Wibeck on Web

Umbraco Member Controls and editable member profiles

Kalle Wibeck — Mon, 31 May 2010 20:00:10 GMT

Please note:
This article covers Umbraco V3, for Umbraco V4 you really should use the standard .Net control Login Control.

- - - - - - - - - - -

It seems that a lot of people are having serious problems with getting the original UmbracoMemberControls package working correctly, so was I back in Mars -08..

The first thing that bugged me was that I wasn't able to log out, instead I was shown a error message (Object moved to here) in Firefox and blank page in Internet Explorer 6 & 7. It seems like this was due to a session that wasn't cleared correctly so I added a Session.Clear() to the logout method and that seemed to fix this. All in all I've made
about 5+ updates to the original package:

Fixed the issue with failing log-outs (displayed "Item moved to here" in FF, blank page in IE) by adding Session.Clear() and Response.Redirect(Request.RawUrl, true); to the login and logout logic.
Added a property for specifying a number of days that the cookie should be valid
Added a "remember me" checkbox, if selected this will set a cookie that's valid for the specified number of days.
Made all texts/labels support the dictionary syntax, i.e if you enter "#LoginFailed" that label will pick a language aware dictionary item named "LoginFailed" instead of some hardcoded parameter.
Fixed some labels that wasn't possible to modify via macro parameters before.

My initial idea was to release this as an new version of the package, but sadly the Packager released by Per Ploug Hansen haven't made it across the finish line yet. Therefore I will only release these files for manual installation, with manual adding of all macros and macro parameters.

UPDATE: A few days ago Immo Wache released an updated Packager (1.0.5) that's working just fine ; ) Thanks to Immo you will find a package installer at the bottom of this page! Nice work Immo!

Installation instructions:

Remove your old umbracoMemberControls files (if you have any), especially the macros and their parameter since otherwise there's a risk for a duplicate parameters error.
Install the package by right-clicking the macros node and select "upload".
The last thing to do is to add some styling to your new controls. Since the label/control pairs in this version uses dl-syntax (definition list) the easiest thing is to style them according to this technique.

Additional information about Member Controls

All text parameters supports dictionary items. Instead of entering "You are now logged in as %%LOGINNAME%%" as your User Logged In Text parameter you can enter "#" followed by the name of a dictionary key i.e. "#LoggedInText". This means that you can use different values for different languages if you have a multilingual website. The dictionary is also very nice if you would like one single place to edit many frequent terms like "log in" or "remember me".
The parameter User Logged In Text supports the constants %%LOGINNAME%% and %%REALNAME%%, if you place these inside your text they will be replaced with the users login name and/or the users real name when the control is displayed.

Download

You can download the package here:

Click to download umbracoMemberControls v0.4 unofficial

Visual Studio 2005 solution file in a zip can be found here:

Click to download umbracoMemberControls v0.4 Source

UPDATE2: Link to download VS2005 sourcefiles added

Technorati Tags: umbraco,membercontrols,package

Reason #1 to use MS Word for publishing web content – Smart Art and Graphs

Kalle Wibeck — Fri, 28 May 2010 22:05:35 GMT

OK, this is a post I've been thinking of for a long time, more than 18 months actually ;-) (and I've determined not to care at all about the aspect of valid XHTML).

Most of you know that Live Writer or MS Word works very well for publishing basic content to a website or blog engine as long as it supports this API feature.

I got to admit that I really love writing in a tool that is so helpful to me when I'm working with text and basic graphics. And you have a great milti-lingial spel cheker (just kidding, multi-lingual spell checker that is).
But how many have really considered the use-cases where Word can be so very smooth and supportive to the whole publishing process?

I was thinking about the assistants at finance that publishes a periodical turnover diagram on the "Investor Realations" page for their company.

Firsts they have to get their figures from their finance app and into Excel
Then create a nice graph that's easy to digest
"Print Screen" the graph and paste into an Image Editor + export as web graphic.
Upload the file to their online repository / Media section
Paste the text from Word into web page
And finally place the turn over graph in the page and publish…

Let's face it, they'll never do it that way…
Unless they buys a nice web app that generates the graphs - they will continue to upload PDF or Word docs for the vistor to download or "read online" as some prefer to call it ; ).

