[development] Fixing themes and regions

[johan at forngren.com]

> WordPress widgets uses an excellent  ajaxian UI where you drag and
> drop widgets (blocks) into columns that represent regions so you can
> see how they will show up and can re-order them by drag and drop.
> Given most Drupal Themes arrange blocks vertically inside regions,
> this would seem to be applicable as well, though a horizontal region
> should be representable the same way. Then you click on that block in
> the GUI to bring up other block configuration options like block
> title, contents, etc.
>
> Drag and drop might remove the need for setting weights the way we do
> it now.
>
> In this case I would suggest the blocks be arranged by region as you
> suggest, but also by template. I tend to use multiple page templates,
> so a tab in the block administration interface for each template in a
> theme would be useful as well. each tab would give you another visual
> representation of the block arrangement.
>
> Permissions-based display of a lot of blocks (i.e. in an OG install)
> would make this kind of interface a challenge in a high N block
> environment, but I must say, I love the way Wordpress Widgets does
> it.  In the case of a lot of blocks, you could allow the user to
> scale the GUI so blocks are smaller, and then they magnify on mouse-
> over like the icons in the Mac OS X Dock. And then we could solve all
> the pain and suffering the world and end war forever.  :-)
>
> I'm jumping in in the middle here so I hope I'm not redundant. Please
> ignore if so.
>
> evan

I like these thoughts, fact is that I was going to write something simular
when I got the time... However, how about non javascript browsers?