First time user feedback - ideas

I finally got thunder working on one site. I have no clue why on the previous site (same version of SF, Thunder, VPS) I am not able to connect. 

Here is some feedback of a first time, dummy user who probably has not understood the concept of Thunder.

Many of the questions might come from me being able to connect to only one site at the moment. Otherwise I could test it.

Generally I don't know what I am seeing on what status.

Sitefinity Explorer - Somehow its not clear to me what am I seeing
a) local site 
b) remote site
c) content of the connected site
d) content of the current VS project

The status information on the bottom of Visual Studio 'Sucessfully loaded the themes from' would be nice to have on the bottom of the Sitefinity Explorer as well.

Kind of would like an FTP view with local stuff on the left and remote stuff on the right. So when I update an css locally I could simply upload that to the remote site.

I guess I rightclick on Theme and choose replace for this. Which would somehow indicate that I am seeing the local stuff.

----------------
If you click on the Solution in the Solution Explorer of VS then you get another Icon to register toolbox widget. I guess it would be nice to have that in the Sitefinity Explorer as well. Unless I click on the solution explorer I would never see that icon.

Also registering only adds a line to the toolbox.config. I still have to upload the control, the toolbox.config build and upload the sitefinitywebapp.dll. 
It would be nice if a UserControl would be uploaded automatically when you register the toolbox widget as well as upload the toolbox.config as well. 

Of course the problem is that if someone added a widget from the backend online the toolbox.configs would not be identical and you would overwrite the changes that where online unless what you do is always based on the online stuff. 

Sorry for confusing feeback. But you can see that I don't seem to understand the concepty yet.

Markus

Watching this video  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1jpn9pbGDk

Hello Markus,

Sitefinity Thunder works on both local and remote sites. The functionalities for the local projects can generally be found in the Solution Explorer since this is what you are already using when working with local projects. For the remote projects, we have created the Sitefinity Explorer.

We have added the status messages to the Visual Studio status bar as well as a Sitefinity Thunder tab in the Output window. We have not felt the need to copy this information to the Sitefinity Explorer.

"Kind of would like an FTP view with local stuff on the left and remote stuff on the right. So when I update an css locally I could simply upload that to the remote site."

Sitefinity Thunder is a tool to help with the development and should be used with a development server, not the production one.
Sitefinity Thunder was not created to be used as a source/version control. I would suggest using tfs/svn to synchronize the changes that you have made to your local project.

"I guess I rightclick on Theme and choose replace for this. Which would somehow indicate that I am seeing the local stuff."

The Sitefinity Explorer shows you the remote project. The idea of the Replace functionality is that you can replace a theme on the server with any local theme, regardless of the local name or parent Website Template.

"If you click on the Solution in the Solution Explorer of VS then you get another Icon to register toolbox widget. I guess it would be nice to have that in the Sitefinity Explorer as well. Unless I click on the solution explorer I would never see that icon."

The icon will not show if you select the solution. You need to select you SitefinityWebApp project where you want to register a control. Sitefinity Thunder will register that control in the toolbox for you. This is a part of the functionalities for a local project. Even if we upload the control to your remote site, you will need to compile that project to use the control. Like I mentioned earlier, Sitefinity Thunder is not meant to be a source/version control. You can use tfs/svn for this functionality.

For first time users, I would recommend watching the Sitefinity Thunder webinar. There are other videos that show examples how to use some of the features in the TelerikSitefinityCMS Youtube channel. I would also recommend going to the Sitefinity Thunder Documentation for more information.

All the best,
Marin Atanasov
the Telerik team