Let's make a little test and place a MS Office graph into this page using Insert >> Graph in Word:

OK, there it is. It took me 1 minute to add the categories, if I had an existing Excel file with the figures it would take about the same time. OK.

Now when I hit publish word converts the Graph to a png file and uploads it to the web server in a snap.
Next time the graph needs an update, all I do is to edit the graph and import the updated figures from my Excel file.

The same goes for Smart Art like the hierarchy chart below, just reorganize and hit publish (why not fire the brat son and put a Real worker on top?)

Could it be any simpler? What marketing department wouldn't realize this in five seconds and go for your CMS solution?

// Kalle

Error: Invalid object name 'umbracoUser', a possible reason – DB Schemas

Kalle Wibeck — Fri, 28 May 2010 08:30:22 GMT

When I moved my site the other day I got struck by the really annoying error:

Server Error in '/umbraco' Application.
Invalid object name 'umbracoUser'.

I tried running the installer again as some old forum posts suggested to no avail…

When I looked in the database I noticed that (almost) all tables had been prefixed with the DB username "wb_umbdb_sql" I used when I once installed the site:

This got me thinking about - Schemas!

Simply put a Schema is used to group tables together and define a structure within a database (I might have gotten this all wrong since I never use Schemas…)

Anyway, the default Schema assigned to a DB user affects this user's ability to see different database tables, you might think of Schemas as a filter in this case.

My new DB user was assigned the Default Schema "dbo". When I changed this to the same schema that prefixed most of my tables the error disappeared!
(It's possible that I would have been enough to just add both the dbo and the wb_umbdb_sql schema, but this is what I did…)

Above you can see that the user now is assigned to the Default Schema (with the strange name) "wb_umbdb_sql", she (the user) is also the owner of this Schema as well as a maber of the db_owner role. Thanks to this she can see both the schema wb_umbdb_sql and dbo.

The dialog above is found in SQL Server Management Studio via YourDB >> Security >> Users >> Properties (right click).

I hope that this short tutorial will help anyone else that might encounter the same issue as I did.

// Kalle

Back on line after 18 months away : )

Kalle Wibeck — Thu, 27 May 2010 20:46:54 GMT

Yes I'm back but haven't got my bodyText/TinyMCE3 to work just yet, this text was written using Windows Live Writer…

UPDATE:

OK, Now I'm using Word 2007 instead, never mind TinyMCE ; )

I've had some busy months (or is it years?) lately. Since I changed job to become IT-Manager I've been force to learn a lot from Infrastructure to setting up an IT budget. Since I've never done this before I've spend way too much time reading and studying what I didn't have a clue about. Even though Hertel Group is a small Company Group (if you count heads, there's 55 of them) we must manage all the same issues that larger IT-organizations face every day, only in a smaller scale…
Hertel Group consist of companies that sell Alloy Wheels from well-known and own brands (OZ, Enkei, Breyton, Carlsson and TSW to mention some) currently we have representation in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Latvia.

I've been more-or-less offline for the last 18 months, at least when you talk about community interaction, Tweets, blog post etc… But a few weeks ago most of the changes I've been force to work through was finally completed. So from now on I'll work more in Visual Studio and much less with installing printers, setting of servers and migration workstations to a new domain - joy!

OK, infrastructure isn't all that bad, but I must say that I really miss those days with headphones listening to some nice Trance Techno (Spotify Link) and just float away stepping through my buggy code ; )

I intend to at least write some blog posts before Christmas, but I can't promise that I will revise this but-ugly blog layout just yet ; )

Anyway, it's nice to be back

// Kalle

Why I love Online RSS reader – And why I recently switched…

Kalle Wibeck — Thu, 27 May 2010 12:12:59 GMT

I just love online RSS readers, period!

When I, years ago, was first introduced to RSS by a former colleague - Nisse Bryngfors – I swept the web for a good tool to assist me with my new task – reading blogs. I tried different Windows apps like RSS Owl, SharpReader, built in browser readers and Omea Reader from JetBrains.

