ZOO 2.0 Usability
In our last two posts we presented a brief overview about what’s coming with the new ZOO 2.0 and gave a quick peek inside the new app concept . In this post we’re going to take a closer look at the new user interface of the ZOO administration area and all the usability features we included. Here we go… Global Parameters We like the global parameters concept in Joomla but it lacks on usability when you don’t use select boxes. So we improved it by using a checkbox to set whether you are using the global parameter or a specific parameter. If “global” is checked the parameter is hidden. If you uncheck it the parameter form will slide in with a nice Javascript effect. This gives you a much cleaner user interface for the global parameters. Item Priority Manual item ordering was a common feature request for ZOO 1.0. In Joomla everything can be order manually but you have only one order rule. It’s either ordered alphabetically or manually or by hits and so on. We rethought the item ordering and came up with the idea of an item priority. In ZOO 2.0 items are ordered by priority and not by an unique order. Items can have the same priority which is great because this allows a second order rule for items with the same priority. For example you can order items alphabetically but also put some items first by setting a higher priority. The priority can easily be edited in the item overview and is saved automatically using Ajax. Slugs In ZOO 2.0 we renamed the well-known Joomla “Alias” to “Slug”. A slug is a unique name which only consists of web-safe characters and it is commonly used in search-friendly URLs. We like how unobtrusive the permalink functionality of Wordpress is and thought about making the slug creation for ZOO 2.0 just as smooth. The slug is automatically created based on the item name. Invalid characters are stripped and if the slug already exists a number is added to guarantee the uniqueness. There is also no input field during this process because in most cases there is no need to change the slug. But if you want to edit it an input field is injected right there. We really enjoy these small things to improve the overall user experience. Drag ‘n Drop Categories Sorting Sorting a large tree of categories can become really annoying if there is no easy way to do so. In ZOO 2.0 you can sort categories by drag ‘n drop! Isn’t this awesome? You can drag any categories and their whole child categories and drop them into the root or any other category. The new hierarchy is saved automatically using Ajax. Which makes resorting your categories a breeze! Drag ‘n Drop Element Positions The first feature we implemented after the ZOO 1.0 release were template positions. For us this was the most missing feature in ZOO 1.0. Now it is no longer necessary to hard-code the elements rendering for your custom types in the template. You can arrange your content via drag ‘n drop from the administration backend. This is really one of the greatest features about ZOO 2.0 and improves template development and the overall usability so much. Awesome! Tag Autocompleter While the development of our tag system we needed an easy way to add and remove tags from items. We used and customized the great AutoCompleter script for MooTools from digitarald. It provides text suggestion and completion as well as multiple selections. Really a nice one to have! For example it is possible to enter comma separated words and all are added as tags in one step. Tag Quick Edit Tags are a really simple thing. The only attribute of a tag is its name. So it doesn’t make sense for us that tags have their own edit view. So we also implemented a quick edit in the tags overview. Actually we really like the quick edit functionality and we tried to use it as much as possible. Action Links One thing we like in Wordpress is that users are not distracted by too much information. For example additional links to manage an item only appear when you hover with the mouse over it. In ZOO 2.0 we also used this concept as often as possible. It gives you a much cleaner user interface. Especially the comments manager benefits from this. Comments Quick Edit Last but not least we like to point out that it is also possible to quick edit a comment from the comments overview. This works so great that we don’t even need no extra view to edit a single comment. All these little things make content management so much more convenient! Next post will be a sneak peek of all the new elements…
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ZOO 2.0 Usability
The ZOO 2.0 App Concept
