Sitecore for President (well for Government Sites)

Roundedcube will be featuring Sitecore at the National Association of Government Webmasters (NAGW) to be held in St. Louis, MO from Sept. 22 – 24.  We’re definitely excited for being part of the show because I think we definitely got something to show.  One of the highlights will be our work for the City of Ogden, UT which was released last year (a Sitecore case study is also available if you want a copy).
One of our goals in the NAGW show is to feature how Sitecore’s capabilities match up with government sites’ needs and processes.  This is not just in the technical point of view but also with its user-experience, deployment scenarios, maintenance, and multi-site/multi-language capabilities.  I think these are some of the most important factors that government entities look for.  So, let’s take a look at them one by on in summary form.  This is by no means the complete list but I’m highlighting what government sites may be looking for.

Customize the Sitecore System Tray

The Sitecore Desktop is just like Windows, it’s customizable.  Not a lot have utilized it because there’s not much about on how to do so except for typical user-specifics such as wallpaper, desktop shortcuts, etc.  Here is one thing you can do to the system tray. 

WARNING: Make sure to be cautious when making these changes as these updates the Core database.

Dynamic Sitecore Desktop

I was playing around with Sitecore and I saw John West’s way of randomizing the desktop wallpaper.  He uses a loggingin pipeline processor that essentially updates the Wallpaper property of the user.  It’s pretty cool….so I get to thinking…let me try to make it more dynamic. 

Sitecore to Support MVC…What Do You Think?

When I first saw that Sitecore is going to support the MVC architecture in a future release, I wasn’t sure exactly what that means.  I have some experience with MVC.  I know about ASP.NET’s implementation and also the S#arp Architecture that improves upon Microsoft’s version.  To me, MVC architecture is great with applications.  It allows me to separate (decouple) the various layers and actually make coding them a lot easier and focused.  So I ask, is this a way for Sitecore to tell us to start building apps with the Sitecore framework as well? 

I would really like to know up to what level the MVC support will be.  Will there be technology preview?  I would like to get a hand on an alpha release and see how it compares with the other architectures.  I’d like to be able to play with it using ASP.NET MVC Web controls or other commercial libraries.  Maybe Sitecore will just support it to allow those parts of a Website that requires more complex logic, that may be easier to implement with MVC, that are more code-heavy to implement.  I don’t see it being used on a Website which is what a CMS is for. But, I do see it being used for an Intranet or even Sitecore applications.

I’ve seen some forum posts and inquiries about MVC within Sitecore. I’m not sure exactly what they are doing so I can’t speak for them.  However, if you’re reading this and have done it, comment back or post a link to your blog that talks about it.  I think there are tons of people wondering about how one decides on using MVC or just typical ASP.NET form-based approach. 

If you have your own take on this….let us know.

Taking Advantage of Sitecore Dictionary and Tokens

The Sitecore Dictionary is one of the newer features that may have gotten under a developer’s radar.  I’m sure there has been chances when a page design element just doesn’t fit any of the data template fields that’s been defined. Designers or content developers always surprise Sitecore developers with “minor” requirements that have been left out in the specs just because it’s so trivial.  In the CMS world, nothing is trivial because of the fact that site owners want as much control on the site as possible (without going back to a developer – this has been the issue forever).

Learn about Language Fallback from Caleb

One of my brilliant Sitecore guys, Caleb Miller, just wrote a much needed globalization post particularly on language fallbacks.  Essentially, a language fallback is when “something” is not translated to the current language context…then the solution reverts to a fallback language that should have that translation.  I’m  sure this is not old news to those who’ve built global sites, but I’m sure you’ll get some nice insights on this post.

Here’s a quick look at what’s in the post:

• difference between sc:fld and sc:field in XSLT Renderings
• item and field level pipeline processors
• checking for languages and versions

Check it out and let him know what you think.

Simple (but needed) Sitecore UI Improvements on Core Apps

Sitecore has greatly improved its UI since I first looked at it (v4).  It definitely gone from traditional to innovative.  Sitecore has come up with so many new UIs in the past few releases  that it I want to make sure that the UI experts don’t forget about some of the original apps’ usability as well.  Just to give you an idea of how things have progressed in the current UI paradigm:

1. typical tree-lists, collapsible panels, pop-ups, customizable buttons, ribbons, page editor, and other Windows innovations
2. Media Library’s improvements on uploads, alt text entry, drag & drop, and thumbnail generation
3. OMS revealed a new set of UI elements such as its graphical reports, Word-like reports and toolbars, and report designer
4. Email Campaign Manager has the Preview mode that actually grabs data not from the current item but as a collection of everything underneath it

I haven’t checked other apps that are coming out but I’m sure some other UIs might be forthcoming.  There’s even the custom field types on the Shared Source that you can use such as the carousel.  These are all great improvements, but let’s not forget to improve some of the older Sitecore apps out there. 