The app that I used the longest time was the free version of Omea Reader cause it had superb support for keeping track of comment feeds and nested them below each post. But as my blog roll grew so did the amount of memory consumed by Omea reader and I realized that I constantly turned it off whenever I did something that demand more RAM (i.e. just about anything I do…). Shortly after I had to format my drives and lost my entire blog roll…

Why I went online

That’s when I began my quest for online RSS readers, and I tried many… Finally I decided to settle with Bloglines since they had a minimalistic WAP-like mobile version that worked just great over GPRS in my lousy old Sony Ericsson T200 and they had a nice little desktop notifier that sat in the system tray and hinted me of updates.

Why I’m currently unpleased with Bloglines

Some weeks ago Bloglines had regular disruptions in their service with medieval response times and most of my subscriptions appearing to never update at all.

By “accident” I actually visited one of the blogs I follow and noticed that there had been over 8 updates for the last week that Bloglines never notified me about!? That’s when it struck me. Bloglines had been struck by a bad case of popularity and probably didn’t manage to keep track of all their users subscriptions any longer…

Time for a new net sweep

Ok, time to consult good old Google again and start with the obvious “Free Online RSS Readers” after plenty “ultra fast” reviews, to slow, to complex, to ugly (Google Reader) no mobile GUI etc and managed to finally stumble upon an nice little web app called News Alloy. Nice effective and advanced enough, it had what I was looking for, a simple fast online RSS reader with a nice mobile UI. So I’m currently evaluation NewsAlloy and so far it has succeeded where Bloglines failed; It instantly updates the feeds I’m following…

// ; ) Kalle

Strange error during install: Your database has been found and is identified as: None

Kalle Wibeck — Thu, 27 May 2010 12:12:59 GMT

I had moved my web site and database to two new servers, and in the process I also changed the login name in the new database to something that felt better just then.

Everything went fine when I restored the database from my backup, “- Very smooth”, I thought.

After web.config was updated I tried to launch my site, but all I found was an error that said:

“Invalid object name 'umbracoUser'.”

I found a posting in the forum that the installation should be ran again to fix this issue.

Well, I set the “umbracoConfigurationStatus” to nothing (“”) in web.config and followed the installation steps.

In the “Detect” step I was puzzled by the message “Your database has been found and is identified as: None”.

I just knew there where a database in there, I don’t want to overwrite it with a clean one! What's this?

Then I noticed that most of the tables in my database had the prefix "my_OLD_user_name" and therefore couldn't be found if my new user had an other default schema... If your user isn't DBO, the default schema will most likely be the same as the username ("my_NEW_user_name" in this example).

I tried a lot of weird things but the thing that solved the problem was this:

I opened up my new user in SQL Server Management Studio under my_NEW_DB >> Security >> Users >> my_NEW_user_name, (right-click) >> Properties.

Under "Default Schema" click the button "[...]" then the "Browse" button in the next window, select the schema that your tables are prefixed with, in this example "my_OLD_user_name", click OK to get out of there and then reload the "Detect" step in the installer.

This solved it, now the installer found the correct tables and identified my database as "v3" - Nice!

My guess is that the schema change will solve the initial error “Invalid object name 'umbracoUser'.”, without going throw the installation, since the symptoms are similar; The schema prefix does not match the users default schema...

Foxmarks releases new version with password synching

Kalle Wibeck — Thu, 27 May 2010 12:12:59 GMT

One of my many favorite add-ons for Firefox is Foxmarks – a neat little utility that syncs your bookmarks between all your computers. It works very well and you have instant access to your bookmarks where ever you are. If you are only working from a single computer you can use Foxmarks as a bookmark backup solution with web access. Yes, you can reach all your bookmarks online from your protected Foxmarks page, a nice little “side effect” to storing your bookmarks online ; )

The new version of Foxmarks (v 2.5.3) adds a very nice utility to also sync your stored usernames/passwords encrypted with your personal encryption key. If you always selects “No” when you get asked to store you password this new feature is nothing for you, no, you’ll probably even hate it. But if you like your password storage you’ll probably just love the new version of Foxmarks ;)

If you wants to take Foxmarks for a test drive go on and download the Foxmarks extension today!
(But please note that the password storage is only available in Firefox 3)

Technorati Tags: firefox,firefox add-on,online backup,foxmarks

Umbraco V3 finally released!

