Leopard Wiki Rant

[SpeedDemon]

I just went through the trouble of setting up the wiki server on my tester leopard server that is in Advanced mode connected to an AD environment and I’m seriously disappointed by the Wiki service that is built into Leopard. Although the management of it was straight forward, it is incredibly limited and can’t even come close to comparing with my current DokuWiki solution.

1. Why wouldn’t Apple have made the Wiki server work with all of the major web browsers. The wiki pages clearly work best in Safari with IE7 being second in my testing. IE7 is horribly slow and nearly unusable for typing new content onto a wiki page through editor. I’m running Mozilla Firefox 3 beta 4 on my MacBook Pro running 10.5.2 and I couldn’t even get the login button to work with it. Apple…. I understand that you like stylish, but please make it useable.

2. Wikis need to be able to take advantage of all the screen space you have and it is ridiculous that Apple’s page layouts are fixed width. All wikis that I have ever used are flexible width.

3. The table editor is the most important feature to me in a wiki for keeping track of data and sharing it with others in an easy to read format, but the editor and lack of page width made this unusable for me.

I can clearly see now after hassling through 10.3, 10.4 and now 10.5 server what Apple is thinking. Apple is only maintaining OS X to be a companion to Windows server environments where certain things like an AFP server, OD group/computer management, software updates, xgrid, quicktime server, etc. are needed. I’m sure that Apple even admits to themselves that any serious users with even somewhat serious needs should be using Exchange, Sharepoint, and possibly another wiki server like Media Wiki (or the hundreds of others that are available and better than Apple’s).

[khiltd]

Fluid width layouts tend to make content unreadable since web typography is several centuries behind the print world, but if it really bothers you I’m sure Apple hasn’t done anything that would prevent you from running a different Wiki application, and I believe the entire thing is just a big Python script whose layout templates you could probably modify to your heart’s content. It’s not like any CMS vendor anywhere expects you to put their default layout into production.

[SpeedDemon]

The fixed width problem was only a small part of problems with the teams server. And yes, I know how to edit the CSS layouts to change the the appearance, but there should be a simple setting in the preferences to adjust these kinds of things.

I clearly more upset with the fact that it pretty much has to be used IN SAFARI. Only about 1% of the users I administer use Safari with most using IE7, and pretty much the rest using Firefox. The Wiki works in neither of the two MAJORITY BROWSERS.

[khiltd]

[QUOTE][u]Quote by: SpeedDemon[/u][p]The fixed width problem was only a small part of problems with the teams server. And yes, I know how to edit the CSS layouts to change the the appearance, but there should be a simple setting in the preferences to adjust these kinds of things.

I clearly more upset with the fact that it pretty much has to be used IN SAFARI. Only about 1% of the users I administer use Safari with most using IE7, and pretty much the rest using Firefox. The Wiki works in neither of the two MAJORITY BROWSERS.[/p][/QUOTE]

If web design could be reduced to a simple setting in the preferences there’d be far fewer horrible looking websites in the world. The number of ridiculous JavaScript hacks and workarounds that are required to make a standards compliant layout look anything approaching decent in your MAJORITY BROWSERS are a complete waste of time for anyone who caters primarily to Mac users–like Apple. If you do not cater primarily to Mac users, then investing in an OS X Server solution would probably not be the most sensible expenditure in the world.

[nakima731]

[QUOTE][u]Quote by: SpeedDemon[/u][p]The fixed width problem was only a small part of problems with the teams server. And yes, I know how to edit the CSS layouts to change the the appearance, but there should be a simple setting in the preferences to adjust these kinds of things.

I clearly more upset with the fact that it pretty much has to be used IN SAFARI. Only about 1% of the users I administer use Safari with most using IE7, and pretty much the rest using Firefox. The Wiki works in neither of the two MAJORITY BROWSERS.[/p][/QUOTE]

Actually – the login prompt issue is solely with Firefox 3 BETA. Use the production Firefox browser, Mac, PC, Linux, the login prompt works fine.

Layout / editing in IE7, yeap it’s a bit off. But that’s cuz IE7 is a POS itself unless it is browsing an ASP, .NET, IIS site.

[Author]

Posts