A couple of days ago we announced our brand new ZOO 2.0 extension and we are really excited about it! Today we want to show you the most important part of your new ZOO architecture: the apps! One of the biggest goals for us during the development was to move from a catalog system to an application builder. The CCK feature from ZOO 1.0 already allows us to create content specific types to fit exactly your requirements. But on the other side everything in ZOO 1.0 was a catalog with the same parameters and content fields. We didn’t like that concept that each catalog has the same properties and settings. For example a blog, a product catalog or a download archive aren’t the same and have different requirements. So the next step was to allow catalogs to have their own properties, settings and workflows and to be a real content application. With ZOO 2.0 we did this step and it is not a catalog system with a CCK anymore. ZOO 2.0 is a content application engine that lets you create your own apps! Let’s start with an example! Imagine you are setting up a new website and need a private blog. When you create the blog a new section will appear where you can manage your private blog with its own items, categories and content. After a few days you decided to start blogging about your business and you don’t want to mix it up with your private blog stuff. Again you can easily create a new blog and another section will appear where you can write articles about your business. This is great! You have 2 instances of the blog application and each instance manages its own stuff. A couple of weeks later you want to add your wines and electronics and make it a browseable catalog. Again you can create two separate instances of the product catalog app. One for wines and the other for electronics. In general you can create multiple instances of every app in Zoo 2.0. The App Instances Normally you will spend most time working inside an app instance to create and manage your content. So let’s go back to our example. We created 2 instances of the blog app. In the configuration of each blog you can choose which template should be used to display the content. Further you can configure some global settings for example for the RSS feed and comments. In each blog instance you can manage its own content. This means each blog has its own frontpage, categories, items, comments and tags. And you can manage all this content in the blog instance. The same goes for the 2 product catalogs. But the big difference between the blogs and catalogs is that they are instances of different apps. This means they have for example different templates and settings to fit their specific needs. Let’s take a look at the core part: the apps itself! The Apps In ZOO 2.0 apps are small ZOO extensions which are developed for a specific purpose like a blog, a product catalog, a download archive and more. Further each app comes with it’s own templates which can be assigned to each app instance individually. Every template loads its own assets like images, CSS or JavaScript. Templates include sub templates for all app views like the frontpage, category and item. We also have to introduce a new core concept for the templates: the layouts! Layouts are responsible to render items with its element positions. Element positions are similar to the module positions in Joomla templates. Each layout has it’s own set of element positions. So when you create your types you can drag ‘n drop the elements on the element positions provided by the template. In ZOO 1.0 you had to edit your template to render an element. This is no longer necessary. Just drag ’n drop them on the element positions. This is awesome! Another new feature of the template engine are global template parameters. Each template has its own set of parameters. When you create an app instance you can set the global template parameters in the configuration. These global parameters will be used by default but the template engine allows you to set them individually for the frontpage, each category and item. You know this concept from Joomla! but we improved it a little bit. Next important parts of an app are the types. We introduced the types and elements concept with ZOO 1.0 as Content Construction Kit (CCK). It allows you to create your very own custom content types which mean you can select the exact elements the type should consist of, like text, images or many more. Later when creating new items in your app instance you choose which type the item should be. For the blog app for example you would have an article and an author type. Also you can create predefined types which are bundled with the app. This is great because it allows users to start instantly creating the content using the predefined types. You can edit existing types and add easily new ones. Another great feature is that you can also attach your own elements. So if you need a specific element for your app and there is currently no one which matches your needs in the ZOO 2.0, you can add your own elements to the app. Further we provide a lot of parameters which allows you to configure and extend your app. You can define basic app parameters which can be used by the app. We got content parameters which allow extending the frontpage and categories with content fields. For example you can add text, textareas and images to categories. This means that app instances of different apps can have different content fields for categories. Isn’t this awesome? It’s a CCK for the frontpage and the categories! Further apps include comments configuration, language files and the alpha index. The alpha index configuration allows you to add more individual characters to match you native language. Of course we have an installation manager for apps. They can be uninstalled and you can install new ones. It is also possible to export your own created apps and share it with others. We hope this gives you a overview of the new app concept of ZOO 2.0. We are pretty excited with the new approach of ZOO 2.0 to be a content application engine. Next post we will take a closer look on the new user interface and all the usability improvements. We have more awesome UI stuff to show!