Kalle Wibeck — Thu, 27 May 2010 12:12:58 GMT

UPDATE: This post was updated using Word 2007 and a little built in image effect on the screen capture of the text editor below

On the 21st of June Umbraco V3 was released !!

This is the release I've been waiting for a looong time.

Why?

Well to start with the former Internet Explorer based Rich Text Editor has been replaced with the superior and cross-browser editor TinyMCE from Swedish Moxiecode Systems AB .

That in itself is a huge update since any CMS tends to be no better than the editor it uses, after all it's in the editor people spends most of their time (while working on their website, that is...).

With this new release I'm finally able to use all of Umbraco's features with my preferred browser, Firefox ;).

For long it was the editor that kept me waiting, and waiting, and waiting... The truth is that it has been ages since the first release date was postponed again and again... Well, why has it taken so long for this update to be released? My guess is that the V3 release has grown far beyond the initial intentions, the project switched repository from SVN to Codeplex (Microsoft's Open Source Portal based on Team Foundation Server), expanded the core developer group and the number of features included in V3 are so much more than the initial plan...

With Umbraco V3 web publishing has absolutely reached higher grounds when it comes to flexibility and user experience...

For a full feature list please visit the Umbraco Projects website, the many forum post or the Umbraco site over at CodePlex ,

To mention some highlights I've picked these:

Valid xhtml - TinyMCE generated standard compliant html code and "nags" the editor to use accessible attributes.
MetaBlogAPI support - Enables off-line editing of pages/blog posts from within any application that support this standard. What do you think about writing/updating your pages from within Word 2007? Yes, Word 2007 generates somehow ugly html, but at least it validates and that's a huge update from the tag-soup we've learn to hate under the name "Word HTML".
(I played a bit with Word as a webpage editor a few days ago, and it's such a huge boost in productivity that I'll have to come back to that later).
Integrated translation logic - It's now possible to import/export all page data as XML files for translation.
Updated CSS/XSLT editor - A new editor for text based files has been added, this enables some intellisense but primary code high lightning.
ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 - Umbraco can make full use of ASP.NET AJAX technology.

I've just update this site to Umbraco V3 and will start to clean up my web templates to get a site that validates, now that the editor at least gives me a decent chance to keep some code quality here ; )

P.S. Since I haven't worked on this web site since November 2005, you're currently unable to make any comments here, but I hope to get thing going now that V3 finally is out ;) // ; ) Kalle

Taking Umbraco V4 alpha for a test drive

Kalle Wibeck — Thu, 27 May 2010 12:12:58 GMT

A week ago we could all read that Umbraco V4 had been announced at CodeGraden08 in Copenhagen, great for them I thought, since at that time there were no links anywhere to be found, not even a screen capture image.

But since then more information have gradually found it’s way out from the Core Team’s Secret Hide-out ; ) Codeplex is updated with some new releases, Umbraco’s nightly build server has been revealed (http://nightly.umbraco.org) and the whitepapers on V4 has also been published.

First I must say that I really love the nightly builds, not because they are super-stable, but because it makes testing the work-in-progress so much easier, no need to start Visual Studio just for a quick test. Kudos for the nightlies!

I’ve downloaded the nightly dated 2008-06-18 for this test drive, everything I’ve found might have been fixed in a later nightly build…

The list of improvements is quite long, I’m just going to cover some of them in this article…

Support for Masterpages

The new masterpages editor a.k.a template editor

I upgraded a local 3.0.5 site to V4 to be able to test in a site with many pages. The installation went very smooth and all of my 28 templates were converted into masterpages automagically, very nice feature that’s easy to love!

