Trilium: Would the project be open to design contribution?

[rojcyk]

I would be willing to help design this product, to make it visually more consistent and generally polished.

[zadam]

Hello, that would be certainly welcome. This is definitely one of the weaknesses right now ...

[AleksandarFaraj]

What tools would you use @Rojcyk? I'll put my +1 for "Adobe XD" since it is easy to use and free.

[rojcyk]

@AleksandarFaraj I would prefer Figma. It is available via the browser for everyone, no apps are needed, and is also free.

@zadam I'll see what I can do! :)

[rojcyk]

@zadam Do you have a planned roadmap somewhere public?

[zadam]

Do you mean like long term or what will be the features in the next release? I typically release new feature release once in few weeks (typically 2-4 weeks). For the next one I plan to work on some of the larger items from the feedback in issues.

[gaui]

It would be awesome to have a new design, set up a Design System and implement the frontend in React + SSR. This jQuery + Bootstrap stuff is so hard to maintain.

[zadam]

React and SSR are mostly out of the question.

[gaui]

@zadam why?

[gaui]

You're SSR'ing currently with Express+EJS right?

[zadam]

I guess the main ones are it would mean a big frontend rewrite and that it doesn't actually solve any problems I have.

I also have some doubts if React is a good fit for this particular project (you can view Trilium's frontend as a glue between several libraries which are not necessarily react friendly). There are some parts which I think would benefit from something like React/Vue etc. but it's pretty clear minority.

[yozlet]

@zadam Which problems are those?

I ask because the use of existing frameworks (for components, state management, storage, testing etc.) could solve a number of higher-order problems, especially around making the code easier to understand and maintain. In this case, it could make it much easier for @rojcyk to integrate his work without breaking app logic. Most importantly, it _wouldn't_ require rewriting the whole frontend before it starts to pay dividends. Nobody wants to wait for a long experimental rewrite before work on the app can continue.

But for that to be valuable, it has to meet your needs for the project. There are a bunch of newcomers who want to contribute (including myself), but ultimately their work has to fit with where you want the project to go. And this may not be the right place/thread to talk about that, but it could save a bunch of time and effort.

[zadam]

My problems are actually very simple (and can be mostly seen in issues) - I want better support for more import formats, I'd like to have some stable script API, people would like to be able to create links inside the editor without opening a dialog, there's a need to have configurable font sizes in different places, I think some visual refresh (with potentially some "themes") would make the app more attractive etc.

From my point of view React doesn't really help with any of these. There's some abstract promise of better maintainability, but that's not a) that clear to me and b) even if it would be true I'm wondering about opportunity costs (vs. developing features which actually matter to end user) and cost/benefits. Interestingly the project started with Vue on frontend, but it was rather quickly removed since the problems I was facing (and to a certain still am) were not really a good fit for Vue. Currently there's also knockout.js in some places where imperative nature of jQuery doesn't work well (mainly some forms). Instead of introducing another framework what I sometimes think about is reducing the knockout.js and non-bootstrap components to the minimum.

[robitar]

I also felt the UI/X could do with a bit of a polish, I'm really liking the philsophy and design around the data model and the thoughtfulness/utility/pragmatism (I was just about to start building something similar when I happened accross it!)

Thanks to the wonderful ability to easily add custom styles (and the well structured easy to grok html) I was able to add some polish in a day or two. It's still a bit rough/wip, but some people mind find it useful:

Css based on the ootb white theme

[edencoxhead]

Wow, that's very impressive!

[zadam]

This was more of a general discussion thread so closing now. Please open new issue for new questions etc.