Original post:
The ZOO 2.0 App Concept
PixSearch Ajax Search module
The PixSearch module is trying to mimic a search like the one on apple.com. It will perform a backend AJAX Query to the core component com_search and display the results instantly while typing in an inputbox. This module is available in 1.5 native version as well as in a 1.0.x version. Demo can be found at: * 1.5: http://labs.pixpro.net in the upper right corner. Note: This is not the place to report bugs or request new features, please go to Pixpro Labs forum to do so at http://labs.pixpro.net Update 20071123: v.0.1.1, Now works properly in IE6/7. Update 20071227: v.0.2.0, A lot of new features! Update 20080204: v.0.3.0, New features! Now only one version for Joomla! 1.0.x. Update 20080317: v.0.4.0, New features! Update 2010-03-04 v.0.5.0 New features and bug fixes! * General refactoring: We went trough the whole code and fixed some “ugly” parts * New function: Status icon – A small icon to the right of the searchbox that displays a rotating wheel during the search. (Can be turned off in the module paramters) * New function: The search word is now highlighted in the search result text. Should make it easier to quickly scan trough the search results. * New function: PixSearch now grabs the itemid of the page from where the search has been initiated and passes it on to the search result page. This means that there is no more loss of module positions if “com_search” hasn’t been connected to a menu.. As a side effect this also makes it possible to use PixSearch on websites that use more then one template. * New function: New module parameter “Manual Itemid”. With this parameter you can pass on a hardcoded Itemid to the search result page. With this you can get the module positions of a certain part of your page on the search results page without having to connect com_search to a menu. * Bug fix: We are no longer using the deprecated “index2.php” function for fetching the results from com_search. This should prevent PixSearch from breaking when the parameter “Add suffix to URLs” is activated in the global configuration. * Bugfix: Normally PixSearch should always include the mootools.js library from the Joomla! core but we have been using some code for this which broke on certain pages for unknown reasons. This is now fixed and mootools.js should always be included automatically.
Announcing ZOO 2.0
Today we are really excited to announce one of the most anticipated extensions for Joomla: ZOO 2.0! Yes, we know some of you waited quite a while for this announcement. This is the start of a blog post series about the new ZOO 2.0. Today we want to give you some insight into the ZOO development and changes in the upcoming version. Actually the new ZOO release was planned for summer 2009. We had some cool features implemented like “drag ’n drop” element positions to improve templating and the overall usability. The project codename was ZOO 1.1. But as always we had some new ideas and we did a brainstorming about how we could add essential improvements to the software architecture to make it more future proof. We didn’t like the old concept that everything is a so called “catalog”. For example a blog isn’t necessarily a typical catalog and may have other features and workflows than a product catalog. And a business directory may have again different requirements. It was great that we already had a CCK which allows to build content items that meet exactly your requirements. The next big thing for us was to transform this idea and make it possible to build your own content applications which have their own parameters, workflows and features instead of having a super catalog, which has hundreds of parameters and options to cover everything. So we started the ZOO 1.5 development in late summer to move from a CCK to a Content Application Builder. Introducing Content Applications What does “Content Application Builder” mean? A content application (or in short: app) has its own application parameters. It has its own templates. Each template again has its own template parameters. Further a content app has its own types, items, categories, feeds, etc. It can even have its own elements. One of the great things is while you are working inside an app you are only seeing the content like items and categories of this particular app and it’s not mixed up with other apps. This gives you a much better