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Caryatid 0.4 Released
New version includes blogs.
Author: M Butcher
Date: 2004-07-18 00:54:19 -0500
The inclusion of image galleries in version 0.3 marked an important turn for Caryatid: the major platform features were complete. This new release exemplifies the change of focus from rapid development of new features to simplifying and solidifying the existing application.
The one new feature in Caryatid 0.4 is the BLT -- Blog-Like Thing.
BLTThe Blog-Like Thing (BLT) types provide a simple mechanism for creating web logs. While sharing a blog between a group of editors is possible, the major emphasis of BLTs is on the individual user's personal blog.
Basic BLTs provide topic-based organization, stickies (bookmark-like support for making your favorite articles "stick" to the front page), image gallery integration, custom logos, and a special blog management page. Under the covers, automatic locking features have been added to BLT to simplify the publishing process for the master BLT entry. Adding an RSS feed to a blog should be trivial.
Admin User InterfaceThe administration screens are going through a user interface upgrade. Along with changing the color schemes, I've changed the layout to be a bit more intuitive, and am in the process of making menus consistent from page to page. Also, in past versions, the document_list.php page was the center of the administration world. Now, each type has become more integrated with the core features of Caryatid. The result is easier (and faster) navigation in the administration site.
User ManagementThis version of Caryatid also reflects the beginings of the user model. Cayatid was designed for a small group of editors, and (given this) a strong security model for editors was never much of an imperative. In other words, all editors had permission to everything. This is changing. The new users.xml file is the foundation of a user model that will add role-based permissions to Caryatid. One other place where this new model may be evident is in the myblog.php blog management tool. This application displays the partitioning of functionality by permissions, even though permissions are not yet strictly enforced.
Other Changes- Many of the kinks in the image gallery type have been worked out.
- HTMLArea has been upgraded to 3.0 RC1 -- this version is notably better than the previous WYSIWYG editor.
- Image gallery support has been extended to BLT entries and Articles. That means you can now attach an image gallery to an article, and the template can intelligently display thumbnails and links to the gallery.
- Prefix filtering has been added to the template selector code. That means that some applications can display a list of templates based on what data type the template supports.
- A new Image template has been added.
- Image Galleries now check to make sure that the images referenced exist in the data store.
- The DocumentCollection code introduced in 0.2 is now fully functional. That means that documents can be collected into one large file and exported, making backups and online exports easier.
- Began process of conforming all HTML to the 4.01 Strict and XHTML 1.01 DTDs.
- Made a number of improvements to underlying classes.
- CSS structure was re-vamped. The new structure should make it easier to change the look and feel of Caryatid by only altering a handful of CSS files.
Coming UpNew changes on the board include:
- More BLT templates
- An easier way to generate listings and portal pages
- Improved admin UI
- New default style
- Image gallery integration with the editor
- Better searching and sorting
Look for these and other changs is 0.5.
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Questions? Comments? Consulting Opportunities? Email matt at aleph-null.tv.
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