Blog items tagged with "preview"

The next release will introduce a new 'Facebook' module and optional Facebook 'Like' and Twitter 'Tweet' buttons to blog posts.  

One feature which didn't make the move from Exponent 1.x to 2.x was the 'Wizard'...essentially a sequential set of forms.  Well 'ta-daaa', we're planning to have a wizard or paged-form feature in the next release (already in the 'develop' code branch)!  This will be a much simpler implementation than available in 1.x, as a 2.x paged form can easily be designed all in one place, instead of having to create separate form pages, etc...  This feature will be available in both the forms module/site forms (event registration now uses site forms) and in templates/views.

Since v2.2.0 is classified a 'major update' to Exponent, you may be hesitant to consider upgrading your sites.  Although in reality it is simply the next incremental version update, it does mark a milestone in the maturity of the Exponent 2.0 code.  Here are some immediate and long term benefits to updating to version 2.2.0 once the stable version is released in the near future:

The remnants of 'old school' Exponent are numbered...meaning very soon we'll no longer be strapped to the modules, subsystems, etc... of Exponent 0.9x that were necessary to get Exponent 2.0 up and flying.  For the most part, we've been able to disguise the great differences between the 0.9x coding architecture and the 2.x MVC coding architecture.  This was done by updating some of the  old school (0.9x) module admin interfaces to look (and act?) similar to the 2.x modules.  However this was done at some (resource) cost, and the complexity of having to deal with two different animals.  Therefore we'll modify our release and development strategies to best accommodate existing installations, yet not restrict such a bold move into the future!  What follows are some notes to Administrators/Designers and another set to Developers about how this will occur.

(Updated Aug 2nd) We've had several requests lately to 'make forms look like they did in versions prior to v0.97.'  Meaning, place the label and input control on the same line instead of the label above the input control.  Since we're trying to move away from using tables to format the layout (the html5 way of doing things), it's not an easy fix, HOWEVER we can simulate the look using css styles.  (NOTE: we have implemented a Single column/Two Column form settings option in the next version 2.0.9 which will easily implement this feature)

In recent conversations in the #exponent-cms irc chat on irc.freenode.net we’ve been discussing how best to maintain Exponent using the most current software technology.  Though Exponent has been based on YUI (Yahoo User Interface) for years, there are more commonly supported libraries which might be worth considering.  Some of these have familiar names in the developer community such as ‘jQuery’, ‘Twitter-Bootstrap’, and the ‘LESS’ css stylesheet compiler.  What’s more, several aspects of YUI are currently broken and unusable in Exponent (e.g., we ship v3.4.0 because newer versions such as v3.4.1, v3.5.x and the soon to be released v3.6.x break our displays).  (Rest assured, we'll maintain backwards compatibility) So here’s where Exponent MIGHT go within the next several releases.