The first issue I encountered here was that I had a div with a umbraco-getitem to set a css class, the auto-conversion made it like this:

<div id="content"<umbraco:Item runat="server" field="CSSclass" 
insertTextBefore="class="" insertTextAfter="""/>>

This caused a "content"–error. This was due to the missing whitespaces around the element, I just added these whitespaces and it worked fine. Since the present version of this element, the good old UMBRACO_GETITEM works fine without these whitespaces this will cause some issues.
If you’re using UMBRACO_GETITEM to add text to imageGen.aspx to create a graphic headline, the added whitespace will make headline start with a whitespace as well…probably not what you, or your designer, had expected…

The second issue I faced was due to file encoding. Some of my templates contained Unicode characters that showed up very strange since the converted masterpages was saved with ANSI encoding instead of UTF-8, I just had to open these files in a editor and save them as UTF-8 and all was fine, maybe a default UTF-8 encoding would be a good idea for the masterpages?

I have to say that I’m impressed by this auto-conversion-to-masterpages-feature, it works very good with just a few outstanding issues to fix… nothing big for an alpha. Support for folder structures would also be very handy for sites with many templates / masterpages.

The improved User Interface

The new slicker interface seems so far to mostly consist of new icons, less shadow-effects and updated AJAX controls for the tree and search field.
And it sure looks cleaner than the UI that have been mostly unchanged since the first OSS version of Umbraco; version 2.0 that was released in early 2004.

The first thing I noticed here was that the icons lost their position in level three and below probably only an adjustment issue.

The icons has lost their position at level three

The context menus are lightning fast thanks to that all the images has been replaced with css sprites – great improvement!
The new icons is also an improvement and they all feels more up-to-date. But what happened to the baby-blue section icons? Why not show them some mercy as well and give them a nice “vista-ish” look-and-fell, and while you’re at it; Remove the text labels from the images so translation might be applied in the sections menu as well.

Comparison of the new (left) and the old (right) GUI design, notice the removed shadows in the left image that’s Umbraco 4

When it comes to the new AutoSuggest search-box I’m not overwhelmed, it sure looks nicer, but it also feels less responsive and it entirely misses many of my pages. Unless I have missed an important configuration somewhere, it seems to me that it doesn’t find nearly everything it should find. And even more strange is the fact that it finds ‘new’, ‘newer’ & ‘newest’ if I type “ne”, but it finds none of them if i add a ‘w’ so that the searchbox contains ‘new’, hmm, weird one… Anyway, this new search isn’t a favorite of mine yet, it needs to mature a bit first…and I’m sure it will, this is only an early alpha you know ; )

Comparison of the new (left) and the old (right) AutoSuggest search boxes

CSS files from the filesystem instead of database

Yes! Finally, the filesystem is the master source for stylesheets as well, and it works like a charm, just put a file in the css folder and it shows up in the Styles node immediately. Good one!

While playing around I also noticed that support for folders had been added for XSLT-files! I was amazed to see this, since it isn’t mentioned in the whitepaper… A bit more research showed that it has been around at least since 3.0.5…

How on earth did I miss that one? Guess I’ve been a bit a sleep this spring ; ). Anyway, to create a file in an existing XSLT folder all you need to do is to specify the name of a new file as “MyFolder/MyXSLTFile” and voilá! You have a new file in your prepared XSLT folder! I love it even though I’m to late to that release party ; ) A final improvement would be to add the folder via the GUI as well ; )

Full Firefox support

Nah, not yet… the nodepicker still doesn’t work, I’ve reported this since the 3.0.5 beta and it still doesn’t work in Firefox 2.0 and the issue is still closed in CodePlex so I guess that some modifications were made to it, it might just have been lost “somewhere” in the process…

Dictonary overview

Very nice addition! One image says it all ; )

Summary

Overall this is a great new version with a lot of good intentions, there’s still some work to do, of course, but this will surely make Umbraco a perfect match for even more developers and organizations out there, kudos to the core team for all work done so far as well as all work left ; )

Unfortunately I still miss my favourite GUI feature – DeepLinking! Deep Linking is when the URL to an AJAX (or Flash etc..) application contains info about the state of the application, this is very easy to handle if you dare to use SP1 Beta for .Net 3.5, this beta contains “support for managing browser history”, in reality this also means deep-linking since every defined state of the application is transferred to the URL without a page reload, I’ve tried it and it works just perfect. For umbraco this might mean that you can copy the URL and paste in another browser, and it may open up in members under letter “Q” for example…

I would also like to see some sort of check-out / click-to-edit feature to avoid that two editors makes modifications in the same document…

I will revisit this post later and make a follow up on how things evolve as times goes by….

