
the layout and such is somewhat out of THREDDS control. The broken links 
and inconsistency with Hyrax may be caused by our lagging on the version 
we use. I'll leave that for John to answer since he is more in touch 
with our use of the Java OPeNDAP library.

As for the layout, CSS, and such of the catalog pages, it is on my list 
to clean some of that up and I've gotten good suggestions from a number 
of people. Here's what I remember from the list: 1) stop hardcoding CSS 
in pages, instead include link to CSS doc that installers can 
modify/replace; 2) same for images, icons, and such; 3) add some div 
tags to allow easier use in CSS; 4) add hook for javascript.

This isn't at the top of my list yet. But I know it isn't a big job so I 
will try to bump it up to the top of the list soon. I'd like to get 
items 1-3 above into the 4.0 release but we'll have to see as we have a 
number of big items for 4.0.

Ethan

Pan, Jerry Yun wrote:
> Hi,
>  
>         I don't know if anyone has noticed, on the OPeNDAP Access Form 
> page, the links to help documents are all broken (click on Action, 
> DataURL, Global Attributes, Variables, I would get a 404 error).  I am 
> using the current TDS release (v. 3.16).  I checked the same links on 
> the form page from a Hyrax server, they work and the urls are slightly 
> different from what TDS has.  Looks like the opendap.org has changed 
> some files' location and TDS has not updated its links.
>  
> The bigger question I have is how we can easily customize the GUI 
> interface for TDS. For example, how can I repair the broken links 
> without modifying Java code? how do I alter the look and feel of the 
> access form - such as expand and shrink the variable list?  The same 
> questions also applies to the Catalog pages, such as custom images, 
> color, CSS, layout, etc.  My assumption is that not every end user 
> will use a client side tool to access TDS/OPeNDAP, and some will use 
> the web GUI exclusively, so the data providers may want to change the 
> GUI to better meet their needs.
>  
> A suggestion: use JSPs to render all GUI components.  With that, the 
> GUI can be changed easily, and a bad link like above can be fixed 
> without waiting for the next release. Another benefit of using JSP is 
> it would make the app internationalization ready and easy to localize.
>  
> Thanks
> =================
> Jerry Pan
> DAAC Staff
> Oak Ridge National Lab
>  
>  
>  
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-- 
Ethan R. Davis                                Telephone: (303) 497-8155
Software Engineer                             Fax:       (303) 497-8690
UCAR Unidata Program Center                   E-mail:    edavis at ucar.edu
P.O. Box 3000
Boulder, CO  80307-3000                       http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/
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