Contents tagged with Community News
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DNN World 2012
I just returned from DotNetNuke 2012 and wrote up a review of the experience at my Engage Software blog.
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Chicago Day Of DotNetNuke 2010 Recap
Saturday, October 2nd was the Day of DotNetNuke in Chicago. A number of us from Engage attended and spoke. I gave two presentations, which are now available on SlideShare (linked below). I’ve added some notes (be sure to click the “Notes on slide 1” tab when viewing on SlideShare) to give context if you weren’t able to attend the session.
Considerations with Writing JavaScript in your DotNetNuke® site Overall, we definitely were glad to participate in the event. The logistics were pulled off excellently (you certainly couldn’t tell that none of the organizers had organized an event of this magnitude before). I was also great to see the number of community leaders that were presenting and available. It really was a treasure-trove of DNN knowledge.
Nik Kalyani, the keynote speaker, did a great job of emphasizing the role that the community needs to play in guiding the development of DNN. A lot of us walked away excited about what we could contribute to move the community and platform forward.
Nik introduced the concept of a DNN Meme. This is an idea about DNN that catches on with the community in a way that it cannot be ignored. The basic idea is that if an idea is too good to resist, we need to share it so that something actually happens with it. Nik suggested that we use the hashtag #dnnmeme on twitter, and post bigger ideas to dnnmeme.com (via emailing post@dnnmeme.posterous.com). I’m not sure that the “DNN Meme” name is going to take off, but I can definitely get behind getting our ideas out there, gauging community interest, and pursuing the things that we all know that DNN needs.
In Nik’s session at the end of the day, we discussed a couple of things (documented on dnnmeme.com). The biggest of which was the need for module developers to get together and see where we can come to some agreements on how to implement our modules (whether that be a more standard set of markup/CSS, new features in the DNN core, or an agreement on how to implement large amounts of settings). Based on that discussion, Will Morgenweck created the DotNetNuke Module Standards project on CodePlex, where we can start the discussion of standardizing our approaches to modules.
If you are a module developer, we’d love your input on the patterns that you use when developing modules. Specifically, where you find yourself working around what the core provides, or find that the core doesn’t provide anything to support what you’re doing. We’ve gotten the discussion started with what we do and would like to do, but we need more voices so that we can come up with some real consensus on how to reconcile our different approaches.
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My Messages Inbox: A Mobile DotNetNuke Application for the St. Louis DNN Hackathon
This past week was the St. Louis DotNetNuke Hackathon. This was a competition for DNN developers to create a mobile application which interacts with DNN. We had one week to create something worth showing off. So, I, along with another developer at Engage, Abadi, took the challenge.
Abadi has experience developing games for Android phones, so we decided to write a Java application (rather than using Appcelerator’s Titanium Mobile product) which could connect with the Messaging feature introduced in DotNetNuke 5.3. If you have a DNN 5.3+ site, you’ll see a module titled “My Messages” on your profile page, which you can use to send messages to other users on the site.
As we were brainstorming what would make a good DNN mobile application, Rich Campbell, Engage’s president/CEO, tossed out the scenario of being notified of a football game being rained out. We all decided that going mobile would add a lot of value to DNN Messaging, and My Messages Inbox was born.
Before I go into the technical details, let me first point out that the Hackathon is currently in the voting phase (until tomorrow, August 31st, at 6:00 Central), so head on over to view the entries, and vote for your favorite!
So, technically, the application comes in two parts. I worked on an extension to your DNN site that enables communication with the Android application that Abadi wrote. The extension contains a WCF web service which allows a user of the site to authenticate and then get a listing of their messages. I’m very happy with how cleanly I was able to interface with the Messaging code (thanks, in large part, to the separation enforced by use of the Web Forms MVP pattern in the Messaging module). This was also my first big leap into using WCF, so it was great to be able to figure out how to integrate it with DNN without needing tons of configuration and setup (with much thanks to Justin Etheredge’s timely blog post on the subject, as well as Steve Fabian’s WCF DNN Security post).
Abadi was a wizard at figuring out the best way to integrate with the Android interface. He’d never worked with web services in Android before, so we had to catch up on how to get connected, how to parse JSON (and, especially, dates in JSON), and how to layout a standard interface. The most awesome feature of the entry, I think, is the ability for our application to check for new messages in the background, while you’re using other applications on your phone, and receive a notification (just like email). Since we were using Android itself, and not the common iPhone/Android abstraction that Titanium provides, we were able to take full advantage of the multi-tasking built into Android to make that happen.
