I’ve been thinking recently I should publish some dev tips on my blog, preferrably as a series of tips and hints about working with eZ Publish. I would like to commit to doing it daily, but I don’t think about my blog that often – so perhaps every couple of days.
We shall see what happens.
For those keeping up with eZ Publish and their new development schedules you will know of course that the next release, 4.3, is just around the corner. Among it are a number of updates and perhaps one of those most eagerly awaited would be an administration interface refresh, something which hasn’t happened since eZ Publish 3.
For those who work frequently with eZ Publish there is probably not much doubt in your mind that the admin interface requires a refresh, could do with a good dose of javascript/ajax and some speed enhancements. And to be honest, that is what you have to look forward to in 4.3.
Unfortunately however the new admin2 design doesn’t really come with many usability enhancements in mind. The javascript additions simplify some operations to remove page loads – but all in the all the admin interface does look very very similar to its predecessor.
I wonder then is it that the eZ Publish admin is at its best layout and optimised design considering the functions and features available, or could it be improved even further with some thoughts about design and usability? Perhaps improving the code base to make it easier to extend and override specific areas of the admin interface, perhaps making things like the top tabs ACL dependent so they don’t appear if you don’t have access to them..
There are mixed reactions to the 4.3alpha1 release on twitter, it should be interesting to see how things go prior to launch.
After years of searching the best Macbook Pro cooling solution I have come across is a glass topped desk sitting directly underneath a refrigerated cooling unit. That keeps the temp down – and keeps the room cool as well.
Possibly not the most appropriate solution for cooling your laptop, but I’ll take whatever works.
I’ve spent the last two days at the beach which has been a welcome break from what should have been a rather relaxed start to the new year.
When you are forced to take a holiday from your “holiday” you know that you are still too connected to work.
Definitely something I will be working on this year.
I managed to run into an issue today with content editing on eZ Publish when working with multiplexers.
For anyone working with eZ Publish multiplexers and issues with child processes cancelling your publish operation check out the patches at issues.ez.no/11577, hopefully this will make it into the next release.
It was great to see the recent release of the latest eZ Publish alpha. This may mean in fact that they will indeed reach their 4.2 release milestone of 29 September
It would certainly be good to see that happen and would instill further confidence in this new development approach.
I look forward to the 29th.
Working with a new client on eZ Publish last month we came across an unusual request for multiple fixed priced addons. On the surface it sounds like a simple request until you get down into the nuts and bolts of what that means, what you have to store and how it all fits together in the realm of eZ Publish.
Why oh why would you ever request such a thing? In the case where you are a distributor across multiple countries you run into the unique problem of wanting to fix your price list to ignore foreign exchange fluctuations. This price book approach works well offline and really well in spreadsheets… in eZ Publish it simply doesn’t exist, until now.
When looking at the requirements for the implementation it became immediately apparent there were two datatypes very close to the functionality we were looking to introduce, the multi-price datatype and the multioption2 datatype.
This gave an excellent base for extending multioption2 to support multi price values. The resulting datatype uses the same underlying option and rule logic from multioption2 with the multi-price functionality of the multiprice datatype allowing customisable fixed or automatic pricing based on forex rates.
The extension remains rough around the edges and will be tidied up in coming project enhancements and released back to the community should it be of value to others.
Twitter is such a wonderful service for discovering new things. The other day I came across a website called Blue Lounge, a company building very cool products to solve common, every-day problems.
From their cableyoyo for keeping your cables tidy through to their Cool Feet for keeping your laptop elevated off the desk for cooling.
Sexy design meets common problems. I am definitely looking at picking up some of this gear. If anyone is already using these products I would love to hear about your experiences with them.