Sitefinity Beta 6.1 available for download

Hi all,

This is to let you know that Sitefinity 6.1 Beta is available for download on this link.

Here is a brief overview of the features in the coming release:

Navigation Widget: Simplified HTML and Styling, Responsive Design

• HTML markup was cleared of redundant elements
• Added option to edit Navigation widget templates in section Widget Templates
• Provided default Navigation templates based on Kendo Menu and Treeview (on the place of RadControls)
• Added possibility to define Navigation transformation rules in section “Responsive and Design Support”
• Transformations to toggle menu and drop down are available in navigation templates out of the box, and are activated when the respective rule is applied
  Note: The previous version of the Navigation Widget based on RadControls will continue to be available but will be marked as Obsolete.

Image Thumbnails: Editable Settings

• Image thumbnail sets can be edited and added in a new section Global Settings>  Thumbnails
• For each thumbnail set users can specify: Name, Width,  Height, Quality
• The following thumbnail resize modes are available out of the box:
  • Resize to fit area – resizes to max width and height
  • Crop to area – crops to exact width and height
  • Resize to fit side – resizes the bigger side to a preset dimension
• In section Images users can select the thumbnails set to be attached to each library, and preview the generated thumbnails
• In Image Widget,  users have option to choose and use image thumbnail (from  drop down Image Sizes)
• In Image Gallery Widget users have option to choose and use image thumbnail  (from drop down Size of thumbnails)

Image & Video Thumbnails: External Storage Support

• When a storage other than the database is set for a Library (file storage, Azure, etc.), this storage is applied to the generated thumbnails as well. Currently, all thumbnails are stored in the database.

 Staging & Syncing

• Added option to sync widget templates
• Enabled option to select specific items to include in sync
• Included filtering of  items to sync by language

Ecommerce

• Added option to specify the order of Attributes
• Enabled the creation of product variations based on multiple attributes.
  To illustrate, for the attributes gender (Male/Female) and size  (Small, Medium) the following variations can be created: Male+Small, Male+Medium, Female+Small, Female+Medium,
• Added ability to associate image to a variation and display it when this variation is selected on the public site
• Multisite Management: Product types are global for all sites
• Ecommerce Note: Upgrade from 5.4 to 6.1 is not supported. You need to upgrade to 6.0 first. Existing variations should be edited after upgrade. For details, see documentation.

• Personalization – Ability to manually update GeoLiteIp.dat database file. By default the file is stored in App_Data/GeoLocation folder

Documentation

• Navigation Widget Documentation
• Ecommerce Upgrade Instruction and Breaking Changes

Important:

• This build is not production ready and should not be used on live projects.
• Support of upgrade from this build to the official release will not be provided.

Regards,
Sitefinity Team

Thank you for the new possibilities with variations. This is a milestone.  I will do my next ecommerce project with Sitefinity!

Problems, questions on thumbnails:

1) Image gallery control has width\height hardcoded in the css so it's overriding the selected thumb size, always making it 120x120 (.sfimagesTmbList .sfimagesTmb)

2) If an album has a thumb size set in the backend...can I still get other defined thumb sizes for an image?  So like we have products and default thumb for products lets say is 300x200.  Now we also have a "related products " repeater on the page, and those thumbs should be 150x75.  Can I just put the new thumb size "group" into the url and have it show the properly sized image?  I've ran some tests and this doesn't appear to work...so that concerns me.  Clearly I cant tell the user to duplicate all her images libraries so each one can have it's own thumb size, then link the custom size to the product as an alt image or something.  I see the Actions->choose available thumb sizes...but when I go back in and select them and re-generate the links still don't work?

3) Url structure is case sensitive...so if I make a style called "Related" the url appears like this "rosemary-romano-ribbons-jpg.tmb-Related.jpg" which flys in the face of the iis lowercase urls as sf just doesn't understand rosemary-romano-ribbons-jpg.tmb-related.jpg.  So I assume the developer name should save back with a ToLower() to make it bulletproof...can't go live with this mixed case structure.