Overall, it was a lot of fun, and a great learning experience all around. Many thanks for Pat Renner for his management, guidance, ideas, and filming (that’s his voice in the YouTube video), and for Anthony Overkamp for the great images we used on the Hackathon Entries page and the Codeplex site. Remember to go to the Hackathon page and vote!
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DotNetNuke & MVC
Earlier this week, Shaun Walker, [DotNetNuke]'s Co-Founder and Chief Architect, caused a bit of a ruckus in the blogosphere/twitterverse with his blog post ASP.NET MVC and DotNetNuke. I think many disagreed with his representation of ASP.NET MVC, whether or not they agreed with the actual point of the blog post (to announce that [DNN] is not going to be ported to ASP.NET MVC). Unfortunately, much of the discussion became a little too heated, so I think we are all glad to be able to move on to more productive discussions now that the backlash has died down some. Charles Nurse has led the way forward for productive discussions by blogging about his recent work integrating an ASP.NET MVC application into a [DNN] site as a real [DNN] module. It's very exciting stuff, even with the list of known issues. Hopefully we can move forward on this front and allow both WebForms and MVC-style development within the [DNN] ecosystem, making it richer for its diversity.
Also, if you are interested in learning about MVC, TekPub's Rob Conery has donated coupons for their ASP.NET MVC series to [DNN]. All you need to do to get some free (excellent) training on ASP.NET MVC is to blog about [DNN] and leave a comment about it.
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ASP.NET Markup Guide
One of the biggest gaps between developers and designers at our company is the disconnect between ASP.NET web controls and HTML markup.
Our designers are very comfortable working in HTML, and passionate about using semantic markup to communicate the structure and meaning of web sites. Our developers, on the other hand, understand the functionality of most of the web controls that ASP.NET provides, but are usually more concerned with the functionality that they provide, rather than the markup that the produce.
To help begin bridging this gap, I created an interactive guide to the markup produced by the various standard ASP.NET web controls. You can take a look and contribute at the repository on GitHub.
Right now, when you pull the files down from the repository, you'll have a control with the actual guide on it, another control which you can register with [DotNetNuke] to make it into a [DNN] module, and a plain ASP page, Default.aspx, which you can use to view the guide outside of [DNN] (Phil Haack's Web Server Here shell extension might be useful for viewing that page without having to setup any real website).
The guide consists of three columns in a table. The left column contains some ASP.NET markup. The right column contains the rendering of that markup. The middle column contains a list of the HTML elements and their attributes which the control renders. The contents of the middle column are dynamically generated when the page loads, using jQuery. This means that the results are always accurate for your current situation (whether you're using a downlevel browser, ASP.NET 4.0's new cleaner markup, the CSS Friendly Control Adapters, or just want to see how the control tree on your site affects the rendered Client IDs). Also, when you hover your mouse over that middle column, the entirety of the HTML is displayed in a tooltip.
At this point, I think the guide is useful and helpful, but there are definitely improvements to be made. Firstly, some styling, so that it's not painful to the eyes to find this information. Secondly, some of the more complicated controls could probably use some more examples, and the controls that aren't in the "Standard" toolbox also need to be represented (e.g. GridView, ListView, etc). Also, some sort of navigation or searching, especially with the addition of more examples.
If you find this useful, leave a comment, and consider forking the repository on GitHub and implementing an extra example, or a new feature.
Hopefully this can help us all get on the same page, and know when an <asp:Label/> is a <label> and when it's a <span>.
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Engage: Events 1.1
The first major update for Engage: Events has been released! Engage: Events is the event management module for [DotNetNuke] from Engage Software.
Many of the users of the 1.0 version of Events wanted to display a small, simple list of events in a prominent place on their site, like the home page. To address this scenario, we created three new templates that look great in a smaller pane, and present a simpler view of the events.
We also recognized that many of our users needed to have access to the list of attendees outside of the website itself. The responses list is now exportable to Excel or as a comma separated values (CSV) file.
One of the more common requests from our users is to limit the number of registrants to an event. This is especially important when you are scheduling classes or other activities with limited seating. You can now set a registration cap for your events, and, if you'd like, provide a custom message to the user if they want to register after the event has filled.
We've put a lot of care and love into this release, and we hope that it makes your event management simple, fun, and more effective. Take a test drive with the new features, let us know what you think and what you'd like to see next, and then buy it for your site.