(Sorry, comments are still not possible due to my laziness ;)

Technorati tags: umbraco umbraco v4 asp.net opensource .net cms

Solve Umbraco Error Message: Item has already been added. Key in dictionary

Kalle Wibeck — Thu, 27 May 2010 12:12:58 GMT

When working with macros and parameters in Umbraco you might have stumbled upon the error:

Item has already been added. Key in dictionary: '[parameter-name]'  Key being added: '[parameter-name]'

This is very easy to solve when you know the reason for it...

Most of the times you will get this error when you install a package that was previously installed, since most macro parameters where added before the “new” ones will be duplicates.

When struck by the “Item has already been added” error it seems like there’s no turning back besides deleting the entire macro, you can’t delete any parameters and you can’t save your macro, but there is an easy solution: Just make sure all your duplicate parameters has unique Aliases, I usually add a letter or two and renames them to “macroParameterxxx” and doesn’t click Save until all parameters has unique Aliases. As soon as you have renamed them all you can delete them one by one...

That wasn’t to hard was it?

The real solution to this problem would of course be that the Umbraco UI checks for duplicates in an earlier stage and never allows them to be added in the first place...

Technorati Tags: umbraco,asp.net,open source,error

Taking Umbraco V4 for another test-drive

Kalle Wibeck — Thu, 27 May 2010 12:12:58 GMT

At the end of June I did an evaluation of Umbraco CMS version 4 alpha and promised to revisit that article later..that is now!

The core developers have been working hard during the summer to bring Umbraco V4 closer to a release candidate and there have been about 100 check-ins in CodePlex since my last test-drive.

Despite some bugs I have found, this is a far better build than the last one. Some bugs might be “show-stoppers” in my opinion, but that is compensated by other great additions.

This time I’ve used a clean install of the nightly build from August 11th and I’m going to follow up some of the things I ran into last time, as well as present some new issues and features. All testing has been done using Firefox 3 on Win XP...

“ - What has changed since last time… ?”

Installation Experience

The installation went very smooth and the only errors that appeared this time was due to me not setting any file permissions at first, when that was corrected the Installation including the Boost and Nitros packages got installed very nicelly.
It would have been even nicer if the installer noticed that I had modified the connection string in web.config before I ran the auto-installer, it didn't and therefore I had to enter all data again...

I've walked through the Umbraco backend one Section at a time and written down what I've noticed whilst doing that. I'm sure there are plenty of stuff that i have missed since I haven't done anything advanced at all this time.

Here comes the different secions:

Content Section

Menu tree

In the Content section I noticed that the tree-menu icons doesn’t lose it’s position any longer and that the little star for unpublished changes finally works in Firefox… now I’m only waiting for the faded “unpublished-page” icons to fade in FF as well ; ).

If it was possible to “fold in” the menu tree that would be a great feature to maximize the working area on smaller screens (1024x768 and below).

“To fold-in, or not to fold in…”

Modal Dialogs

Last time I tested the inline modal dialogs had an annoying “slide down slowly” transition that took ages (1.5 seconds) to display. That sliding effect has now been removed, making them appear much faster, good one Per!

Rich text editor

The node picker still doesn't work in Firefox from within the “Insert Image” dialog. Still a JavaScript error when you select a node in this view:

JS Error in Firefox: “parent.opener.dialogHandler is not a function…”

And I find it a bit annoying that the editor don’t auto-fill the whole width of it’s area like everything else in Umbraco does…

Is this a wide enough editor for any screen size?

Media section

Image upload bug

Uploaded images and files doesn’t get their properties set at all. This causes a missing image in the editor since the file extension is removed. Definitely a show-stopper this one... And it seems that the “Insert/Edit Image dialog” from the editor doesn’t have this bug when you upload a new image, strange one!

Users section

New feature: Permissions Editor, wooha!

