Answers to the Sitefinity 3.6 questions

Answers to the Sitefinity 3.6 questions

Posted on February 17, 2009 0 Comments

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There have been quite a few questions in the comments to my last post announcing Sitefinity 3.6 and as one of the visitors noticed, no one did answer the questions. This post will make much more sense, if you take a minute and go back through the comments on that post. So, to start with that one, no the team did not get any smaller, as a matter of fact a new developer has joined our ranks just few weeks ago.

Documentation

Sitefinity 3.6 brought a lot of bug fixes and several end user features, not just the new backend architecture, which is understandably the most interesting to the audience on this blog. Having that in mind, we wanted to get the fixes and features out as soon as possible and decided we'll deliver the documentation after the official release (kind of a win-win situation we thought).

 

I am sorry if we have poorly communicated this decision.

 

We are working on the documentation and samples as I write this post. Since the process of getting the manuals online is not as trivial, as one would expect, I will be publishing the materials here on the blog as soon as they are done. We expect to have all the topics in about 10 days and online in the manuals - until then check this blog for the fresh materials and samples.

Embedded templates, references and mappings

As it has been pointed out, I have promised to have the reference ControlsConfig file and all the templates delivered with the Sitefinity. We have changed our minds and published these materials as knowledge base article. However, the KB we have published, was unfortunately rather incomplete and had several wrong references. We are all truly sorry for this and are working (actually finishing) the simple tool which will generate the correct references for the ControlsConfig file for the entire site. The tool will also be able to extract embedded templates from your own modules. We are expecting to have the tool done this week.

 

One other problem that has slipped through the official release is the public control mappings - they are not working correctly, though, there is a simple workaround - you just set the paths manually. It is impossible to change the defaults for the new instances of controls (e.g. you want the external template to be used whenever you drag NewsView control on the page - currently it is always going to use embedded template). All these issues have already been fixed and are pending release in the hotfix.

 

ContentViewDesigners were another tiny detail that slipped by - namely you could not map them (same problem as in previous paragraph) and hence had no opportunity to modify them. With designers there is no workaround, since you cannot change their properties through Sitefinity. This issue has been fixed as well.

Secured modules

 

The issue with custom secured modules not appearing in Sitefinity has been reported shortly after we have released Sitefinity 3.6. Fortunately, Pepi has quickly tracked down the problem and published a workaround in form of KB. KB explains the background on the issue and provides a solution.

Localization of embedded templates

While I will talk more about this in the future posts, here are some basic principles:

  • Embedded templates use embedded resources for localization
  • External templates use embedded resources for localization if they are using our template parser (our template parser is used when your template files have any other extension than .ascx)
  • External templates use external localization files if you are using ASP.NET template parser (you are using ASP.NET template parser if your templates end with .ascx extension)

Silverlight controls

The only built-in Silverlight control at the moment is the video player that is available with build made against .NET 3.5. You can obviously use your own Silverlight controls in Sitefinity (like one of the visitors mentioned, by wrapping it in user control). We have finished the ground work for the Silverlight controls in Sitefinity, so with every new version of Sitefinity, chances are, more Silverlight enabled controls will be included.

The hotfix

All in all, we are very happy with the release, since there seems to be only few issues that have made it to the release and those are generally minor ones. We have been monitoring all the feedback over the past days (part of the reason we've been a bit quite) and have been fixing the glitches. We are aiming to release a hotfix in coming days that will address the reported issues and provide the ControlsConfig generator - which will provide correct references for all the host types. Most of the clients are very happy with the ease of upgrade, so one of our major goals has been fulfilled - though we will continue to work in this direction and make the whole process even simpler.

 

The hotfix will be extremely simple in nature and will require from you only to change the .dll files in the bin folder. At the same time, we are working on the documentation and will release it incrementally here on the blog.

 

I am sorry if I have come off as uninterested in your questions and problems you have risen. It's only that I wanted to give you the real answers and status updates on what are we going to do about these problems, rather than give you some generic political answer. And real answers take time of course.

 

Stay tuned for the docs...

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The Progress Team

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