workflow when working with your content. We also wanted to make these apps exportable so that it is very easy to share apps among each other. So we implemented an installation manager which allows you to uninstall and install new apps. Also it was essential to us to make an app extendable. Finally apps became small extensions for ZOO with their own controller and views. You can do anything by extending your app! ZOO 2.0 is around the corner By designing and developing this new application architecture we reviewed the whole code base of ZOO 1.0. At the end nearly 100% of code is rewritten from scratch for the new version. The code is now slicker, more flexible and much improved. We put a lot of effort into developing ZOO 2.0 and it took almost twice the time than developing version 1.0. To reflect on the completely new architecture and all the new features we decided to make a major version jump to ZOO 2.0! Which other new features are included? We got our own brand new native comment and tag systems. Both are very slick with a great usability. We got a completely new template engine with element positions. You can now arrange your content via drag ‘n drop. There is a new global parameter system for categories and items. All elements are completely rewritten and we added “repeat”-functionality and a lot of new features. And of course we also got a bunch of new elements. There is a lot more and we will talk about it in the next blog posts! Goodbye ZOO LITE and PRO How does the new app architecture affect the ZOO distributions? Another thing we didn’t like about the current ZOO 1.0 are the different ZOO editions: ZOO Pro and ZOO LITE. The update process isn’t that smooth if you want to move from LITE to PRO and we also have to deal with two different release packages. To cut a long story short with the new ZOO release there will only be one ZOO version. And now here it comes: it will be free for everyone distributed under the GPL license. It will include all the new features and a blogging app along with a template. Cutting edge! ZOO 2.0 is written from scratch and uses the latest web standards and technologies offered by modern browsers. We utilized all the new CSS3 properties and selectors, added the latest JavaScript stuff and used CSS image sprites for fast loading times. To achieve this we dropped the IE6 support for ZOO 2.0 like we already have for our templates since January 2010. ZOO 2.0 requires PHP 5.2+ and is of course compatible with PHP 5.3. We care about our Members You might ask: “ZOO 2.0 will be free and includes all new features? So why did I purchased ZOO PRO in the first placed?” Here is the answer. Currently we are developing a lot of new sophisticated apps for ZOO 2.0 to cover a wide range of uses. Like blogs, download archives, product catalogs and many more. Basically a versatile app bundle will replace the current ZOO PRO edition. We will also provide anybody who purchased the ZOO PRO edition access to the all new apps even if the membership is already expired. This means we will extend all active memberships and reactivate all expired memberships so that everybody has at least additionally two months of testing and working with ZOO 2.0 and all the apps. A couple of months ago we already extended the three months membership time to six months. So if you purchase the current ZOO 1.0 or the new apps for ZOO 2.0 you will have six months access to updates and our forum. We think this better reflects the time some projects take. One more thing: ZOO 2.0 will be a BETA release at first and only ZOO PRO members will have access to the BETA. Once ZOO 2.0 goes stable we will provide a public download for everybody. The release date and the future The release date for the ZOO 2.0 BETA is set for 23. March 2010. We got a new teaser site online with a countdown. Check it out! We will do a number of blog posts on the new app architecture and the new features in the coming days. After the BETA release it will not take that long for the public stable release. We are confident that the new architecture of ZOO 2.0 is future proof so that after the release we can focus on adding additional features. We are aiming for short release cycles for ZOO 2.1, 2.2 and so on. Also we will try to open the development process more by posting details about upcoming features. If you enjoyed this reading get excited about ZOO 2.0! Because we are!