One major improvement is the new permissions editor by Shannon a.k.a. Shandem. Basically it gives you the ability to modify the built in user types as well as defining your own ones.

It also features one single place to edit node permissions on a user level, very nice indeed, well done Shannon!! Not only does this provide a way better permissions editor, it’s also a great way to explore the difference between the built-in User Types!

User Type Editor

User’s Content Tree Permissions editor

Can’t save users or create new user types

Currently you’re unable to create a new User Type due to a .Net Error*. It’s also impossible to save a user if you don’t fill in the “Change Password” text boxes, but I guess that will be fixed in a later version…
Once you’re able to attach different groups (multiple) with defined permissions to a user (like you can do with members) there isn’t much left to wish for in this section.

Feature request for the Permission Editor: It would be great if modified permissions was somehow indicated on each parent/ancestor node to easier see that something is changed. I would also like to know what happens when you change User Type for a user, will the user keep her current permissions or will they be overwritten?

*) .Net Error: “System.ArgumentException: ERROR CREATING CONTROL FOR NODETYPE: userTypes”

Settings Section

Content Types

This Content Type editor is redesigned with a fresher look but the feel is still the same, sadly. It’s still impossible to place the cursor in the textboxes (without right-clicking) since they becomes part of the click target for the drag’n’drop. And you still can’t sort the order of the properties if you have more properties than what fits in your screen. What happens here is that if you drag a box, the “drop gap” between the other boxes will appear 3 boxes up or even off screen!? Hmm, what if I only want to move it up one step?

On the other hand it’s now possible to sort the tabs by entering the preferred sort order, this is one feature I’ve longed-for, nice to see it!

“Tab sorting…”

Developer Section

I can’t recall if this were implemented in the last version I tested but, you now get a list of all your installed packages as well as information about available updates for the installed packages. You even get a nice uninstaller for your packages! Of course a roll-back for modifications in the config files and/or the database would be nice as well, but I guess that’s a bit trickier to implement.

Members Section

No, no changes at all what I can see. But I noticed that you can click create in the Create dialog without any defined Member Types, that throws an empty string exception.

If you change icon for a Member Type it will still use the same icon that all Member Types uses, guess that isn’t by design.

In my wishlist for the Members Section I will add:

A Search / Auto suggest / Live filter - feature in the top search box or the Dashboard (shouldn’t this always be context sensitive BTW)
Remove all the alphabet folders if they’re empty
Drag-n-drop or double-click to add/remove Member Groups from a member .
Remove the Structure / “Allowed child nodetypes” tabs from Member Types. It just doesn’t make sense…

Summary

Umbraco V4 is an awesome CMS! There are so many great additions that it would have made sense to skip a version number and go straight for V5.
Right now I can only come up with one feature that would make a great difference; Basic image editing from the editor and the Media Section...

// ; ) Kalle

(Still no comments, but this time I'm at least working on it ;)

Technorati tags: umbraco umbraco v4 asp.net opensource .net cms

E-mail templates that looks good everywhere…

Kalle Wibeck — Thu, 27 May 2010 12:12:58 GMT

I just got a newsletter from Campaign Monitor, if you haven’t heard about them they provide an e-mail newsletter service and are the founders of the Email Standards project that “...works with email client developers and the design community to improve web standards support and accessibility in email...”.

In the newsletter they said that they had updated their collection of free e-mail templates. Since they know what they’re doing, I see no reason not to trust them when they say that they have “...tested them in the major [email] clients...”.

If you have made CSS layouts in e-mail you know what a pain it can be. When you are satisfied with the result you receive a butt-ugly copy of your newsletter from someone using Lotus Notes or Outlook 2007. You can save yourself a lot of hassle by learning from the e-mail pros.

So next time you think of creating a nice CSS layout for an email, why not start with a tested template?

After all, designing for e-mail clients is ten times worse then designing for a few “modern web browsers” due to the extreme difference in CSS support. And if you need some inspiration make sure you check out their design gallery as well…

PS. I first heard about Campaign Monitor from Niels Hartvig of Umbraco since he uses their service for the Umbraco Newsletters.

