Viewlets don't suck! They are just really annoying.

This is a small Plone viewlet tutorial that adds/removes a bit of template code to the portal top viewlet manager. The tongue-in-cheek title refers to the following:

• In essence, viewlets are really cool. They allow you to customize any part of a Plone page without touching any Plone code.
• In practice, they are a bit harder to work with than they should be (in the author's opinion) due to but not limited to the following reasons (some of which may be limitations of Plone):
  • They require GenericSetup [1]
  • They require a Python package [2]
  • They require an understanding of the ZCA [3]

The goal of this package is to add/remove a viewlet as quickly as possible. The steps are roughly:

1. Create a Python package (viewlets_dont_suck)
2. Create namespace packages (they.are.just.really.annoying)
3. Create generic setup profiles (default AKA install, uninstall)
4. Create ZCML to configure viewlet (added to the portal top viewlet manager)
5. Create template (viewlets_dont_suck.pt)
6. Add GS code to hide the viewlet on uninstall (is there any more we can do?)
7. Add Python code to call the GS code to hide the viewlet (Extensions/install.py)
8. Add GS code to customize the order on install (last but not least)