About Web Development by Activo » Ektron http://www.activoinc.com/blog Web Development in a Web 2.0 World Fri, 29 Jan 2010 17:16:07 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 en hourly 1 2009, the year of Open Source Software http://www.activoinc.com/blog/2009/01/07/2009-the-year-of-open-source-software/ http://www.activoinc.com/blog/2009/01/07/2009-the-year-of-open-source-software/#comments Thu, 08 Jan 2009 05:15:23 +0000 Ron Peled http://www.activoinc.com/blog/?p=176 We are lucky to live in our times. No, it is not fun going through (steep) downturn economy. But it is exciting to see the changes that such a recession will bring. One of the exciting changes that I predict for 2009 is a general boost to open source projects: increased usage and adoption by corporations while communities and ecosystems grow. Perhaps even to a point of competition with commercial products (in some cases). This is another question by itself: Can an open source project compete with a commercial product?

This year, 2009, we will see how open source projects will make huge strides and erase the gap with commercial projects, if not gain an advantage over them. Here is why:

1. Unbeatable Price: free! I know, it is not entirely true, you still need services around open source products and arguably more than in commercial products. But as the market learns to adopt more and more open source products the TCO can be lower with open source than commercial products, especially if you have the right team on your side.

2. Gain from the ‘wisdom of the crowd’, instead of wisdom of one as is often the case with commercial products. We see examples of this all over, in particular in the web development industry: Umbraco is gaining huge marketing share compared with Ektron. Magento Commerce is gaining huge market share over any other open source ecommerce platform and some of the low and mid-level commercial products in the ecommerce industry. Similar thing is happening with ASP.NET: the framework is now adopting the MVC design pattern mostly due to the fact that other platforms like Zend Framework and Ruby are free and product amazing websites. Top it off by the adoption of jQuery in almost any commercial web product today including ASP.NET framework which dumped AJAX.NET in favour of jQuery.

3. This is the sad-but-true part: developers are being laid off and hence join open source projects. It is known that the IT industry lags about 6 months after the indicators have come in, in other words, hi-tech layoffs will continue to come. In any case, more developers will be out of a job and will have plenty of time to collaborate and volunteer in open source projects – a great way to polish a resume…

To summarize, in 2009 we will see a great boost in open source adoption. Now, I am not saying that commercial products will not see any upside this year, but the competition will certainly be tougher then ever before. I am excited to see how it plays out. We certainly are going to focus our energies and our client’s energies on the leaders of each industry. You?

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]]> http://www.activoinc.com/blog/2009/01/07/2009-the-year-of-open-source-software/feed/ 0 A list of CMS and eCommerce systems that officially support jQuery http://www.activoinc.com/blog/2008/12/07/a-list-of-cms-ecommerce-and-blogging-systems-that-officially-support-jquery/ http://www.activoinc.com/blog/2008/12/07/a-list-of-cms-ecommerce-and-blogging-systems-that-officially-support-jquery/#comments Sun, 07 Dec 2008 22:49:48 +0000 Ron Peled http://www.activoinc.com/blog/?p=155 Last updated: December 7th, 2008.

Recently, jQuery – the agile JavaScript Library – has reached a tipping point. Here is a list of CMS and eCommerce systems that our clients are most interested in and their status with regard to jQuery.

Systems where jQuery is officially supported:

1. Microsoft has adopted jQuery and will offer intellisense support in its dominant IDE: Visual Studio 2008.

2. Umbraco - an open source CMS now offers jQuery by default and using jQueryin Umbraco is a matter of adding a simple call in order to include the jQuery files in the page.

3. Drupal - is an open source CMS and Framework CMS, as of version 5 it offers jQuery streight from its core. There are plans to build a centralized jQuery plugin in Drupal version 7.

4. Typo3 - is an open source CMS Framework. Typo3 has a jQuery extension that allows advanced integration with jQuery.

5. DotNetNuke - an open source ASP.NET CMS. Since October 2008 DotNetNuke offers built in jQuery support beginning with version 5.

Systems where jQuery is not supported:

1. Joomla - seems to favor Mootools over jQuery. Here is an article on how to support jQuery within Joomla and avoid conflicts with other libraries.

2. Zend Framework – the leading PHP Framework following the MVC design pattern. A press release was issued in May 2008 announcing Zend Framework and Dojo partnership.

3. Magento Commerce – an open source eCommerce platform that is gaining huge market share in the eCommerce industry. Currently Magento Commerce supports prototype JS library instead of jQuery, but offers ways to integrate jQuery easily.

4. Zen-Cart - an open source eCommerce (competing with Magento). At the moment Zen-Cart is not supporting any JavaScript library in its core.

Other systems and their relationship to jQuery:

1. WordPress - an open source blogging software. Uses jQuery for its core functionality and is avilable for any third party plugin.

2. Ektron CMS400 – Ektron has an enterprise level CMS with advanced content editing features. Oddly enough, Ektron seems to have embedded their own version of jQuery in their code.

While jQuery seems to be favored the favored JavaScript library by many developers, it has yet to be declared as the default one for many projects and systems. I’ll be keeping this list updated in the following months. Let me know if there is a system that interests you and I did not list it here.

