I am pleased to announce the availability of a new DotNetNuke...

One of the new features coming in Cambrian is an update in the permissions grid.  The current grid supports two states, Allow and Null (not assigned).  The new grid will support three states (Allow, Deny, and Null).  The obvious question here is how do you present this to the user?  The current design allows for a nice compact way to set the permissions within a grid utilizing checkboxes.  The new way will use a new DotNetNuke WebControl that supports multiple states and mimics a checkbox.  The original name I came up with for the control was DNNTriStateCheckbox.  However, while developing this control I soon realized there was no reason I needed to only support 3 states and saw the opportunity to support any number of states and not necessarily look like a checkbox.  So the control is now called DNNMultiStateBox.  It is probably the simplest of all the controls in the Read More »

For a long time now many skinners for DotNetNuke have felt like customizing individual menu items was like looking for the Holy Grail.  All the menus I have contributed to the community (Solpart and DNNMenu) have always had the ability to customize each menu item.  The problem always was how do we allow DotNetNuke the ability to customize the items?  The only place...

The conversion of the ClientAPI and WebControls to utilize the MS AJAX Framework along with emitting xhtml compliant markup is near completion.  It is now time to start testing the backwards compatibility of the conversion.  In order to adequately do this, I am asking for the communities help.  If you are a skinner who uses any of the DotNetNuke webcontrols (DNNMenu, DNNTreeView, etc.) your assistance is needed.  If you are a module developer who uses any portion of the ClientAPI or any of the WebControls,...

Sometimes I grow frustrated when trying to solve apparently simple things, that end up taking most of the day to come up with an answer.  And if the answer is one that is bordering on a hack, I am even more distraught. This happened to me again while trying to optimize the latest version of the webcontrols, that will now use the Microsoft AJAX extensions framework. The optimization deals with allowing the control to persist its current structure. For example, when you have a tree that supports populate on demand,...

DotNetNuke has supported navigation providers for about a year and a half.  Currently there are 4 providers we support.  The provider model is based off of interfaces, promoting a one-size-fits-all mentality.  This can be both a blessing and a curse.  The curse as it relates to the navigation providers is that it limits the features that the navigation provider's control can support.  For example, recently I added support for the DNNMenu to support horizontal submenus.  In order for this feature to be used in...

Thought I'd mention that the Edit In Place enhancements will be incorperated into 4.5.

Instead of rewriting an entire entry, I think it is best to simply point you to the original blog, which also links the document with all the design details. 

Yesturday I blogged on the MS AJAX framework's PageMethod implementation falling short when it comes to control developers.  Before I completely gave up on this, I decided to investigate some of the toolkit's controls to see how they handle these callbacks.  Two controls came up in my search: Rating and ReorderList.  I spent some time investigating the Rating control, which seems to utilize the classic ASP.NET...

With my plate relatively clear, I have decided to spend some time investigating the released version of Microsoft AJAX Extensions for ASP.NET 2.0 (formarly Atlas and from now on I will call it MS AJAX).  Specifically, I want to see what advantages and disadvantages I would have by utilizing this framework instead of (or addition to) the ClientAPI.  One of the first things that I looked for was the ability to make "callbacks".  I had heard about Atlas' ability to invoke webservices for some time now and have been on a project that was IE specific and therefore was able to use the WebService behavior to accomplish the same thing.  While this functionality is cool, people who know me, know that my real passion is for writing reusable webcontrols.  Writing a webcontrol that needs to communicate with the server

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I am pleased to announce the release of the latest DotNetNuke WebControls v1.5.  I must admit, this release took a lot longer than I had anticipated.  I have spent the last couple weeks putting everything else on hold in order to finish up the DNNTabStrip control.  Most of the work done will be visible to the public, however, there is quite a bit of work that I spent in prototyping that may never see the light of day.  The bulk of the work was done in the DNNTabStrip control.  This required some additional...

The DNNTabStrip control has been under development for quite some time.  The original document was written in August of 2006.  I am happy to announce that I was able to finish the final chapter for it just a couple hours before the Super Bowl (Go Bears!).  Chapter 6 deals with the two callback methods available, detailing under what situations you would choose one over the other.  Here is the introduction.



The ClientAPI currently supports two different types of Callbacks:  Simple and ProcessPage. ...

Originally I had planned on showing you all the pieces of code that are run in order to make ASP.NET validators work.  However, I soon realized that the amount of detail I was going into was detracting from the original purpose of this entry.  Namely, that I want to explain why the ASP.NET Validation controls are not very friendly to an AJAX application, especially one in which partial rendering comes into play.  The following chart outlines the client-side areas I am going to focus on.

 

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Just thought I'd share a quick note regarding the status of the DNNTabStrip. 

I had taken a break from its development in order to focus on the Edit In Place functionality.  I was at the phase where I was evaluating what to do with tabs that contained other controls that required initialization script.  Probably most notable of these controls were validation controls.  After experimenting with them a little I found that they were not written in such a way that would play nice with AJAX, which led me to investigate how MS handled them with their "magic" UpdatePanel.  I had discovered then, some rather specific code used to parse the script.  While I guess you could say this was one option, I did not like it.  If I write any logic I do not want it to only work with specific versions of other vendors controls some of the time.  This seemed at the time to be a recipe for disaster.   Maybe Microsoft could pull it off, for they owned many of these controls, but I was still skeptical.

