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DNN Blog
Apr
9
Posted by:
Joe Brinkman
4/9/2010 11:44 AM
 I am pleased to announce that once again we are backporting a feature from DotNetNuke Professional Edition to the Community Edition. In DotNetNuke 5.3 PE we added a new control panel which leverages the Telerik TabStrip to provide increased functionality over the previous IconBar. Some of the new control panel functionality makes common tasks even easier and provides more streamlined access to some administrative areas of the application.
The control panel is divided into 4 separate tabs: Common Tasks, Current Page, Admin and Host. Because of the layout and architecture, it will be easy to add additional panels in the future. Each tab is focused on a set of related tasks.
The Common Tasks tab is focused on 2 key tasks that are repeated hundreds of times for the typical website – creating pages and adding modules to pages. The insert page function is a new addition to the control panel and makes it simple to add a new page to your site. When you need to add a lot of pages to the site, this panel will come in very handy. The module functionality is pretty similar to the functionality provided in the previous IconBar control panel. The sole addition in this section is the ability to create both a “shared” module copy as well as a real copy.
In previous versions of the IconBar you had the ability to copy an existing module from another page on the site and add the copy to the current page. This copy was shared with the module on the original page. Any change to either module would be instantly reflected on the other page as well. There are many instances where the user wants to use an existing module as a template. They want a copy of the module, but want to be able to edit the module without affecting the original. The new RibbonBar control panel adds this ability.
By checking “Copy Module” before pressing the “Add Module” button you will create a completely new instance of the module that is completely independent of the original. One thing to keep in mind is that if the module does not support IPortable, then the content will not be copied and you will only get the module settings that are controlled by the framework and any custom module settings will not be copied. As shown below, with the new copy function, you can edit a module on one page (Test page)
and it won’t affect the module that it was copied from. This has long been available on the “Insert Page” screen, but now this feature will be readily available on the control panel.
The Current Page panel is completely new and gives you more options over managing existing pages on your site. The Settings and Actions sections are hold-overs from the previous control panel. The meat of this tab is the new Update Current Page and Copy Actions functions. These two sections allow you to quickly move pages, change the page skin and copy permission and design settings to child pages. All of these functions previously required going to the page settings screen and finding the particular setting or button to trigger the action. With the new control panel, these actions can be accomplished with just a few clicks.
The final two tabs provide access to most of the pages on the Admin and Host menus. More and more sites are hiding the Host and Admin menus and instead relying on the control panel links to the admin and host pages to get to the administrative pages. By placing these links directly in the control panel, we eliminate an extra postback when going to the host and admin pages and allow you to jump directly to the end target.
I am really excited to see this new functionality getting backported to Community Edition and know that over time we’ll see additional features from the Professional product migrate down into Community Edition. While our Professional Edition product pays the bills, it is the Open Source Community Edition product which is the lifeblood of the company and is where my true passion lies.
14 comment(s) so far...
Re: RibbonBar Control Panel Backported to DotNetNuke Community Edition
I Recommend every one to use the "Advanced Control Panel" by Olver Hine (OliverHine.com), instead of the Ugly DNN RibbonBar Panel
By Ingo Herbote on
4/9/2010 3:08 PM
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Re: RibbonBar Control Panel Backported to DotNetNuke Community Edition
Now we just sit back and wait for Oliver to make it better. :-)
By vollerworld on
4/9/2010 3:07 PM
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Re: RibbonBar Control Panel Backported to DotNetNuke Community Edition
@ingo @vollerworld - Yes. We are well aware of the control panel from Oliver Hine and Sebastian Leupold. That is the great thing about DotNetNuke - you are free to pick and choose those features and extensions that you prefer, or to make contributions to the core to enhance existing functionality. I welcome the competition as it only benefits the community and I look forward to seeing how the community improves upon the base that we have provided.
By Joe Brinkman on
4/9/2010 3:14 PM
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Re: RibbonBar Control Panel Backported to DotNetNuke Community Edition
I like the moves you are doing...
By Jan Olsmar on
4/9/2010 6:55 PM
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Re: RibbonBar Control Panel Backported to DotNetNuke Community Edition
Joe,
When do you anticipate this being available?
By Steven Nestler on
4/12/2010 9:03 AM
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Re: RibbonBar Control Panel Backported to DotNetNuke Community Edition
I thank you for the effort that you guys have put into your new ribbon, but to be honest your i would of preferred to see Oliver's & Sebastian's "advanced control panel" included into the core as well.