See the rest here:
Announcing ZOO 2.0
Announcing ZOO 2.0
Today we are really excited to announce one of the most anticipated extensions for Joomla: ZOO 2.0! Yes, we know some of you waited quite a while for this announcement. This is the start of a blog post series about the new ZOO 2.0. Today we want to give you some insight into the ZOO development and changes in the upcoming version. Actually the new ZOO release was planned for summer 2009. We had some cool features implemented like “drag ’n drop” element positions to improve templating and the overall usability. The project codename was ZOO 1.1. But as always we had some new ideas and we did a brainstorming about how we could add essential improvements to the software architecture to make it more future proof. We didn’t like the old concept that everything is a so called “catalog”. For example a blog isn’t necessarily a typical catalog and may have other features and workflows than a product catalog. And a business directory may have again different requirements. It was great that we already had a CCK which allows to build content items that meet exactly your requirements. The next big thing for us was to transform this idea and make it possible to build your own content applications which have their own parameters, workflows and features instead of having a super catalog, which has hundreds of parameters and options to cover everything. So we started the ZOO 1.5 development in late summer to move from a CCK to a Content Application Builder. Introducing Content Applications What does “Content Application Builder” mean? A content application (or in short: app) has its own application parameters. It has its own templates. Each template again has its own template parameters. Further a content app has its own types, items, categories, feeds, etc. It can even have its own elements. One of the great things is while you are working inside an app you are only seeing the content like items and categories of this particular app and it’s not mixed up with other apps. This gives you a much better workflow when working with your content. We also wanted to make these apps exportable so that it is very easy to share apps among each other. So we implemented an installation manager which allows you to uninstall and install new apps. Also it was essential to us to make an app extendable. Finally apps became small extensions for ZOO with their own controller and views. You can do anything by extending your app! ZOO 2.0 is around the corner By designing and developing this new application architecture we reviewed the whole code base of ZOO 1.0. At the end nearly 100% of code is rewritten from scratch for the new version. The code is now slicker, more flexible and much improved. We put a lot of effort into developing ZOO 2.0 and it took almost twice the time than developing version 1.0. To reflect on the completely new architecture and all the new features we decided to make a major version jump to ZOO 2.0! Which other new features are included? We got our own brand new native comment and tag systems. Both are very slick with a great usability. We got a completely new template engine with element positions. You can now arrange your content via drag ‘n drop. There is a new global parameter system for categories and items. All elements are completely rewritten and we added “repeat”-functionality and a lot of new features. And of course we also got a bunch of new elements. There is a lot more and we will talk about it in the next blog posts! Goodbye ZOO LITE and PRO How does the new app architecture affect the ZOO distributions? Another thing we didn’t like about the current ZOO 1.0 are the different ZOO editions: ZOO Pro and ZOO LITE. The update process isn’t that smooth if you want to move from LITE to PRO and we also have to deal with two different release packages. To cut a long story short with the new ZOO release there will only be one ZOO version. And now here it comes: it will be free for everyone distributed under the GPL license. It will include all the new features and a blogging app along with a template. Cutting edge! ZOO 2.0 is written from scratch and uses the latest web standards and technologies offered by modern browsers. We utilized all the new CSS3 properties and selectors, added the latest JavaScript stuff and used CSS image sprites for fast loading times. To achieve this we dropped the IE6 support for ZOO 2.0 like we already have for our templates since January 2010. ZOO 2.0 requires PHP 5.2+ and is of course compatible with PHP 5.3. We care about our Members You might ask: “ZOO 2.0 will be free and includes all new features? So why did I purchased ZOO PRO in the first placed?” Here is the answer. Currently we are developing a lot of new sophisticated apps for ZOO 2.0 to cover a wide range of uses. Like blogs, download archives, product catalogs and many more. Basically a versatile app bundle will replace the current ZOO PRO edition. We will also provide anybody who purchased the ZOO PRO edition access to the all new apps even if the membership is already expired. This means we will extend all active memberships and reactivate all expired memberships so that everybody has at least additionally two months of testing and working with ZOO 2.0 and all the apps. A couple of months ago we already extended the three months membership time to six months. So if you purchase the current ZOO 1.0 or the new apps for ZOO 2.0 you will have six months access to updates and our forum. We think this better reflects the time some projects take. One more thing: ZOO 2.0 will be a BETA release at first and only ZOO PRO members will have access to the BETA. Once ZOO 2.0 goes stable we will provide a public download for everybody. The release date and the future The release date for the ZOO 2.0 BETA is set for 23. March 2010. We got a new teaser site online with a countdown. Check it out! We will do a number of blog posts on the new app architecture and the new features in the coming days. After the BETA release it will not take that long for the public stable release. We are confident that the new architecture of ZOO 2.0 is future proof so that after the release we can focus on adding additional features. We are aiming for short release cycles for ZOO 2.1, 2.2 and so on. Also we will try to open the development process more by posting details about upcoming features. If you enjoyed this reading get excited about ZOO 2.0! Because we are!