4) Still doing inline blocking scripts in the navigation templates...suppose the more aware can cut\paste into their sites core script.  I've also found if you decorate your menu elements with the kendo classes you prevent "popping" of the menu styling as the kendo CSS takes over and the functional part of the menu can be done later

5) Nav is linking in KendoAll not KendoWeb...I mean clearly like #4, if you're aware you can change it, but why hose other people who don't see that.  Means you're loading KendoMobile and KendoDataViz on every pageload.  So you've gained rendering performance by removing bloated markup to then re-hose it with larger page size via scripts...sitefinity is responsive, who wants kendomobile loading.

6) I'm sure you know, but document revision history doesn't work...

I would have whished for some improvements in the multilingual image department! Who know maybe in 7.x

www.marktold.com/screencast/6-1-beta-images.swf

Markus

Another sad moment

www.marktold.com/screencast/sf_images_so_sad.swf

a) it seems when you go to properties the values are not persistant. Old set size gets lost and the open in new window is not checked anymore.

b) the image still opens like in 1998 simply in a browser window. Come one you sure can do better then that. 

Reported in MAY 2012 www.sitefinity.com/.../image-widget-open-original-size-not-persistent


www.telerik.com/.../pits.aspx
www.telerik.com/.../pits.aspx

Terlik is able to get my users the abiltiy to crop resize change modify images on the server but simply choosing a small image having it open large in lightbox seems to be to hard. 

This is everyday stuff for backend users. 

Markus

PS: This has also been on my which list for so long that all I can do is hope for 7.x 

Double entrie in navi template selection menu (panle bar still missing)

Markus

Creating a nested library with dot in title breaks something

www.marktold.com/screencast/sf_beta_library_with_dot.swf

Markus

PS: I sure hope feedback from us is appreciated. Beta programms might help get the product better before it is put to use

Did I ever mention that I think its about time that you remove the Migrate your site on dashboard?

Did I ever mention that the Edit content directly in browser should be hidden if set to false in settings?

Makus

When creating a new page

Description, Keywords is closed
Advanced options is open

100% of new pages need description
20% of new pages need changes on advanced options

I let Telerik figure out if it could make sense to have description open by default and advanced closed by default.

Makes the page less high also faster mouse to go to and create

Markus

PS: Just my two cents proven to be so wrong many times

One thing that I found a little odd was that you couldn't specify thumbnails for sub-libraries. I was only allow to specify the settings at root level libraries. Do you have plans to allow sub-level libraries the same ability? I definitely could see this being needed.

Creating a page called "Images" breaks the backend where you can't edit the page anymore (Resource can not be found).

Tried it 3 times (in case it was something with my installation) but all 3 time the page broke.
All other pages still work.

Hi Steve,
Answers to your questions are below:

1)    Nice catch on the image gallery control. We updated the CSS  - it is no longer restricted and will adjust to the thumbnail size.
2)    Multiple thumbnail sets can be associated to an Album. So, in the case you describe, you need to associate another thumbnail set to the Album which will generate 150x75 thumbnails for all images in additions to the 300x200 thumbnails.  Then, in the related product repeater, you need to use a link to those thumbnails (the thumbnail URL is formed by the URL of the original image + thumbnail set name as parameter, you can see a thumbnail URL for reference).  I hope that addressed your question.
3)    This will be fixed. Thanks!
4)    Inline blocking script is there for demonstration purpose only. We will add a comment that this is not a good practice, and provide instructions for practices to follow.
5)    This will be updated.
6)    We are aware of one case when revision history doesn’t work. It happens when user uploads documents via the HTML editor Document Manager button. Can you confirm that this is the case? If not, please, provide more details.

Thanks again for the comprehensive feedback.
-    Kalina

Thanks Kali!