I think DNN Corp should really look hard at the work they have put into their control panel's - these are how the default control panels should work. They have optimized them using css sprites to help improve performance & used jquery/ajax to avoid those annoying post backs that you see in everything the corp produces. FYI: I am not out to offend anyone but optimizations & no post backs is everything in online apps these days. I still just don't get why the corp is so far behind on this 2 very important things?
By Adam Kirkbride on
4/12/2010 9:03 AM
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Re: RibbonBar Control Panel Backported to DotNetNuke Community Edition
I also recommend that the corp take a look at Oliver's "LOGIN" & "USER" skin objects. These are another great example of Oliver's work - oliverhine.com/DotNetNuke/Skinobjects/OptimizedSkinObjects.aspx
"Yet another enhancement I've maintained in my production branch of DotNetNuke, is replacement LOGIN and USER skinobjects. Like most features in DNN, they're were originally designed with a serverside postback control which creates unnecessary overhead for your users, administrators, server, and network connection.
The login and register postbacks are replaced with standard URLs which greatly enhances the experience for your users (mostly with page load times)."
By Adam Kirkbride on
4/12/2010 9:03 AM
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Re: RibbonBar Control Panel Backported to DotNetNuke Community Edition
This is a very nice addition. The iconbar has always been a sore spot for me and I have often thought about creating a replacement. I was not aware of the previous replacement created by Oliver Hine.
However, Ingo and vollerworld raise good points. The DNN team has always been quite good at making the functionality work, but the UI has always been, well..., just ugly. Those of us that have been around since v1 have just kind of gotten used to it, but whenever I show it to someone new to DNN that is familiar with other CMS systems, they always react with the same snarl.
Compared to some CMS systems (Telerik's SiteFinity for example) the UI looks like a programmer made it rather than a graphic designer or UX specialist. Now that DNN has a commercial revenue stream, are there any plans to get some real help in this area?
By Jay Mathis on
4/12/2010 9:04 AM
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Re: RibbonBar Control Panel Backported to DotNetNuke Community Edition
I think it is a good thing that the community does get back ports every now and then as this also helps with faith in the community that the core teams are not purely focusing on new features only for the PE users.
Cheers and look forward to the choice
MK
By Machine Killer on
4/12/2010 9:04 AM
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Re: RibbonBar Control Panel Backported to DotNetNuke Community Edition
@Adam - The new RibbonBar also works without postbacks and makes use of AJAX where necessary. There are lots of great Open Source projects in the forge and our goal is to move away from picking favorites and bundling them with the core.
Instead we hope to provide a standard core set of functionality and provide a rich mechanism to allow you to seamlessly find and install extensions - whether they exist in the forge or on Snowcovered. The core platform will provide a standard set of functionality and if you find something like Oliver's control panel that is better, that you could just go to the app store page in your DotNetNuke installation, download and install the new control panel in just a couple of steps.
By Joe Brinkman on
4/12/2010 9:13 AM
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Re: RibbonBar Control Panel Backported to DotNetNuke Community Edition
@jay - The UI and UX is being worked on. We recently hired a full-time UI/UX person who is working with the core Experience Team to develop a new style guide which is the first step to getting our long anticipated UI overhaul. As we are working on freshening up the platform we will be streamlining the workflow in many areas to improve the overall useability.
By Joe Brinkman on
4/12/2010 9:16 AM
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Re: RibbonBar Control Panel Backported to DotNetNuke Community Edition
These are welcome enhancements to the core. Thank you for your work and persistence in getting these to the Community Edition. This will make my administration easier.
Thank you,
Richard
By Richard Binnington on
4/15/2010 4:23 PM
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Re: RibbonBar Control Panel Backported to DotNetNuke Community Edition
How long until we see this update released? Looks cool by the way, a long awaited update.
By joshk on
6/28/2010 7:30 AM
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Re: RibbonBar Control Panel Backported to DotNetNuke Community Edition
I like the functionality of the new ribbon bar but I have to echo the sentiments expressed here that it is very unattractive. I have tried Oliver Hine's ribbon bar and it is kind of ugly too. I think it is time to lose the icons altogether and shave 75% off the footprint.
By Mike Cox on
6/28/2010 7:29 AM
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