CSDC 2007: Day 1 Roundup
It was a beautiful day in Frisco, TX. Telligent picked a very nice venue and have been great hosts for the first CommunityServer Developer Conference. Here's a wrap-up of today's events:
Rob gave a little talk about Telligent and gave a quick demo of Enterprise Reporting and Graffiti. Best part--all attendees will be getting free licenses of both!
Introduction to Graffiti (Rob)
- Post-based content. It works like a blog so it's very easy to create content. They twist is the ability to configure navigation, add widgets, and theming options.
- Supports revision/history tracking. This allows for "mistakes" as you can view or go back to previous versions of a page. That's a nice touch.
- Basic workflow support. Users can be designated as "allowed to post and go live" or "post and require review". Nothing too sophisticated but in a good way.
- Graffiti is planned to be released before CS 2008 (see below for that date) with likely integration at some level with CS 2008.
Overview
- There are 7 groups of controls that make up the CS Chameleon theme engine. Each were demonstrated and provided some clearer insight into how the controls can be used as opposed to just what their guts look like. They are pretty extensive and getting familiar with the semantics and seeing it in action helps.
- Basically, the controls are context-sensitive and primarily use the URL and URL parameters to morph into the appropriate display. The URL and URL parameters are set through the SiteURLs.config file. I'm going to explore these controls more now that I have more context for how they work.
- Context is also set through containers. The page container provides a master container but you can then create user, blog or forum level containers that can contain child content. It's actually pretty clever if you ask me.
- Dynamic Configuration is the "quick 'n dirty" option for modifying things you would typically modify in CSS. Basically, it that's what it does. It's got some color-pickers and visual aids but, really, it's just a fancy web-based CSS editor.
- Dynamic Configuration files are saved as an XML file that can be imported and exported and, this it what makes it unique from a regular CSS editor. You can can control what options are configurable in the Control Panel by modifying the Themes.config file.
- After playing with this in the last theme contest, I found it time-consuming compared to manually editing the theme. A little over-engineered if you ask me but, still a cool concept.
- Something worth noting that you may or may not get in the documentation is that images can be save with the dynamic configuration. They get serialized into the XML file and are added to the Site Files folder when imported. That's kind of cool but still not really that valuable to me.
- Tip! When creating your theme file, make sure you select images from the My Files folder. The export function will only export/serialize files from this folder.
What's Coming in 2008
- Not very many changes to Chameleon. Existing 2007 customizations should work with CS 2008. Allegedly, 2008 will just add new pages. I'll believe it when I see it.
- Query Overrides: ability to pull data from a non-CS data source into a CS control. Pull data from things like an XML file or a web service.
- Link to logic: override whether or not a link is displayed. Extended control over when links are displayed. To be honest, I didn't really get the point of this feature.
- Widgets ("...but don't call them that")
- Coming in '08 are widgets that can be added anywhere on the page as opposed to just the sidebar. More like a plugin? Maybe we call them "Widgins" or "Pludgets".
- They will be configured/added at the Site, Blog, and Group level.
- Ben did a nice little demo on how to create and install a couple of these "pluglets" and I overheard the possibility of providing some kind of compatibility with existing 3rd party "wigglin's". Sounds like a promising feature for developers if we could just figure out what to call them...
- To be honest, I almost left for a walk before this started. It just didn't seem like a feature that I would be interested in. I was right until they demonstrated that Enterprise Reporting is NOT just for reporting on CommunityServer. This was news to me but really changes my perception of the project. Being able to point the reporting tool at my other SQL apps opens up a whole set of options. I'm not sure why Telligent hasn't clarified that--maybe I'm missing something.
- It is limited to SQL datasources at this point but additional datasources will likely be added.
- Assigning specific reports to related roles or users is pretty limited at this point.
- Look for a Beta download this week.
- Now we're talkin'! This is some very very cool stuff. It's just what I've been looking for and will open up a whole new world for CS developers.
- Basically, using REST, you will be able to select, insert and update data from your CS database. REST works similar to the familiar HTML form actions like GET, PUT, etc. so it's easy to figure out. CommunityServer sends you XML data and you send XML data back.
- A simple demonstration was given where a desktop application was created, references to the web services where added, and, within a short time, a form to moderated posts was created.
- The new web services stack uses the existing data access layer which includes all of the exception handling and caching currently being used.
- Returning data through JSON is under consideration but, for now, it's XML only.
- I can't wait to get my hands on this API. I've been looking for it for quite awhile and already have plans for it. This will be be the biggest selling point for me as far as 2008 goes.
- Though nothing earth-shattering was revealed, we did get a glimpse of how the much anticipated "Groups" feature will look.
- Groups are like virtual communities but not quite independent. They will have their own roles (different from the main site) with permissions yet to be defined.
- Groups will be able to have their own theme, widgins, and will be configured to be open (anyone can join), closed (requires invitation), and private (requires approval).
- The Control Panel is getting a facelift. The layout will be different and the way permissions and roles are displayed looks much cleaner.
- Assigning permissions in general has been greatly simplified which should help. Basically, permissions are context sensitive so you won't see "Blog Administrators" listed when you are viewing forum permissions.
- The reasons for getting rid of virtualization and user themes seems pretty reasonable. Their
reason excuse for getting rid of the Reader smells a little funny. "...we do not feel that it properly fits into the platform...Instead, we plan to release a separate RSS Reader application sometime in Summer 2008." It doesn't fit into the platform? What? Why bother creating a separate reader then? I'll see if I can get more on this tomorrow. - A beta is expected in January with a release in the first quarter of 2008 (though someone in the back--probably CEO, Rob Howard--yelled, "Projected release date!" So, we'll see. It would sure be nice to be able to play with the web services API as soon as possible.
That's it for today. Want more? Here's the official Telligenti report.
>> Day 2