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]]> http://www.activoinc.com/blog/2008/12/07/a-list-of-cms-ecommerce-and-blogging-systems-that-officially-support-jquery/feed/ 2 Ektron CMS400 7.0 issues with .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 http://www.activoinc.com/blog/2008/10/06/ektron-cms400-70-issues-with-net-framework-35-sp1/ http://www.activoinc.com/blog/2008/10/06/ektron-cms400-70-issues-with-net-framework-35-sp1/#comments Mon, 06 Oct 2008 08:30:42 +0000 frankrusch http://www.activoinc.com/blog/?p=96 After upgrading my development machine with Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 SP1, I noticed a couple things. First, the installer also updated the .NET Framework 2.0 instance to Service Pack 2.

Second, my instance of Ektron CMS400 v.7.0.4.20 (which runs under .NET Framework 2.0) starting having problems. Specifically, I could no longer create library items in the workarea. Attempting to save a library item, for example, a hyperlink would cause the page to postback and the icon bar to disappear:

The postback page after attempting to save the library item

The postback page after attempting to save the library item

There is no error message, but viewing the library item list reveals that the item was not saved.

The culprit was the page /workarea/library.aspx. Viewing the HTML source of this page when attempting to “Add Library”, the form tag’s action attribute was:

library.aspx

… no querystring parameters; so when the page posts back in Ektron, it can’t save the library item and fails.

Viewing the same page on a system without .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 results in an action attribute like this:

 library.aspx?LangType=1033&action=AddLibraryItem&folder=98&type=images

Some background: As it turns out, the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 installation changes the way the FORM tag’s ACTION attribute is handled. Prior to this upgrade, ASP.NET would ignore whatever you typed for the form’s action attribute in the markup. ASP.NET would instead render the action attribute to match the original page request. Starting with SP1, the action attribute is no longer ignored and will be rendered exactly as input.

Ektron, as it turns out, supplied an action attribute in the library.aspx form tag. Until the release of this Service Pack, it was ignored by ASP.NET.

Two possible solutions:

This may not be an issue in Ektron CMS400 7.5+, but users of v7.0 should be wary, even if they’re not planning on upgrading .NET Framework 3.5 SP1… Windows Update may upgrade you automatically around November of this year.

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]]> http://www.activoinc.com/blog/2008/10/06/ektron-cms400-70-issues-with-net-framework-35-sp1/feed/ 2 Joomla vs Ektron http://www.activoinc.com/blog/2008/09/05/joomla-vs-ektron/ http://www.activoinc.com/blog/2008/09/05/joomla-vs-ektron/#comments Fri, 05 Sep 2008 21:27:34 +0000 Ron Peled http://www.activoinc.com/blog/?p=52 We have been receiving a lot of comparison inquiries lately and I wanted to put this simple Joomla vs Ektron content management systems comparison table out there. Have in mind that much of the decision of which CMS to choose for your company or organization is usually made way before this comparison since the two systems are different in such a fundamental level. However, this is a comparison of those fundamentals plus some of the ‘interesting’ features.

Joomla vs Ektron

Joomla vs Ektron

Feature/Item Joomla Ektron
License Model Open Source Closed Source, Compiled
Price Free Starts at $15,000
Web Platform PHP ASP.NET 2.0
Database MySQL MS SQL (Express version OK)
Extendability Options Plugins, Components, Mambots. Joomla 1.5 went through significant development that now offers many hook-ups for plugins without hacking any core files. Plugins (Observer Method), Ektron API (via ASP.NET code behind), Extensive Web Services API
SEO Options Search Engine Friendly URLs (Joomla 1.5)
Meta tags controls
Full template overrides, clean HTML		 Search Engine Friendly URLs (CMS400 7.6)
Meta tags controls and consolidation
Content Tagging
Full template overrides, HTML is often not so clean (part issue with .NET as well)
Social Networking None, unless using a third party component or a plugin. Many features built in: Personal profile, personal area, connections between profiles, forums, blogging.

Thoughts?

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]]> http://www.activoinc.com/blog/2008/09/05/joomla-vs-ektron/feed/ 1 Ektron: Clarification on User Controls vs API http://www.activoinc.com/blog/2008/07/30/ektron-clarification-on-user-controls-vs-api/ http://www.activoinc.com/blog/2008/07/30/ektron-clarification-on-user-controls-vs-api/#comments Thu, 31 Jul 2008 00:44:36 +0000 Ron Peled http://www.activoinc.com/blog/?p=26

We recently spotted an article from Bill Roger’s blog (Ektron’s CEO) which discusses usage of the Ektron Server Controls v.s. Ektron’s API. At Activo, we are constantly using both approaches and indeed each approach is a bit different and is used in different situations. The article makes it much clearer that Ektron actually put more effort than we thought before into the Server Controls. Understanding that the Server Controls were made for this sort of usage makes us now feel more secure using this method. Previously, I always thought of this method as a hack and preferred the API.

Frank heads our .NET development team and added the following:

I’ve found it easier to start off with a foundation of one of the server controls and build off of that, rather than using only API calls. The server control acts as a “datareader” which can be used to access the data initially. Many of the custom controls we built to replace XSLT use this model:

  • Add a ListSummary inside the user control/page and set its properties.
  • Access the ListSummary’s EkItems property.
  • Manipulate the data from EkItems, transform it, and output it into a repeater.

This tends to work more reliably than using the API calls. However, if the code needs to bypass the permissions model, the only option is to go direct using the API.

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