View original post here:
Announcing ZOO 2.0
Announcing ZOO 2.0
Today we are really excited to announce one of the most anticipated extensions for Joomla: ZOO 2.0! Yes, we know some of you waited quite a while for this announcement. This is the start of a blog post series about the new ZOO 2.0. Today we want to give you some insight into the ZOO development and changes in the upcoming version. Actually the new ZOO release was planned for summer 2009. We had some cool features implemented like “drag ’n drop” element positions to improve templating and the overall usability. The project codename was ZOO 1.1. But as always we had some new ideas and we did a brainstorming about how we could add essential improvements to the software architecture to make it more future proof. We didn’t like the old concept that everything is a so called “catalog”. For example a blog isn’t necessarily a typical catalog and may have other features and workflows than a product catalog. And a business directory may have again different requirements. It was great that we already had a CCK which allows to build content items that meet exactly your requirements. The next big thing for us was to transform this idea and make it possible to build your own content applications which have their own parameters, workflows and features instead of having a super catalog, which has hundreds of parameters and options to cover everything. So we started the ZOO 1.5 development in late summer to move from a CCK to a Content Application Builder. Introducing Content Applications What does “Content Application Builder” mean? A content application (or in short: app) has its own application parameters. It has its own templates. Each template again has its own template parameters. Further a content app has its own types, items, categories, feeds, etc. It can even have its own elements. One of the great things is while you are working inside an app you are only seeing the content like items and categories of this particular app and it’s not mixed up with other apps. This gives you a much better workflow when working with your content. We also wanted to make these apps exportable so that it is very easy to share apps among each other. So we implemented an installation manager which allows you to uninstall and install new apps. Also it was essential to us to make an app extendable. Finally apps became small extensions for ZOO with their own controller and views. You can do anything by extending your app! ZOO 2.0 is around the corner By designing and developing this new application architecture we reviewed the whole code base of ZOO 1.0. At the end nearly 100% of code is rewritten from scratch for the new version. The code is now slicker, more flexible and much improved. We put a lot of effort into developing ZOO 2.0 and it took almost twice the time than developing version 1.0. To reflect on the completely new architecture and all the new features we decided to make a major version jump to ZOO 2.0! Which other new features are included? We got our own brand new native comment and tag systems. Both are very slick with a great usability. We got a completely new template engine with element positions. You can now arrange your content via drag ‘n drop. There is a new global parameter system for categories and items. All elements are completely rewritten and we added “repeat”-functionality and a lot of new features. And of course we also got a bunch of new elements. There is a lot more and we will talk about it in the next blog posts! Goodbye ZOO LITE and PRO How does the new app architecture affect the ZOO distributions? Another thing we didn’t like about the current ZOO 1.0 are the different ZOO editions: ZOO Pro and ZOO LITE. The update process isn’t that smooth if you want to move from LITE to PRO and we also have to deal with two different release packages. To cut a long story short with the new ZOO release there will only be one ZOO version. And now here it comes: it will be free for everyone distributed under the GPL license. It will include all the new features and a blogging app along with a template. Cutting edge! ZOO 2.0 is written from scratch and uses the latest web standards and technologies offered by modern browsers. We utilized all the new CSS3 properties and selectors, added the latest JavaScript stuff and used CSS image sprites for fast loading times. To achieve this we dropped the IE6 support for ZOO 2.0 like we already have for our templates since January 2010. ZOO 2.0 requires PHP 5.2+ and is of course compatible with PHP 5.3. We care about our Members You might ask: “ZOO 2.0 will be free and includes all new features? So why did I purchased ZOO PRO in the first placed?” Here is the answer. Currently we are developing a lot of new sophisticated apps for ZOO 2.0 to cover a wide range of uses. Like blogs, download archives, product catalogs and many more. Basically a versatile app bundle will replace the current ZOO PRO edition. We will also provide anybody who purchased the ZOO PRO edition access to the all new apps even if the membership is already expired. This means we will extend all active memberships and reactivate all expired memberships so that everybody has at least additionally two months of testing and working with ZOO 2.0 and all the apps. A couple of months ago we already extended the three months membership time to six months. So if you purchase the current ZOO 1.0 or the new apps for ZOO 2.0 you will have six months access to updates and our forum. We think this better reflects the time some projects take. One more thing: ZOO 2.0 will be a BETA release at first and only ZOO PRO members will have access to the BETA. Once ZOO 2.0 goes stable we will provide a public download for everybody. The release date and the future The release date for the ZOO 2.0 BETA is set for 23. March 2010. We got a new teaser site online with a countdown. Check it out! We will do a number of blog posts on the new app architecture and the new features in the coming days. After the BETA release it will not take that long for the public stable release. We are confident that the new architecture of ZOO 2.0 is future proof so that after the release we can focus on adding additional features. We are aiming for short release cycles for ZOO 2.1, 2.2 and so on. Also we will try to open the development process more by posting details about upcoming features. If you enjoyed this reading get excited about ZOO 2.0! Because we are!