#6) Nope just used the backend UI to upload a doc...running on localhost not iis, not sure if that matters (also using Firefox)

Video: screencast.com/.../3WmXLwQnlk

Hi Markus,
Comments on your beta related feedback is below:
-    Problem with link not opening in new window was fixed. Thanks for reporting it!
-    Opening an image in a light box will be considered for the next release.
-    We could not reproduce the problem with double entries in navigation templates. Do you add the second template yourself? Any details will be appreciated.  
-    Enabling panelbar will be very out of the box using the Kendo Controls. Samples will be provided.
-    Creating a nested library with dot problem will be fixed.
-    We are planning major rework of dashboards for the next release and will remove most of the existing content.

Thanks for finding the time to test and provide feedback.
-    Kalina

Hi Chris,
This is an existing limitation - sub libraries inherit the settings (permissions, thumbnails) of the Root library. The idea is that sub libraries are a way to organize similar content in hierarchies.
If a library should have different settings (thumbnails included), it should be moved to a different parent.

Hi Rick,
This is known issue in Sitefinity. Since “Images” is used in the URL of images, creating a page with this name in the backend is a problem. We will think of a way to issue a proper warning and explanation when this happens.
Please, proceed by using a page with different name.

Thanks for your input,
-Kalina

Dear Kali
-    Opening an image in a light box will be considered for the next release.

This acutally translates to ...

... sorry did not make it to the road map  6.2
... sorry we try to implement it in the near future
... unfortunately there is no time frame set for this.

I feel like a young boy asking his parent for a cat the past two year and they tell him they consider it next year.

I am trying to move more into the designers market where I provide the best CMS there is: Sitefinity, while they do the design.

Such a simple missing feature is just bad for show and tell. You can show off with all the nice stuff but when they ask you how to open a window large you get transmitted back 10 years. Now in beta it does not even open a new window the user needs to use the back button of his browser.

Wow. but we got responsive design which is great.

Sorry for venting off. But when you ask for something over and over again and you get the same answers every time you kind of loose faith - well this unless this is a request that does not make sense to most end users :-) 

Want to know how many times I read the dashboard will be change in the next release?

Markus

Kali

Are you sure the product will be ready by next week? Just thinking about the bugs we found here makes me worry. I wished you had 100 beta tester more and would starting beta testing about 4 weeks earlier to get more bugs found and fixed. 



Markus

@Markus

I think you're confused as to what this is...it's a beta for 6.1, we're testing new features for problems, it's not a *** fest on what polish updates are still missing.  Everyone already knows the stuff is missing.  If it takes 5 minutes to fix, that's besides the point of this exercise.  We're trying to make sure the *NEW* stuff doesn't go in busted...as annoying as that is...it's what it is.

  When you think about it, thumb-nailing is a huge PITS polish item, and a big engineering task to do right, that took a lot of time.  So 1 thumbnail update might have equaled 5 other pits updates.  I'm fine with this one coming first, it's huge for anyone who doesn't want unconfigurable 160px thumbs.  Just because this is a new beta does not mean it's an open bag for them to take 4 weeks to fix all the unrelated polish items.  It's just not how it works...if you don't like it, then don't take part, but you don't have to berate them for not spending time re-doing the dashboard or implementing something else.

Re: Lightbox:  I don't even understand why this is so important...neat, maybe, but it's a fluff enhancement right now.  The pits issue has FOUR votes, one being yours, this isn't exactly high priority right now.  

Does this look familiar? demos.telerik.com/.../defaultcs.aspx ...it should...it's the cropping tool.  They didn't spend any time building it, just dropped it in.  So it's not that a lightbox is so significantly harder to do...it's just small potatoes.  If you want a control to do that for your users, then make one in thunder, it'll do image pickers for you...but I don't want dev time wasted on something like that when things like the download list still don't have multiple templates available in the UI.

So yes...we got responsive design, and while it's still in it's infancy, it IS great, and sure as hell is gonna sell a lot more licenses than an image loading in a lightbox...