// ; ) Kalle

Technorati Tags: free e-mail templates,email standards project,e-mail css layout,umbraco,newsletter

Image upload from Flickr to Umbraco...

Kalle Wibeck — Thu, 27 May 2010 12:12:58 GMT

wb
Originally uploaded by kalle.wibeck

@Warren: This is a post to test image uploads from Flickr straight to Umbraco via MetaWeblog API...

But I think that the image will be linked to Flickr and not actually uploaded since the image had to be public in Flickr to be able to Blog it...

UPDATE: Now I edited this post in Live Writer to verify the functionality...

And I was correct about the image path, it is loaded from Flickr and not from Umbraco’s media section…

// ; ) Kalle

Is Umbraco going to invade the US?

Kalle Wibeck — Thu, 27 May 2010 12:12:58 GMT

proof-of-invasion
Originally uploaded by Kalle Wibeck

This is a proof that Umbraco is going to invade the US, right?

Now it's official:
Umbraco will invade the US on october 6th, or is it just my sick brain that can spot the similarity?

(Click on the image to see the notes on Flickr..)

Q: Will Lake Michigan be the way in?

// ; ) Kalle

(Still no comments…)

Technorati Tags: umbraco,codegarden08,us invasion,joke,chicago

Are you a loser when it comes to protecting your files? Use an online backup solution!

Kalle Wibeck — Thu, 27 May 2010 12:12:58 GMT

The accident where I lost all my personal files

Last Christmas I had a disk crash on my job laptop. Like most companies we’re not allowed to store client data on our PCs, I had that stuffed away in repositories and project servers. But stupid me had saved quite a lot of personal documents in a local folder. Since my computer uses an encrypted disc, restore was never an option… ; (
OK, nothing left to do but realizing that my computer will return from Poland (HP’s European service center is located in Poland) without my loved ones…bye-bye…

Just a sad dog, I don’t know him...

What about all my photos at home?

That one accident got me thinking of my PC at home, with thousands of irreplaceable photos, Family videos, Hobby project etc on it. What if one of the disc crashes on that one? All our photos will be gone!! Well, not all of course, I’ve made some CD backups during the years, but none for the last six months... scary thought, these photos of my kids growing up are actually irreplaceable!

OK, I needed an automatic “fire-and-forget” solution, I know myself too well – if I have to remember it I’m going to forget it… that’s the raw truth…

I investigated external hard drives, plug’n’play backup boxes, DVD burning and online services. The external drives felt a bit insecure, viruses will reach those too. The boxes costs a fortune, DVD burning will be forgotten so I settled for an online service.

The final solution

I did a whole lot of research browsing and looked at most of the different backup providers, or at least the ones Google led me to. My criteria was:

Affordable (low) price
No storage limit
Reliability, who wants their files secured by a company that might be out of business in a year or two?
Simplicity, like I said above, if I have to remember it, I’m going to forget it…

The provider I choose for the winner was Mozy, a company owned by EMC (You know the global company that makes the ECM system Documentum). They charge $4.95 / month for an unlimited storage and everything is handled by a small application that sits in your task bar and waits for a convenient time to run next backup (configurable). Currently I’ve uploaded about 30 GB of my precious files to safety on Mozy’s encrypted servers…

Mozy even has a free service limited to 2 GB storage that you can increase by referring your friends to Mozy. BTW, the free service was a perfect option for my private files on my work computer ; )

No one gets it (besides my own brother)

OK, now I felt that I just had to warn all my friends from making the same mistakes I did. By not having a proper backup solution I risked loosing many of my photos so I wrote a short mail and sent it to 30 of my friends just to inform them about my finding and gain some extra space in my free account, of course ;).

Guess what? Only one person signed up and it was my brother, although I know for sure that none of the rest had a satisfactory backup solution!?

How come?

Are they just as stubborn and ignorant as I am? I guess so... ; )

Here’s a link for you if you would like to try Mozy for free (and give me some more space as well) ;)

(Select MozyHome for home/personal usage, and MozyPro for your company)

// ; ) Kalle

Technorati Tags: backup,online backup,backup photos,mozy,carbonite,automatic backup,umbraco

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