About Web Development by Activo » Wordpress http://www.activoinc.com/blog Web Development in a Web 2.0 World Wed, 24 Nov 2010 00:25:02 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 iNove theme from mg12: Pros and Cons http://www.activoinc.com/blog/2009/03/29/inove-theme-from-mg12-pros-and-cons/ http://www.activoinc.com/blog/2009/03/29/inove-theme-from-mg12-pros-and-cons/#comments Mon, 30 Mar 2009 06:12:06 +0000 Ron Peled http://www.activoinc.com/blog/?p=205 As you can see I am using the iNove theme offered free by mg12. I have spent about an hour this weekend to tweak and set it up to my liking and overall it is a great theme. The look and feel of this theme is awesome, clean, and easy to read. While playing with it over the weekend I did find some room for improvement. I am going to limit  my pros/cons to max 5 for each and please remember this list is provided with constructive intentions only. So here is a short pros/cons list for the iNove theme:

inove_theme_on_activo_blog

iNove theme Pros

  • Clean look & feel.
  • Allows for custom meta tags, google search, notices, rss feed, and email feed.
  • Neat usage of icons.
  • Well balanced main content area versus sidebar.
  • Fantastic set of default hard-coded widget set for the sidebar.

iNove theme Cons

  • Not using the wordpress widgets engine, hence it is difficult to edit and tweak. In some cases will require editing theme files.
  • Scalability and performance is impacted due to the large number of css and javascript files. Using local jQuery file instead of the google hosted one.
  • Not using CSS sprites while having a classic example of one such possible usage (icons).
  • Javascript files are not minified.
  • Some external plugins are required for all the functinoality to work.

Overall, it is a thumbs up for anyone who is considering this great theme. However, like everything else, there is always room for improvement.

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]]> http://www.activoinc.com/blog/2009/03/29/inove-theme-from-mg12-pros-and-cons/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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