The checkbox not being persisted?...yeah that should be fixed though because you can't even change it in Advanced settings....I have voted on the pits item.

Just because you ask for something over and over again does mean it's ever going to appear...there needs to be consensus that everyone wants it when they do their planning, and 4 votes doesn't really scream "urgent: enhance me now".

Re: Dash:
Who REALLY cares, you know as well as I do you can jQuery those links out in 2 minutes...a dash is so unimportant in the grand scheme of things when we're looking at missing ModuleBuilder features or API enhancements.

As a developer you should be pushing for things to make your life easier so you can do more sites faster, not fluff items like a content aggregator (dash).  Right now you're just clogging the thread with old things and being REALLY ungrateful for even being part of this preview to find problems.

Hi Markus,
All critical bugs reported by beta testers were fixed already. Our team is testing extensively as we speak, and is in the final stages of verification. That said, the release will be next week, as planned.
I agree with Steve that we should stick to discussing the 6.1. Beta release in this forum to keep the discussion focused and productive.
-Kalina

Hello,

Thank you for the big update with Ecommerce Dependent Attributes per variation. I am unfortunately not ready to test these features just yet, but I did want you all to know a lot of people have been looking for this particular portion of the update. We did a lot of talking about this on this forum here: www.sitefinity.com/.../ecommerce-product-creation---multiple-attributes-in-one-variation

Thanks again for everyone's hard work!
James

@Kali

Please accept my apologies.

@Steve

When you are right, you are right :-)

Markus

Clicking the resized image opens the image in its original size

Only when you use your custom settings will the image be opend in its (as might be understood by end users) original size.

Thumbs just open in a new window.

Would it be possible

a) when this option is checked that thumbs would automtically open the original size image
b) if a) is not possible remove this option for all but the manually resized versions

I don't think it makes sense to open a thumb image in thumb size in the same browser window.

Markus

Changing thumb image will change original image and all it's thumbs.

www.marktold.com/screencast/sf_change_thumb.swf

Could this lead to troubles - Should there be a warning?

Markus

Hi Markus,
1) on the problem with open in new window - this will be fixed, thumbs will open the original size. Thanks for letting us know!
2) On editing the thumbnail - this will not be allowed. Users should always work with the original image if they want to make changes. Nice catch!
Thanks for this very useful feedback on the Beta!
-Kalina

Dear Kalina

Will we see another beta or was that it?

Any date set for the release. I have a new project in line and if 6.1 comes out this week I will wait.

Markus

Dear Kalina

How about the Panelbar example where you have a top level menu with only 1 level

- Home
- Products
- About us

and the Subnavigation with Panelbar based upon the selection of the top level menu

if Products is selected Panelbar show show

- Product 1
   Prodcut  1 description
   Produckt 1 price
- Product 2
   Product 2 description  
   Prodcuct 2 price

Dont see an Panelbar Template - thought there was going to be one.

Markus

Hi Markus,

Although there is no default navigation widget template for PanelBar, there is enough flexibility to create a custom one. We have a sample for this exact scenario here.

Kind Regards,
Tihomir

Dear Tihomir 

Thanks. The question is more how do I get the panelbar to be based on the top level menu

Before I used a sitemap which I would bind to the RadPanelbar. 

Markus

PS: This is the template for treeview. wouldn't it be easy to incluce a panelbar template out of the box so we would not have to find the link you gave me every time and make the changes in every single project. Please remember there are some of us who deploy and maintain more then one site a year.

So every thing out of the box saves us not only time once but every time.

Since I am totally new to Kendo

This is what I would achieve (see image) Red would not be visible

http://614300.berchtold.net

Again with RadControls I simply used a SitefinitySiteMap 

The improved thumbnail support is a nice start. I posted some extra ideas in PITS for the image library, they are also stated below::

When defining an new object type:
- Make it possible tot define a default library specifically for an object so that f.e. when a user creates a news object he only gets / can select news images from the news images library

When defining a library
- RESOLVED IN 6.1: Make it possible to set one or more sizes for a picture per libary, so f.e. news can have 3 size formats
- Make it possible to set resizing on upload automatically (3 type in 6,1) OR set it to manually >>per format size<<

When uploading a picture
- Per size: when automatically resize the picture conform the settings by Stuart (6.1) or else show a popup to resize (new)

When changing a picture
- Keep the original so a resized image can be changed. Also let the user change autogenerated pictures with a resize popup.

