Alexey Rusakov on Sitecore development

Thursday, March 02, 2006

Thanks to staying at home with cold I had a chance to add a couple of new features to sdn5. I've also added a 'beta mode' so that they can be tested first. To enable the beta, just go to the http://sdn5.sitecore.net/?sdn5beta= - it will set the beta cookie and thats basically it. You can click 'back to normal' any time, but I'd appreciate if you also let me know whats wrong.

To the features:

1. Search autocomplete

Thats actually the reason I wanted a beta mode first to make sure that javascript works fine for everyone, and doesn't annoy people. The autocomplete data is supplied by new MondoSearch Behaviour Tracking web service based on actual search queries at sdn5, which is very neat.

For client side I've used prototype and scriptaculous javascript frameworks, and I've enjoyed using them both very much. Prototype adds a lot of basic stuff making js coding much easier, and scriptaculous builds high-level effects using prototype. And it even has ready-made ajax and local autocomplete controls making the task really easy. I look forward to playing with them more, but don't want to abuse sdn with cheesy effects.

I'd also like to make use of behaviour in future so that html is totally clean from javascript bits. The downside of all that is of course that its quite a bit of javascript code to download at first visit.

2. Remember me and logout

I think was a very popular request and its a shame that I haven't added it before. I've set it to expire in a day for now, but with sliding expiration enabled. Anyway, this one is also in beta for a while because its not an optimal solution yet, unfortunately.

Hopefully this won't turn into a google-like betas, and I'll move it to a live version soon. Let me know if something doesn't work for you or you simply don't like it.

ps. Sdn5 also has page titles now (again, shame on me), but I was brave enough to make that huge modification on a live site at once.

Thursday, March 02, 2006 10:32:33 AM (FLE Standard Time, UTC+02:00)

Comments [5]
Sitecore

Thursday, March 02, 2006 10:44:32 AM (FLE Standard Time, UTC+02:00)

I see some strange behaviours...
For example when you fill in just 'd', the first autocompletion is 'rendering'? Ofcourse there's a 'd' in it. But better would be an autocompletion after you filled in at least 3 characters :).

Alex de Groot

Thursday, March 02, 2006 10:52:55 AM (FLE Standard Time, UTC+02:00)

Alex,

Thanks for the feedback, makes total sense - done :)

Alexey Rusakov

Thursday, March 02, 2006 11:18:27 AM (FLE Standard Time, UTC+02:00)

I tought I did actually post this comment already but I'll do it again:

Found 4 bugs:
1. When you've got the completion and you scroll over a menu-item, some dots appear.
2. When you've filled in some data in the searchbox and you click on logout. It submit the search-field instead of logging you out.
3. The remember-checkbox doesn't work when you click on logout?
4. On the frontpage of SDN5 there's a link to the old SDN. But it links to sdn5.sitecore.net.

Alexey did actually resolve the fourth.
Hope he's able to resolve the other without fully rewriting SDN5 ;).

Alexey should stay at home more often. I'll provide him several features which impoves SDN! :P

Alex de Groot

Friday, March 03, 2006 9:58:08 AM (FLE Standard Time, UTC+02:00)

Great work with the remember me functionality, have been missing that feature for a while :)

Per Bering

Friday, March 10, 2006 3:41:33 PM (FLE Standard Time, UTC+02:00)

Nice features Alexy :¬)

Search bar seems to be A.W.O.L on IE7 (but it is for current SDN5 site)

Stephen Pope

Comments are closed.