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Over the past couple weeks I have been working to provide a better UI for the DNNLabelEdit control.  This image shows a quick preview of what will be possible.



The main points and the reasons behind this enhancement are covered in a new document called DotNetNuke Edit In Place.  Here is an exerpt

Many aspects of programming (and life for that matter) require the choice between two extremes.  Balancing these...

Thought I'd mention that I have updated the DotNetNuke WebControls Site.



New features on the site include

Sample showcasing the new DNNToolBar control complete with source preview Updated DNNLabelEdit sample Sample showing DNNTextSuggest and DNNLabelEdit inside a templated control ClientAPI Dynamic Script Load sample ClientAPI Callback sample ClientAPI Callback With Elements sample Documentation page outlining the available documents...

A new chapter has been added to the DotNetNuke TabStrip Rendering document that discusses the tradeoffs to consider when setting the TabCallbackPostMode property. Like the previous chapters, this one uses a sample to demonstrate each of the options.

I am happy to announce that the DNNTabStrip Beta control has been released with a detailed document and samples showing how the different rendering modes it supports affects performance.

I have been spending my spare time lately investigating the best way to handle dynamic control loading from the client using AJAX capabilities. The reason I am spending time on this is I plan on developing 2 new controls: DNNTabStrip and DNNExpandOnDemand. The first type of control is pretty explanatory, for everyone has seen tabstrip controls before, the second is actually a much simpler version of the first. Let me explain. I plan on making a tabstrip that can populate its panes on demand, so that only the...

In version 4.3.2/3.3.2 a fix was made to the main ClientAPI js file (dnn.js) that allowed for greater compatibility with other javascript frameworks (namely prototype).  Unfortunately, this fix causes a major bug with the FireFox browser and all DNN WebControls.  I am recommending applying this patch to any site you have updated to 4.3.2/3.3.2 to repair...

I am pleased to announce that the first non-beta of the DNNMenu will be included in DNN 3.3/4.3. While its current implementation does not have all the features of the original Solpart Menu, it does include some new functionality that I have always wanted to add. (Keyboard Navigation, Populate On Demand, Mouse In Delay, No Hardcoded Markup, Option for Tableless Display).

Was reading this blog entry regarding the architecting of Live.com and found this quote intersting.

Server versus Client Rendering

Traditional web-pages are generated via the server.  Live.com and many of our properties are very client-centric where the client constructs the web-page from the user’s meta-data. In general, the first time a web-page loads, a server-generated page will almost always be faster....

I finally got around to posting the finished version of the DotNetNuke ClientAPI Developing WebControls document. You can access it in the Project Downloads section of the Core: WebControls project. Please note, you will not be able to access the source from the document until the 3.3/4.1 release of DotNetNuke. I figured it would be helpful to get some of the information included in that package early so you are not bombarded with a lot of information all at once.

DotNetNuke's skinning engine was designed with both the advanced developer and the designer in mind.  With the release of 3.2/4.0 both of these stake holders were catered to with the abstraction of the navigation provider and the re-organization of the properties that the navigation skin objects exposed (See the navigation document for more details).  I am happy to announce that there will be another technique that may be used by both the developers and the designers in the creation of the look and feel of the navigation controls. 

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Earlier I had blogged on integrating the ASP.NET 2.0 menu into DotNetNuke via the Navigation Provider introduced in DotNetNuke 3.2/4.0.  I had originally planned on releasing the source code and assembly shortly after the release.  This did not happen as quickly as I had anticipated due to a heavier than expected workload.  I am however happy to announce that today I am releasing this navigation provider to the public.

Installation

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I have decided to release another patch to try and address some of the backwards compatibility issues identified by the community in the DNNTree control.  The following issues have been updated. TreeView - Case Sensitivity As I mentioned in the earlier update there was one property (NavigateUrl) that had its case inadvertantly changed.  Since then another property was found to have the same issue (CssClass).  I am happy to report that I have found a workaround that will make both...

Today I am releasing a patched version of the webcontrols that will alleviate some of the issues involved with backwards compatibility.  In order to keep as many people in the loop on the recent changes to the code I decided to provide detail on both the last minute changes that went into the controls just prior to the release of 3.2/.0 and the ones that are now patched.

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Finally carved out some time to tackle an issue I have been interested in for some time now:  keyboard navigation for my controls.  It is not that I have been avoiding the functionality, just that I didn't want to implement a solution until I figured out the direction the non-IE browsers decided to take when it came to giving focus to any element on the page. I stumbled upon this article the other day.  Its nice to see that some ideas of Microsoft's...

I may not have a cool prize to offer like some core team members for guess the photo, but I think you may have fun trying to guess what menu is actually being rendered in this screen shot.  Hint:  Its not Solpart.  Simply add a comment with your guess.

I guess I could throw in the complete suite of DotNetNuke WebControls to the winner when they are released. :)

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As with most commercial controls out on the market the DotNetNuke team has put together a sample demo application to showcase each of the controls.  Currently there are three controls in the demo:  DNNTree, DNNMenu (beta), and DNNTextSuggest (beta). 

An additional use for this site is to house the ClientAPI documentation  along with the UnitTests for the namespaced (linked...