Should demos be implemented as components?

[Cheetham, Anastasia]

Antranig's review of the keyboard accessibility plug-in demo
    http://issues.fluidproject.org/browse/FLUID-3799
raised the same question that came up in my mind as I was creating the demo: Should our demos themselves be implemented as a Fluid component? At the time, I vacillated between a) benefitting from and demonstrating the power of the framework on the one hand, and b) keeping the demo focussed on the thing that was being demo'd on the other hand.

Michelle and I discussed the issue, and in the end we felt that the information we were trying to focus on - how to use the keyboard accessibility plug-in - would be more clearly conveyed without the trappings of the rest of the framework. We, as Fluid developers, are very familiar with the structure of a component, and so we are quite comfortable looking at code that is structured this way. But I think we forget that for developers who are not familiar with the format, it can take a bit of effort to get used to (I imagine Mike and Gollam might concur). If the keyboard accessibility plug-in demo is implemented as a Fluid component itself, then users who are not familiar with the framework must spend extra time and effort to understand the framework before they can get to understanding the thing they came to the demo to learn: the keyboard accessibility plug-in. Or they might not take the time to learn about the framework, and misunderstand the demo to assume that the framework features are a requirement for using the plug-in.

As I said above, I vacillated about this. I do agree with the goals of illustrating best practices; and these days, it feels very odd to write code that doesn't use the framework's features. I'm still not sure which is the best way to go.

There are at least two other demos that use a similar non-component style to demonstrate a component (InlineEdit and Progress), so I think this is a conversation worth giving due consideration.

What are other people's thoughts on this issue?

-- 
Anastasia Cheetham     Inclusive Design Research Centre
acheetham at ocad.ca            Inclusive Design Institute
                                        OCAD University