Django Suit version 2.0

[darklow]

Brace yourselves, this is going to be a long post!

I have bad news and good news.
The bad news is - Bootstrap 3 branch will be discontinued.
The good news is what is coming instead! 

Some history

Some time after i launched the very first Django Suit (DS) version I realised biggest challenge is to keep up with Django admin changes. And bs3 branch version proved that even more. I haven’t finished it yet as Django admin started changing quite a lot. New templates, new features, new styles etc. Third party apps are also changing and evolving a lot, therefore same problem existed with 3rd party apps too. I knew i needed to solve this issue before continuing.

Flexbox

Recently I did a lot of thinking and experimenting and because browsers have evolved significantly I found an answer to my problems - Flexbox. I’ve been working on Django Suit fresh rewrite for few weeks and haven’t overridden a single Django admin template and in the end of the post you can see real screenshot of what i achieved by CSS only.

So this is a short story how Django Suit v2.0 rewrite started.

I will try to avoid any Django admin templates override as long as possible and if needed i will use JS DOM manipulations instead of overriding templates, which gives a few huge benefits:
When Django admin templates changes, some minor visual bugs may appear, but it will not break anything.

Without overriding admin templates, we have much wider 3rd party app support. Any app that haven’t modified templates too much and use Django admin markup should work perfectly.
This gives us much wider Django version support range, however I think Django Suit will stay with 2-3 recent version support.

What’s new in Django Suit v2

• Based on Bootstrap 4.0 (currently v4-alpha):
  • Moved from Less to Sass.
  • Flexbox usage and support.
  • Responsive sizing using rem units. To increase whole admin sizing (font-sizes, margins), all you have to do is change font-size for body tag.
• Django 1.9+
• Menu rewrite to MenuItem classes
• FontAwesome icons
• Demo app is part of Django Suit repository now
• Toggle-able list top actions if any row is selected
• Menu:
  • Horizontal navigation
  • Aligned right menu
  • Rewrite whole menu builder to MenuItem classes

So here is the current state of v2.0 rewrite.
No templates overridden except base_site.html:

Todo:

• CSS: Base layout
• CSS: List base layout
• Menu builder rewrite
• Custom admin view example
• CSS: List states / cell / row attributes
• CSS: Popups
• CSS: Forms
  • CSS: Forms base
  • CSS: Regular and collapsible fieldsets
  • Form sizing handling (label and field column proportions)
  • Two column change form with submit row on right
  • Submit buttons debounce - avoid clicking submit twice
  • Form inlines
  • Tabular Inlines
  • Stacked Inlines
  • CSS: Submit row
  • CSS: Floating/fixed Submit row
  • CSS: Delete confirmation
  • Sticky submit box
• CSS: Alerts & messages
• Suit Widgets
  • AutosizedTextarea
  • EnclosedInput
  • LinkedSelect
• Native Widgets
  • CSS: Date & Date time picker
  • CSS: Side to Side chooser
  • CSS: Many to Many select
  • CSS: Many to Many checkboxes
• CSS: Footer
• CSS: Responsiveness
• CSS: Login
• CSS: Left side menu
• Horizontal list filters
• Form Tabs
• Form Includes
• Warning on leaving if unconfirmed changes
• Print styles for list and forms.
• Sortables
  • For tabular inline
  • For Stacked inline
  • For admin change list
• Django support:
  • Django 1.9
  • Django 1.10
  • Django 1.11
• Examples:
  • "Kind of" inlines in inlines / nested inlines solution Django Suit version 2.0 #475 (comment)
  • Multiple admin sites
  • Django select2 widget
• Documentation

If you're ok with incomplete features and missing documentation (demo app with all examples is included) then feel free to install or even use it for production (I personally use it in production for a few projects already):

pip install https://github.com/darklow/django-suit/tarball/v2

In requirements.txt:

 -e git://github.com/darklow/django-suit.git@v2#egg=django-suit

Work in progress links:
v2 demo: http://v2.djangosuit.com/admin/
v2 branch: https://github.com/darklow/django-suit/tree/v2
v2 docs: http://django-suit.readthedocs.org/en/v2/

Feel free to share your thoughts.

[chris-erickson]

We use Suit on every project (paid!), and it looks like the future is going to be good. 🎩 Really appreciate the work you've done.

[fyaconiello]

Any ballpark when suit v2 is going to be ready? I have a couple paid django 1.x folks i wanted to upgrade to 1.9, but i'm afraid to break their admin.

[gamesbook]

I really hope we will see support for Django 1.8 as that is a long term release - that could be a deal--breaker.

[gamesbook]

Also hope to see the left-menu option retained as an alternative to the top menu - there was a lot of discussion about this before -- the fact remains that there is simply more horizontal screen space than vertical and avoiding "bar creep" is very desirable.

[darklow]

@gamesbook Thanks for your feedback. I'll look into Django 1.8 support. As the stage is early, probably I can adjust it to make work for both. Supporting Django LTS release makes sense.
And I added horizontal menu to features list as well, it was planned, just forgot to mention in roadmap.

[SalahAdDin]

What's about left or right sidebar?
I want all previous suit versio features.

[gamesbook]

@darklow Thanks for the positive feedback. This a great product that we hope to keep using and deploying further in future. (I see 1.8LTS has planned support through to April 2018).

[darklow]

Day by day suit v2 is getting more and more mature.

Status update:

• List layout fixes
• Forms base
• Submit row
• Delete confimations

PS. You can see total progress in main issue description.

v2 demo: http://v2.djangosuit.com/admin/

[darklow]

I know many of you will like these features that I just deployed ;)

• Two column change form with submit row on right (with responsive fallback to bottom)
• AutoSized textarea

You can see full list of updates in v2 branch commit log:
https://github.com/darklow/django-suit/commits/v2

v2 demo:
http://v2.djangosuit.com/admin/demo/country/170/change/

[nchampsavoir]

This is really shaping up quite nicely. :)

2016-02-17 16:39 GMT+01:00 Kaspars Sprogis notifications@github.com:

I know many of you will like these features that I just deployed ;)

• Two column change form with submit row on right (with responsive
  fallback to bottom)
• AutoSized textarea

You can see full list of updates in v2 branch commit log:
https://github.com/darklow/django-suit/commits/v2

v2 demo:
http://v2.djangosuit.com/admin/demo/country/170/change/

[image: image]
https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/445304/13114625/f301e576-d59c-11e5-8290-0131349b6af6.png

v2 demo: http://v2.djangosuit.com/admin/

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
#475 (comment)
.

[darklow]

If anyone wants to contribute to Django framework and help Django Suit as well, there is a great chance to do it. There is an incomplete pull request at Django repository with a super-valuable feature started, which needs some help to make it to the final line. Author don't have time to finish what he started, however he already did a great job and almost finished it.

Django: Added template-based widget rendering
https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/15667

Pull request and author comments about what still has to be done to finish it:
django/django#4848 (comment)

I will try to help as much as possible, but i already have my hands full with v2 and other things.
If we could get this PR by Django version 1.10 then no more hacks for widgets are needed and anyone can style any widgets with custom templates. I think this is awesome and very very valuable feature.

Thanks.

[darklow]

Isn't this cute? :)
Native Django admin Date/Time widgets:

Live demo: http://v2.djangosuit.com/admin/demo/showcase/add/