When using an image in HTML
- Keep references to the (resized) images so the can't be deleted. When saving HTML make a link between the picture selected and the object containing the HTML so an (resized) image cannot be deleted.

Keep up the good work!

Roger

This post is regarding the ecommerce dependent variation addition in this update.

Problems I have personally found with my project so far after upgrading to 6.1:
- A lot of backend caching issues when moving in and out of variation changes and product management. It seems to not update appropriately for user in backend after making a variation or product change. These caching problems I have only seen after upgrading project to 6.1
- Front end out of the box widget tends to show all attributes under a category even if variations don't include all attributes on system. This becomes a problem when you have thousands of products that are not uniformly using all the attributes you add under a certain "department" or "type".
-The first Front End dropbox under product details always glitches out after a option is picked, it posts back without the other options that particular drop down should have.

I will continue to play with this update. Let me know if my experienced issues here don't reflect everyone else's experience with it.

Thanks,
James

@James,
  You're doing better than we are...product detail pages just outright 404 on us.  Had a ticket in for a day or so, still no answer.

Hello James,
thanks for the feedback.

The first issue you experiencing should be fixed on the final version. At least we are not able to reproduce it using Firefox, Chrome, or IE 9+ can you give us some information with what browser did you experienced this backend caching issue ? Thanks.

About the second issue it is by design. Currently we cannot know how and which of your attributes may or may not be in use in order to really handle all possibilities we will make the product details page on front end very slow. Because of that we are always showing all visible attributes for this specific product types and we are filtering the attribute values only showing the ones which exists in variation. The reason why we did it like that is because the case with no value specified value is a valid case. For example you may have several shirts with different sizes and colors. But for clothes for pregnant women you want to leave the size empty. So because of that in the upgrade instruction it is said that you have to merge manually all your variations and remove unused attributes because they will be shown on the frontend (and backend) : www.sitefinity.com/.../upgrading-your-sitefinity-6.0-project-to-the-latest-version

Third issue : by design there is no automatic population or anything like that for the "other" options. Ones you select something in the first options the other options are refilled and only the possible variations are visible from then on, but nothing is preselected even if there is only a single possible option value.

Hello Nayden,

First Caching Issue: First of all the caching issues I am experiencing are taking place on Windows 7 (64 bit) OS using Internet Explorer version 10.0.9200.16635. To explain further about what I am experiencing I will say this. For example, I will add a variation by clicking the “Create a variation” button on backend under a certain product. I will pick the values of the attributes and select a SKU and additional charge. I then finalize the variation by clicking “Create this variation” button again. The backend then takes me back to the variations screen for that product, although, the new variation I just created does not show up until I refresh the page… That is why I believe it is a caching issue, it may also be a DB query issue. Sometimes it takes multiple refreshes for the backend to reflect what it should. This kind of issue also happens when adding attributes or values to attributes. The backend just doesn’t seem to be acting appropriately. Maybe the problem is my project specific, although, I doubt it.

Second Attribute Visibility Issue: One thing I noticed is that all attributes used on a product would be accessible on product detail view of the product list widget. I am not sure it would take too long to run a query on all attributes used in a specific product, IE: Look through variations and store used attribute ids. I think it would better reflect an ecommerce requirement to then only show the attributes used on that product (in at least one of the variations). In your example of the case where there is no value specified. I think it would be a better end-user experience just to remove that dropdown option all together then. Otherwise, you have a dropdown box that says “size” (in your example) that has no values under it. That is more confusing to the end-user than anything. My suggestion is to use the product detail view as a trigger to query only attributes used in a variation of that product and then post the dropdown boxes appropriately. The only other option for me in my project would be to create new “type” or “department” for individual products or a few. I feel the “Type” and “department” categorization capabilities could be used more completely and efficiently without doing that. Third issue: I believe I jumped the gun on this issue. I can no longer reproduce the third issue I posted above. It is a non-issue.

