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06 October 2011

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Dynamicweb 8 has been on its way during all of 2011 - we are wrapping up the initial development work and are ready to release a Dynamicweb 8 CTP (Community Technology Preview) for developers and partners who want to take a first look at Dynamicweb 8.

In this post I’ll give an overview or headlines of the various things coming in Dynamicweb 8 – most of it was presented at the partner conference in the spring, but here goes in a little more detail.

During the next weeks I’ll give detailed information on the various subjects – let me know if you have any special whishes on information.

“It’s not features, its technology”

That was the message at the partner conference. It is not totally true, because Dynamicweb 8 also has a lot of new features build in – but the main purpose was to modernize and upgrade the underlying tech stuff of Dynamicweb as well as upgrading the “old” parts of the system – user interface upgrades and new version of i.e. file manager etc - and not the least improve the documentation of the system.

Technology upgrade & API refactoring

Dynamicweb 8 is very much an “Inventory Management” of the core of Dynamicweb. What does that mean?

• The API of Dynamicweb 7 is messy, inconsistent and has a lot of things public available which is of no use for developers extending the system. With Dynamicweb 8, major parts of the API have been refactored so things are ordered in a more intuitive way. Getting rid of things that should not be public, moving and renaming namespaces etc. All of this to make the API more intuitive and easy to use. It is not rewriting the code – but restructuring the namespace and type structure.

   

• Dynamicweb 7 also has different approaches to the same things – because of evolution and backwards compatibility. Example is Dynamicweb.Template and Dynamicweb.Templatev2.Template which basically do the same thing – one just with lots of additional features, xslt support etc. Another example is notifications – we have 2 ways of broadcasting them – the old, and a new way. With Dynamicweb 8 we aim at getting rid of all this. That means that Dynamicweb.Template and Dynamicweb.Templatev2.Template are merged to Dynamicweb.Rendering.Template, and all the old type notifications (23 in total) are changed to the new way.

   

• Almost all collections in Dynamicweb 8 API have been migrated from System.Collections.CollectionBase to the newer System.Collections.ObjectModel.Collection giving support for i.e. LINQ on all collections in eCommerce.

   

• We have been through all 3rd party components used in Dynamicweb and either gets rid of them or upgrade to new versions. ASPNET e-mail has been replaced by System.Net.Mail, Telerik controls replaced by our own controls etc.

   

• Dynamicweb 8 is a .NET 4/.NET 4.5 application; Dynamicweb 7 was .NET 2/3.5. This can have some impact on custom solutions built using .NET 2/3.5 – it is simple to upgrade though.

User interface

The user interface of Dynamicweb 8 is based on the UI introduced in Dynamicweb 7. So accordion with trees, the ribbon and toolbars.

Where Dynamicweb 7 both supports Dynamicweb 6 and 7 user interfaces and also both eCommerce 6 and 7 interfaces, Dynamicweb 8 only supports the new UI. Same goes for User management – solutions are required to upgrade to the new user management if it has not already been done.

With Dynamicweb 8 everything in the UI has been upgraded to the same look and feel. A new introduction is the module tree replacing the old module screen - and also getting rid of all the non-modules in the list, like HTML, Audit, Custmozied URLs etc. etc. All either removed totally or moved to the Management Center. Furthermore a long list of modules have had their UI updated, including Newsv2, Newsv1, NewsletterV3, Survey, Forms, workflow, Media DB, Module registration, all control panels and a lot of other things.


Dynamicweb module tree and News user interface.

Also the User interface comes in 2 versions – a “installed as Dynamicweb 8” mode and an “Installed as Dynamicweb 7” mode. The Dynamicweb 8 mode hides things like old stylesheet settings, some modules from the module list, attaching modules to paragrapsh, settings on page and website properties etc. Most legacy settings only needed if still using the old stylesheet system.

One other and important change is “Responsive UI”. Now when clicking buttons like Save and Cancel, the UI responses the action right away so the user can see things are happening. We have that some places in Dynamicweb 7 in the later service releases – in Dynamicweb 8 it is implemented practically everywhere improving the user experience quite a bit.


Responsive UI

New modules

Dynamicweb 8 also comes with some new modules with Online Marketing Center as the most exciting one. It replaces the statistics module with its reports, introduces lead management, profiling and split testing of content. Later on this is a part of Dynamicweb 8 that will get a lot of new features.


Online Marketing Center

Dynamicweb 8 also ships with a new forum module (the one that runs the Developer Forums), a booking module and a brand new replacement of the Import/Export module with great improvements on usability and performance.


New import/Export module mappings

New core features

Besides the upgrade of the module tree, the most comprehensive update of core functionality is a brand new file manager. Usability searching is improved a lot, and we introduce a couple of important features.


The new file manager

First of all we introduce configurable meta tags for files in the file manager. It is now possible to register, titles, copyright, links etc. on images and use those information in Gallery module.

Secondly we introduce 2 image resize features. One makes sure that images are resized to a maximum size no matter what – so if an editor uploads large images directly, they are resized no questions asked. Another option is to specify an unlimited number of thumbnails that are generated and placed in subfolders.
Furthermore backend permissions are upgraded to work the same way as for i.e. pages.

New features

Apart from the updates mentioned above, this upgrade includes a lot of minor features, some of them listed here.

• Newsletter signup from forms
• News in more categories
• Meta data in gallery and file publishing modules
• Update of security system – SQL and XS injections. Auto IP banning etc.
• Handle search engines on page level (301,404 etc.) and 404 on inactive products
• Support for mobile detection and devices in the Designs & Layout system.
• New eCommerce features in UI, i.e. orders administration.

A total of more than 160 minor features.

So what’s in it for me?

(Below a sales pitch – just skip it if you do not buy that kind of stuff :-)
Is it just geeky stuff – or does it provide REAL value? YES – it provide lots of new value. Here are my thoughts on that. 

• For developers: The API has been cleaned, refactored and documented way better. This alone means less time spent looking in the “big box” of tools. More intuitive, less to disturb the work, and way better documentation. Also new .NET version, .NET 4, giving full access to all the new features in that platform.
• For designers: Not the same amount of benefits as the .NET developers – but lots of improvements on the Designs & Layout engine, better performance on template systems, new XSLT features, better support for HTML 5, mobile/tablet device optimization made easy etc.
• For consultants/Commercial guys at partners: Always more easy to sell an up-to-date system: Up-to-date on core infrastructure with IIS7, SQL-Server 2008R2, .NET 4, Support for new browsers, modern user interface (Office look-a-like). But also Online Marketing Center making room for lots of projects with clients talking about getting customers, converting better, understanding visitor behavior – not just talking colors and content – but talking business. 
• Customers: All of the above should result in better projects with less hours spent on things not creating value – hours that can be spend on the talking business part.

Thats all for now - hope you like the improvements. I'll go into further details in the various subjects in later posts.

Give me you feedback!

Thanks.

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