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The Plan for Alpha Zen

Currently we have a pre-alpha Zen. It has some capabilities that a complete demonstration version (Alpha Zen) should have. We need a plan to develop the pre-alpha Zen to the Alpha Zen. This is it.

Here are the salient points about Alpha Zen:

  1. When Alpha Zenarrow-up-right is released, Mashweb.Clubarrow-up-right will host it and be completely revamped. At the same time, the white paperarrow-up-right will be moved into this Guidearrow-up-right, which will be released along with Alpha Zenarrow-up-right. Code from web-call.ccarrow-up-right will be cherry-picked and installed on Mashweb.Clubarrow-up-right. Prior to the release of Alpha Zenarrow-up-right, web-call.ccarrow-up-right will be for experimenting and providing early glimpses of the Zen framework.

  2. Poor, innocent nontechnical visitors will be the target audience of the homepage and a section of Mashweb.Club. A section of Mashweb.Club with a target audience of programmers will be clearly marked "Advanced". The purpose of Mashweb.Club will be to inspire interest in using and further developing the Zen framework.

  3. Mashweb.Club will allow a visitor to create web pages using any of the most common responsive web design patterns (also called multi-device layout patterns). See Responsive Web Design Patterns on developers.google.comarrow-up-right, (bit.ly/web-design-patterns). These pages will not be based upon templates. The DOM structure of the page will be live edited, then persisted (only for registered users). This editing will be described in a separate team discussion here.

  4. A registered user will be able to upload a Scheme file with DOM and JavaScript extensions and run it inside the web page he creates.

  5. A visitor will be able to create very simple web apps using a visual program editor. See the barely begun web-call.cc subproject (web-call.cc Demo #3: Zen visual program editorarrow-up-right.

  6. Using the HTML5 Drag and Drop API, a visitor will be able to drag and drop text and other types of data from outside the web browser into a Zen web page.

  7. Using the HTML5 Asynchronous Clipboard API, a visitor will be able to copy text and other types of data from outside the web browser into a Zen web page.

  8. A registered user will be able to persist any of his Zen web pages.

There are many important details to the DOM editing (point #3), covered separately in Part 4: Web Page Structurearrow-up-right.

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