[OPEN-ILS-DEV] OPAC (was: Planning for Evergreen development, post 2.0)

[Dan Scott]

<snip>

On Tue, Jan 11, 2011 at 03:44:32PM -0500, Bill Erickson wrote:
 
> >    User impact: Changed user interface means some relearning. Speed
> >    boost should be significant.
> >
> 
> I've been beating my head against the OPAC a lot lately and it's probably
> created some obvious bias ;)  This would be a big project, of course.  There
> is quite a bit of functionality in the OPAC (more than I can remember,
> sometimes).  In my opinion, though, such a change, if done right, would be a
> major victory for Evergreen and one of the most important requirements for
> wider adoption of the software.

An implementation thought, to avoid a period of destabilization, would
be to replace the SlimPAC with the TT2-based OPAC. (The SlimPAC could
still live at the same URLs as before to satisfy those hordes of people
who bookmarked them, of course). Then, when the appropriate amount of
functionality has been developed in the TT2-based OPAC, it could replace
the main OPAC (and the need for a separate "Basic Catalogue" should have
disappeared).

I'm already dreading trying to map the dynamic OPAC URLs to a TT2-based
OPAC (we promised they were persistent URLs, right?), but I am looking
forward to cleaning up the URL structure. You had mentioned in IRC that
you were already working on a prototype, is this something you can
share?