The list below are just some of the things I’ve noticed that could help a Sitecore user.  These are simple (not sure about the implementation) improvements that can help make the UIs more usable.  I’m not saying that I can’t currently do what I’m trying to accomplish (i.e. refresh in the User Manager can be done by closing the app and firing it up again), but these improvements will cut down some of the “brute force” user experience we currently have.

Disclaimer: These are not all-inclusive…I’m sure I’ll notice more (or retract some) but if you have anything to add, just comment below and let the Sitecore community know.

User Manager

• Refresh button to update the list of users
• Enable the “Drag a column to this area to group by it” or maybe a similar filtering; very useful for sites with extranets and ECM subscribers
• Column sort
• Context pop-up menu instead of “select user” then use the button on the toolbar

Security Editor/Access Viewer

• Combine Security Editor and Access Viewer to see the effects of security changes
• Refresh button on Access Viewer

Content Editor

• Jump to content section not just a field
• If My Toolbar is defined, make it the first ribbon
• Pre-defined set of My Toolbar customizations based on user’s roles (and can be part of user’s profile)
• Remove Media Library and Workbox by default to make the Content Editor quicker (I think most people use those as separate apps – and normally you have separate roles who might using those)

Page Editor

• Keep Ribbon and Page Editor buttons always visible (no scrolling)
• Context pop-up menu since sometimes sometimes the content can be too long and scrolling is needed
• Enable My Toolbar with appropriate buttons auto-disabled/enabled

Media Library

• Multi-select to do typical “Windows Explorer-like” functions such as delete and move

Well, that’s it for now.  This post is not meant to list a set of future features that I’d like to see; otherwise, it’ll be a very long post.  Anyway, if you have more to add, comment below.

Sitecore on Firefox…next version…how about Chrome?

Did you know that Sitecore’s future release would actually support Firefox fully in the “Halo” release?  This means that you will now be able to use Sitecore CMS in Firefox with all the various user interfaces and not just Content Editor, etc.  I’m excited about because of the following reasons:

• Firefox has an active community of add-on developers that helps to make “things” available such as generating Lorem Ipsum fillers, web development tools, color identifier, and more.
• Firefox is generally accepted as more secure (but more recent studies have shown that IE is becoming as secure but it’s ubiquity remains a reason for it being a primary target).
• Firefox keeps getting faster and faster especially when it comes to Javascript; as we all know, Sitecore is heavy on Javascript particularly AJAX so this could only help.

I know the reasons above are not deal breakers but what this new full-browser support brings is “OPTION”.  This brings Sitecore to a different level of acceptability with companies that have very tight security policies.  Not sure if Firefox is more secure as I’m not a security expert, but based on many blog reviews and researches it seems to be so.

So, in brief, I’m excited to see the new version when it comes out. But, why did I mention Google Chrome above?

The main reason I’m writing this post is only because I found out about a very cool browser add-on for both Firefox and Chrome called IE Tab.  It’s available at:

http://www.ietab.net/

I downloaded it for both browser and voila! I have the full Sitecore CMS client on both browsers with all its glory.  And I’m not talking about the client being “dumbed” down, it’s what you would expect as if you’re in IE. 

Well, the reason for that is because the add-on essentially uses the Internet Explorer Web control as the rendering engine (i.e. creates an <object> tag that displays the URL into the IE engine).  This means that any other add-ons you might have in either browser will not work on the content of the site.  So, if this is the case, why even bother?

Well, here are some good things to consider:

• In Chrome, I get to see less Window framing…which means I get to see more of the Sitecore CM client.
• I could use some of the browser add-ons that doesn’t work with the site’s content such as Lorem Ipsum generators without going to another browser or site.
• It gives you another option to test the Web site on IE without firing up IE.
• Most of the Sitecore CMS functionalities work such as the keyboard shortcuts, etc. (upload in the media library doesn’t seem to work).
• You don’t get to see the IE logo all the time : )

Anyway, I thought I share this since it was interesting to me.  Soon we don’t have to fake the Firefox thing…just Chrome. Of course, we’d love to see Chrome fully supported at some point too.