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Engage: Employment 1.4 for DotNetNuke
Have you heard of our Engage: Employment module for [DotNetNuke]? I'm talking about our module for posting job listings on your website and allowing folks to apply for them. We have today released a new version of the module to fix a number of bugs that have been discovered, while completely revamping the administrative experience.
Where before it took about a million clicks to get the module setup and to get a good understanding of how it was setup and what had already been setup, now you're initially greeted with an administrative overview, with quick, one-click access to every part of the administrative interface. We think this will save you hours if you're setting up a site of any significant number of job listings.
We've also added the much requested ability to send notification emails to different people for each job, to allow for easier management and delegation of responsibilities when dealing with new applicants. These new applications can also be given statuses to track the movement of the application through your hiring workflow (before you were stuck giving statuses to the users themselves, even if they were great for one position but terrible for another).
Finally, we improved the searching experience, adding the ability to search by job categories and to use quoted phrases when doing a keyword search.
And this is all in addition to the bugs we found and fixed from the previous version. We really think this is the slickest, most intuitive, and most stable release of the module yet, and we have some great ideas for where to take it next to increase its appeal even more. You can see what we've done, where we're headed, and submit your own bugs or suggestions at our issue tracking site.
If you haven't used the module before, or you want to see the new features in action, you should take it for a spin on our demo site. Here you can login as an administrator and a user, and see what the experience is like from start to finish.
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Tulsa TechFest 2008 Wrap-Up
We at Engage spent the end of last week in Tulsa, presenting and participating in the 3rd annual Tulsa TechFest. My colleague Ian has written up a great review, with links to all of our presentations on his blog.
I presented on Building a DotNetNuke Module, walking through the Visual Studio project template that we just released, demonstrating what DNN requires of and offers to developers of modules.
We had a great time and really enjoyed the turnout for our sessions. We hope that those of you who attended were able to learn from us, and we were glad to get some time to learn from the community as well. Hope to see you guys again next year!
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C# Compiled DotNetNuke Module Template
It shouldn't be hard to get started writing a module for [DotNetNuke], but it doesn't seem like there's a whole lot of help especially when you are wanting to use C#. At Engage, we have created a Visual Studio project template which will get you started developing a C# [DotNetNuke] module, using a Web Application project (rather than the, in my opinion, much more cumbersome Web Site project). It is available for free on our downloads page after registering on the site.
The template will get you started with the basics of a [DotNetNuke] module, providing basic placeholder controls (for view, edit, and settings), base classes to use for your module controls and your settings control, a manifest and NAnt build file to easily package your module, and the basic starting point (and sample code) for your business controller class and data provider. It should really speed up how you start a new module, and free you from always copying your last module and then having to figure out what to delete and what to leave.
To use the template, put the downloaded zip file into the C# web templates folder for Visual Studio. This is typically in My Documents/Visual Studio [2005|2008]/Templates/ProjectTemplates/Visual C#/Web (you might have to create the Web folder yourself). This will make the new project type appear under the Web node for C#, in the My Templates section, when you create a new project. You might also want to open up the zip file and alter the template manifest (C# Compiled Module.vstemplate) to include your company name (replace the values in the CustomParameters section where it says YourCompany).
Please check it out, we hope it helps you out. Happy module building!
[Cross-posted from http://www.engagesoftware.com/Blog/EntryID/162.aspx]
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Introducing Engage: Events 1.0
After three public pre-releases, and weeks of wrestling through user-submitted bugs and those we found (so that you don't have to!), we are now ready to release Engage: Events to the eagerly awaiting public! After we cemented our feature-set in the Beta release, we have hunted down no less than 15 bugs, ranging from grammar to complete show-stoppers. We are very thankful for the support of the community as we worked together to create a [DotNetNuke] module that fits your needs, from the ground up, based on your suggestions.
And, to be clear, this is only the beginning. This is the first "production-ready" release of this module, but it is definitely not the last. We have already heard a good amount of suggestions from our Beta period that we couldn't incorporate into the product for 1.0, but we will definitely be looking into those again (and any new suggestions) as we move forward to continue adding improvements and functionality to Engage: Events, without compromising quality or aesthetic.
If you haven't already taken a glance at the module during the pre-release phase, or you want to see the new rock solid 1.0 before you upgrade from the Beta, take a look at our demo site, where you can log in as a user or an administrator and play around with all of the options available in the module. We're excited for you to try it out and let us know what you think.
[Cross-Posted from: http://www.engagesoftware.com/Blog/EntryID/160.aspx]