Go here to see the original:
Announcing ZOO 2.0
Announcing ZOO 2.0
Today we are really excited to announce one of the most anticipated extensions for Joomla: ZOO 2.0! Yes, we know some of you waited quite a while for this announcement. This is the start of a blog post series about the new ZOO 2.0. Today we want to give you some insight into the ZOO development and changes in the upcoming version. Actually the new ZOO release was planned for summer 2009. We had some cool features implemented like “drag ’n drop” element positions to improve templating and the overall usability. The project codename was ZOO 1.1. But as always we had some new ideas and we did a brainstorming about how we could add essential improvements to the software architecture to make it more future proof. We didn’t like the old concept that everything is a so called “catalog”. For example a blog isn’t necessarily a typical catalog and may have other features and workflows than a product catalog. And a business directory may have again different requirements. It was great that we already had a CCK which allows to build content items that meet exactly your requirements. The next big thing for us was to transform this idea and make it possible to build your own content applications which have their own parameters, workflows and features instead of having a super catalog, which has hundreds of parameters and options to cover everything. So we started the ZOO 1.5 development in late summer to move from a CCK to a Content Application Builder. Introducing Content Applications What does “Content Application Builder” mean? A content application (or in short: app) has its own application parameters. It has its own templates. Each template again has its own template parameters. Further a content app has its own types, items, categories, feeds, etc. It can even have its own elements. One of the great things is while you are working inside an app you are only seeing the content like items and categories of this particular app and it’s not mixed up with other apps. This gives you a much better workflow when working with your content. We also wanted to make these apps exportable so that it is very easy to share apps among each other. So we implemented an installation manager which allows you to uninstall and install new apps. Also it was essential to us to make an app extendable. Finally apps became small extensions for ZOO with their own controller and views. You can do anything by extending your app! ZOO 2.0 is around the corner By designing and developing this new application architecture we reviewed the whole code base of ZOO 1.0. At the end nearly 100% of code is rewritten from scratch for the new version. The code is now slicker, more flexible and much improved. We put a lot of effort into developing ZOO 2.0 and it took almost twice the time than developing version 1.0. To reflect on the completely new architecture and all the new features we decided to make a major version jump to ZOO 2.0! Which other new features are included? We got our own brand new native comment and tag systems. Both are very slick with a great usability. We got a completely new template engine with element positions. You can now arrange your content via drag ‘n drop. There is a new global parameter system for categories and items. All elements are completely rewritten and we added “repeat”-functionality and a lot of new features. And of course we also got a bunch of new elements. There is a lot more and we will talk about it in the next blog posts! Goodbye ZOO LITE and PRO How does the new app architecture affect the ZOO distributions? Another thing we didn’t like about the current ZOO 1.0 are the different ZOO editions: ZOO Pro and ZOO LITE. The update process isn’t that smooth if you want to move from LITE to PRO and we also have to deal with two different release packages. To cut a long story short with the new ZOO release there will only be one ZOO version. And now here it comes: it will be free for everyone distributed under the GPL license. It will include all the new features and a blogging app along with a template. Cutting edge! ZOO 2.0 is written from scratch and uses the latest web standards and technologies offered by modern browsers. We utilized all the new CSS3 properties and selectors, added the latest JavaScript stuff and used CSS image sprites for fast loading times. To achieve this we dropped the IE6 support for ZOO 2.0 like we already