Groovyness - the agile paragraphs

Back on track. After releasing Magnolia CMS 4.4 my mindset moves back to Magnolia 5.0. While playing around with groovy to merge the changes from the 4.4 branch back to the trunk I came up with a idea which I would like to share and get some feedback from you.

Using a groovy builder (DSL) we could make the paragraph definition very concise

• include the dialog definition in the paragraph definition
• add a closure for rendering the content

example: text and image paragraph

What we get:

• no configuration (update, ...)
• a single concise definition (all in one place)
• agile

Note: this will not replace any other ways of defining paragraphs or dialogs its just a groovy alternative. But since we allow pragmatic registration of dialogs, paragraph, ... in Magnolia 5.0 such an implementation should be rather trivial.

Magnolia CMS 4.4 - Milestone 1

The team has finished its first sprint of Magnolia 4.4 development. As you might know, we aim to deliver some acutely missed enterprise features with this release.

If you want to see some of the features in action please have a look at the video done by Federico:



Features we have implemented in the first sprint:

• Diff view (EE). We have implemented a visual diff based on the rendered HTML output.
• Translation export/import (EE). Export and import of translatable text to and from CSV files. The export uses the dialog configuration to determine what should be exported and what not.
• Soft locking (EE). Show a warning message if other users have a page open in the edit mode.
• ModeShape support. Magnolia can now be backed with the JBoss JCR repository implementation.
• FCKEditor update. We updated to 2.6.6. The most interesting feature in this version is a SpellChecker.
• Early paragraph execution. Paragraphs sometimes want to execute logic before the page rendering starts. This is needed to perform operations like forward and redirect. This is now possible due to a new filter which executes the model in an early phase. This enables us to build multi-step forms (see next sprint).

In the second sprint, which will be the last one, we will mainly work on:

• De-coupling deletion and de-activation. The immediate de-activation of content on deletion was always problematic. We have worked out a concept and are about to solve the issue.
• Reference view (EE). A page which lists content that references a page and content the page references. This can be used to build a warning message on deletion and to show dependent content in the workflow dialog.
• Multi-step forms (CE/STK). Enhancement of the form builder so that one can build wizard-like multi-step forms. Each step is created as a sub-page. Each step validates and the status is kept in the session. The concept is based on the new early paragraph execution.

Finally we want to thank Aperto (diff view), MediaCatalyst/Sony Europe (translation export/import) and fastforward (FCKEditor update) for their substantial contributions.

You can download the bundles from our Maven/Nexus repository. Be aware of the fact that those releases are definitely not meant to be used in production.

• CE bundle - 4.4 M1
• EE bundle - 4.4 M1

Unconference 2010 - Magnolia 5.0 and Roadmap

This year's Magnolia conference was a very great and inspiring event. At the community day we had few presentations related to Magnolia 5.0 which's slides we like to share with you:

Magnolia 5.0 - Three perspectives
A brief overview about where we stand and what we plan to achieve if Magnolia 5.0. You are missing the demo, but well ... there is still some valuable info in it.

Magnolia 5.0 'GenUIne'This is the presentation as given at the conference 2009 for those interested in the background.

Magnolia 5.0 - Why VaadinMy colleague Daniel Lipp talked about why we have chosen for Vaadin.

Magnolia 5.0 - JCR 2.0 and Content APISome insights about what JCR 2.0 means for us and how we can improve the current Content API and gain performance.

Magnolia Roadmap - Beyond 5.0About Magnolia 4.4 and STK 2.0.