Thanks so much for your time,
James

Hello James,
About your first issue during our development we also experienced such an issue on different places (add an image to a product go back to products grid) and so on.. but it was happening because of a patch that Microsoft released but as I am aware then they patched the patch so if everything on your system is up2date you should not experience this issue. Still if you can confirm it is just this Master,Detail View issue we will look at more carefully. Currently I cannot reproduce it with Windows 7 up2date and Internet Explorer 10.0.9200.16540 (which is older then your version).  Also can you confirm that on other browsers it works ok ?

Second issue about the attribute visibility. We surely ware able to hide the attributes if there are no values. However we wanted to make sure that the Attributes are just for that for variations. There is no point of someone having millions of unused attributes. Keep in mind if they are not in use you should be able to remove them or change the apply to types property.
The problem why we didnt do the "hide automatically scenario " was the fallowing:
Lets say you are opening a Kid Clothes and you see a Color and Size.. great with values and etc.
Then you click on another product of the same type but the color is gone. And you see only size till now its ok right ? However lets say that in the first case you select a Size "5" where from then on .. the only color available is just 1 or no color at all because the one with size 5 doesn't have a color set, int this case we will hide the attribute and this hiding/showing of attributes doesn't look very good from UI perspective.
To keep the attributes fixed however and only update the combo values looked better to us so thats why we did it this way. Of course if there is demand (if you send a feedback request and some peoples vote for it) we can make it hidden or "switchable" based on some config property.
Keep in mind the ProductOptionsControl is changeable so everyone who doesnt like this functionality or doesnt like dropdowns and want fancy color buttons or checkboxes and radio buttons and etc can implement his own. The "data" inside the entities related to the variations is not changed at all and it is as it was before 6.1.

Also we will probably make the populator that is populating the values not internal in next version(s) as well so it will be even easier for customization.

Regards,
Nayden

Nayden,

I have found that Internet Explorer is the only browser that this caching issue occurs on and I have everything up to date according to Microsoft Windows Update. Another problem I noticed on all browsers: When you are in the Backend and you click "ecommerce" and then "Products" for the first time after logging on it seems to look like its completely loaded yet it is not completely loaded. It just sits there with a blank white page and then finally the products show up. Not sure what that deal is. The progress bar is missing or something.

As for the attribute visibility, I see your points and they are very relevant if you are selling all clothing or all similar "normalized" products. My project includes thousands of products that all may or may not have certain attributes. Too many different products for different "type" or "department" creation. Athough, I have a lot of products that need to be grouped with attributes but do not need the attribute size, for example. So, I would have to create a separate department for that specific product alone. I think I may have to go with a more custom solution for my particular project, I guess. Which means this particular concern is probably more of a support question than a beta bug report. I will have to most likely modify "ProductOptionsControl.ascx" so that I can change the "visible" attribute on "<asp:dropdownlist>" for the certain attributes that return no drop down options.  It doesn't make sense to me that if a attribute was made on the system and there isn't one variation of any product using that attribute, it still shows up but with no options under it on the front end. Don't seem right to me. I believe a product detail view of Product A should only have attributes showing on frontend that are used at least once in one of Product A's variations. I will consider entering this into PITS.

Back to bug reporting: I don't see too many other issues other than the logic issues I mentioned above and the caching issues I am experiencing after upgrading.

Thanks,
James

Hi all,
Since Sitefinity 6.1. was released already, this forum will be closed. Please, transfer your feedback to the General Forums here: www.sitefinity.com/.../forums
Thanks for participating!
Kalina
Sitefinity Team