have for our templates since January 2010. ZOO 2.0 requires PHP 5.2+ and is of course compatible with PHP 5.3. We care about our Members You might ask: “ZOO 2.0 will be free and includes all new features? So why did I purchased ZOO PRO in the first placed?” Here is the answer. Currently we are developing a lot of new sophisticated apps for ZOO 2.0 to cover a wide range of uses. Like blogs, download archives, product catalogs and many more. Basically a versatile app bundle will replace the current ZOO PRO edition. We will also provide anybody who purchased the ZOO PRO edition access to the all new apps even if the membership is already expired. This means we will extend all active memberships and reactivate all expired memberships so that everybody has at least additionally two months of testing and working with ZOO 2.0 and all the apps. A couple of months ago we already extended the three months membership time to six months. So if you purchase the current ZOO 1.0 or the new apps for ZOO 2.0 you will have six months access to updates and our forum. We think this better reflects the time some projects take. One more thing: ZOO 2.0 will be a BETA release at first and only ZOO PRO members will have access to the BETA. Once ZOO 2.0 goes stable we will provide a public download for everybody. The release date and the future The release date for the ZOO 2.0 BETA is set for 23. March 2010. We got a new teaser site online with a countdown. Check it out! We will do a number of blog posts on the new app architecture and the new features in the coming days. After the BETA release it will not take that long for the public stable release. We are confident that the new architecture of ZOO 2.0 is future proof so that after the release we can focus on adding additional features. We are aiming for short release cycles for ZOO 2.1, 2.2 and so on. Also we will try to open the development process more by posting details about upcoming features. If you enjoyed this reading get excited about ZOO 2.0! Because we are!
Excerpt from:
Announcing ZOO 2.0
Intro template
In march we "Intro"duce our new template Intro. The clean and light design is predestinated for setting up a blog, a portfolio or any other content of your choice! The template comes with a very clean and open design, only wrapping the articles in boxes to put your websites content into the visitors focus. Most of the template colors can be easily customized by just editing CSS and the use of only a few images will accelerate template loading time. We created some new module styles for this template, like the new styles for the submenus and the YOOtweet module . The new module class suffixes for the ribbon header and the stamped style of modules complete the brand new look of this template. The template comes with 12 new color variations with subtle colors to match every kind of content. New List Styles Typography is a key element in web design. This templates delivers you a sophisticated typography and we also added two additional list styles to this template. The first new list style can be perfectly used to build lists with a nice menu style hover effect. It integrates in the template layout and changes its colors depending on the module position it is published in. The second one is a neat list style with a plus sign and a dotted line as separator. Both can be used to put your lists in the right perspective. Have a look at our Typography page and learn how to use them. Feature list A variety of template color variations Built with the new Warp5 template framework Multi-column dropdown menu Lots of modules with color variations, endless combinations with icons and badges possible 2-1-3 column ordering for search engine friendliness Compact size, using gzip and image sprites Works with all YOOtools
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Intro template
JM Morganite – Mordern Magento autos theme
JM Morganite (http://magento-themes.joomlart.com/jm_morganite/) is now available. We build sample contents around automobile category which well-demonstrates modern,…
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JM Morganite – Mordern Magento autos theme
JA Lime – Blog site well-tuned with JA Comment
JA Lime Today, the second 2010 template JA Lime (http://www.joomlart.com/demo/#templates.joomlart.com/ja_lime) is out, we give it a vote for…
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JA Lime – Blog site well-tuned with JA Comment