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4/28/2009 How Important is the Sitecore Remote Database Installer?I'm blogging about another poll on the Sitecore Developer Network in the hopes of getting more votes and comments. Please vote: 4/23/2009 Internet Explorer Optimization for Sitecore Documentation PublishedSitecore published an Internet Explorer Configuration reference, which covers some new IE8 features. Most of the configuration is optional. I have updated my post that provides links to the best Sitecore documentation. Sitecore Developer Network Poll: What Primary Source Code Management Tool Do You Use with Sitecore?One of my students this week asked which source code management tools developers most often use with Sitecore, or which works best with Sitecore. I created a corresponding poll on the Sitecore Developer Network, but these polls are not very visible so I'm posting a link here in the hope of getting more responses: 4/16/2009 Sitecore Intranet Portal DocumentationI have updated my post linking to the best Sitecore documentation to reflect the Sitecore Intranet Portal (SIP) Installation, AD Integration, Core Concepts, Main Settings, Skin Settings, Content Features, Cookbook, and User guides. Sitecore (Microsoft) CRM Membership Provider and Documentation PublishedSitecore published (Microsoft) CRM Security Provider documentation and compiled code. I have updated my post that provides links to the best Sitecore documentation. 4/9/2009 Three Factors to Sitecore’s SuccessI was thinking about Alex de Groot's blog post Thank you, Sitecore community. It’s somewhat self-congratulatory to say, but my experience watching Sitecore USA grow from a carful to a multinational group with offices in numerous states has made it clear that the most important aspect of the company is its people, especially those hired in the early days that set the company's direction and culture. Sitecore has managed growth successfully by waiting for the right people to fill strategic positions. For Sitecore, this most important aspect (people) developed the second most important aspect, product (the Sitecore Web Content Management System). Sitecore is really an amazing platform, and could not be as successful, extensible, and capable of increasing productivity as it is without this solid and well-considered architecture. This may indicate that a young software company should invest in it's product, possibly in favor of marketing (often the primary factor in the success of a software company). But to be clear, Sitecore couldn’t possibly be as powerful without Microsoft and ASP.NET – Sitecore’s engineers don’t think they could have built Sitecore with Java (I haven’t asked about LAMP, Haskell, etc.). For Sitecore, the third most important driver of success may be the community, which is really an extension of Sitecore’s people, and a result of Sitecore’s focus on the partner channel and adapting that business model as it expands into new markets. So thanks to all of the partners, customers, independent consultants, and Sitecore employees working around the world, on and off the clock, to improve the product, deliver optional components, develop custom solutions, teach training, educate prospective customers, write documentation, white papers, case studies, blog posts, and assist the community through the Sitecore Support Portal and on the Sitecore Developer Network Forums! Sitecore has been fortunate to see its success continue as the market becomes more challenging. Web solution developers find common patterns, and Sitecore addresses the majority of those patterns with relative ease. I think it says a lot that people can sift and decipher the chaotic realm of CMS software literature including obsolete and misinformation to pick what I continue to think is the best Web CMS available. Great minds think alike! 4/4/2009 Windows Live (Blog) WriterI have to say that as an owner, I've been pretty disappointed with Windows Live Spaces. The overall usability of the management Web site is pretty bad, which may be one reason I don't use many of its features. It seemed like it supported 32-bit Firefox for a while, which was great because Firefox didn’t support the WYSIWYG and I could just edit HTML, but this stopped, maybe due to my move to 64-bit Minefield. Anyway, now I have to use IE, which means copying the source view from the WYSIWYG (which IE has conveniently turned into one long line of markup) between the browser and a real editor. I can't tell you how much time I've spent deleting spam comments – I have to go through the frustrating process of figuring out how every few months when I get a chance to maintain the blog. It’s one of the worst user interfaces in the whole system, possibly in the entire universe (trust me, I’ve been using computers for 20 years – since the basic interpreter and command line days, and I’m not the only person to complain about). I guess I should spend the time to figure out how to require that I approve the posts, but that seems like a major challenge. It could be so much better if they just fixed a few things…but I digress. You may have noticed that Windows Update has been suggesting some optional Windows Live components lately. I generally like to install everything available from Windows update (except the Vista Ultimate language updates) so I can get an idea of what new problems they may cause for my users. So I grabbed these things and quickly ignored them. So I was pretty excited when I right-clicked something and it prompted me to blog about it with Windows Live. It then prompted me to create a blog or connect to an existing one. I can’t remember exactly what blogs were supported. So far, so good – just the spelling check is probably good enough to keep me using it, and the interface is light years ahead of the browser-based interface. This is definitely something I prefer to use, and also something my dad could (probably) figure out. Let’s see how it manages comments…I will try to update this post as I find more features. As I think about how to make this post relate to Sitecore somehow, it seems like if this Windows client can access the blog, then so could Sitecore. There may be some way to capitalize on the Windows live Writer interface for blogs, and possibly even other content. But I doubt Microsoft has publicly documented whatever protocols it uses, which may be proprietary and could change. Bugs:
Updates:
For example, here’s Remove Formatting not working: Created by: Douglas Stockwell Downloads:7149 Posted:11/1/2006 Free Easily transfer syntax highlighted source code from Visual Studio to elegant HTML in Windows Live Writer. With any mode, Microsoft fails the “pasting a nested list from Word” test worse than I’ve seen recently, giving me an <h4>, <h5>, and <h6>: 1 A1.1 B1.1.1 COr worse, just some <p>’s: 1. A a. B i. C Worst is “Keep Formatting”: <p style="text-indent: -0.25in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1" class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin"><span style="mso-list: ignore">1.<span style="font: 7pt 'Times New Roman'"> </span></span></span>A</p> It does seem to nicely translate all those <’s, >’s, &’s, and other characters to HTML or XML entities. Screen Shots: Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 (WYSIWYG):
Google Chrome 1 (plain text):
Windows Live Writer version 14! (a capture of a capture of a capture):
Clear View > Use editing theme (where’s the ribbon? ;-) and the editor resizes with the window, unlike the browsers that waste most of my monitor’s space:
I can crop and apply other effects, and there are right-click options to make images clickable, etc.:
If you click on any of the images above, depending on your user agent, you might have access to image manipulation features. |
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