I've been working hard to get the mojoPortal newsletter feature ready and I plan to make a release this weekend. I'll blog more about that later as there are a lot of new things since the last release. For now I just want to mention that I'll be comitting the newsletter feature to svn trunk in the next few hours for anyone who is eager to get it and anyone who might be able to help test it. I've done preliminary testing in all the data layers and it seems to work in all of them.

This first release of this feature should be considered an alpha. I haven't done eveything with it I want to yet but its at a usable point and will improve by use and feedback. Email does not lend itself to testing, I mean you either send an email or you don't send it. I've tested it on short lists and I've tested simulating long lists with some thread sleeping but thats not a very good simulation.

I've just updated this site with the latest build and created 2 Newletters, mojoPortal News which will be a real newsletter and Temporary Test List which I'm hoping some of you will join so that I can better test the sending of mail to the list. I will send to this list a lot while testing and will ask for replies to verify that the mail is received, but once satisfied its working well this list will stop. So please login now and visit the My Profile page to opt in to my lists.

The mail gets sent on a new thread so it doesn't interfere with the UI. There is a new Task Queue Monitor page where you can check the progress. If the application recycles while sending the mail it will kill the thread and therefore stop the process from sending but it is designed to resume where it left off when the application start event is fired.

More work needs to be done in creating some email templates. There are 2 not too great ones included. Email templates are a pain compared to regular html because you can only get consistent styling in different email clients by using in-line style. Trying to use images in the mail is also problematic. I'll be investigating solutions for these challenges to improve future versions.

This first implementation requires the user to be registered in the site to opt into the list, eventually I may make an opt in option for non registered users. I'll be working on and testing the opt out feature tomorrow to make sure its ready for the release.

Happy New Year mojoPortal Community!

To celebrate (boy I really know how to party!), I finally got around to making a video tutorial covering the basics of using mojoPortal.

mojoPortal User Guide Volume 1

One of my resolutions for the new year is to do more video tutorials.
Another is to make another batch of good looking skins. Using free designs I made 10 skins in 10 days several months ago. I still have a bunch of designs I dowloaded before that I didn't get to, I just need to find another week or 10 days to throw at them.

I'm also getting very close to making a release, I know I've been saying that for weeks but some things have gone slower than anticipated. Newsletter is a complex feature. If I don't finish it soon I'll just go ahead and make a release without it as there is lots of other good stuff available now in svn that needs to be set free. Of course anyone working with the source code is smart to be getting the code from svn trunk and not waiting for me to get around to making releases.

If there are particular topics you would like to see tutorials about please let me know. Also any feedback about this one is appreciated. It was just a quick improvised one. I actually did a better longer one first only to realize at the end it wasn't capturing audio. So when I did it again I kept it a little brief.

I am about finished implementing a quick google maps feature. I went ahead and updated this site with the code so I could show it off. You can see it in action here: http://www.mojoportal.com/googlemaps.aspx

It allows you to specify a location, map size, optional to show the map type control (Satellite,hybrid,map), option to show the zoom control, option to open a balloon with info about the location, option to show a local area google search, and a few other options.

I haven't finished implementing the get driving directions, will finish that tomorrow but its exciting enough I couldn't wait to blog about it. Its in my svn sandbox now and will be in svn trunk by later tonight.

It was really very easy, but visual stuff is always exciting and fun to work on.

Those working from the source code using svn trunk, it will be available in the next few hours. After you do svn update, rebuild the solution then visit yoursiteroot/Setup/Default.aspx to install it. Then it will show up like other features that you can put on any page.

Update: 2007-12-09

I got the driving directions working as you can see by clicking the link above. One thing to be aware of is that driving directions won't work on a local network or on localhost using the free google maps API key. As I understand it, if you buy an enterprise license it can work on local networks but the free one only works on public sites. The map seems to work just fine on localhost, its only the driving directions feature that doesn't work on localhost.

I just upadated the mojoPortal demo site with the latest code. I've been doing some more work on the ExtJs controls and using them in the Site Office feature. The idea of Site Office is that the core of it will be a UI framework for intranet style applications. Currently we have a plugin model for content management features used in the public side of the web site. Site Office will have its own plugin model that makes it easy to build features that plug in. A feature will have a section in the Menu and clicking the navigation links will open the feature page/control/view in a new tab in the center pane of the layout.

You can check it out here: http://demo.mojoportal.com/SiteOffice/Default.aspx and can login with admin@admin.com and password = admin.

I have some not yet working features setup that do open in the new tabs but the features don't yet work. I'm really just looking for feedback on the layout. Notice how you can hide panels and resize them. Feel free to click the links and see how it works. Especially cool is if you open a lot of tabs the tabs become scrollable. If you make the side panels wider it doesn't take as many tabs to be able to see the tab scrolling.

Currently the Welcome tab which is always present shows the home page of the site. I plan to make it configurable so you could have a special intranet home page that is the default page shown there. Note that you can navigate the site inside this tab.

Notice also that if javescript is disabled in your browser it still can show the feature views when you click a navigation link, its just not as rich an experience. Being able to work without javascript is just one accessibility requirement. I'm particularly interested in any other accessibility issues that can be identified and resolved so that the Site Office UI framework can be accessible from the beginning so if you have any expertise on accessibility and you see problems do let us know.

I think these ExtJs layout controls go a long way towards a rich user interface for office/intranet style applications. I'm still pondering what can go in the right side and bottom panels. Mabe help could go on the right side. Lots of possibilities really.

Hey mojoPortal Community, exciting news!

We've been invited to The 2008 MySQL Conference & Expo. This would be a great opportunity to help promote mojoPortal. Anyone who is interested and able to get to this conference please contact me. It would be great if we could assemble a small team and take turns manning the booth and visiting the sessions.  joe dot audette [at] gmail dot com

The most difficult part will be figuring out how to afford to get there and pay for lodging. If anyone would like to donate to help us we would be grateful. See the PayPal link on the left of the home page if you can help. I need to confirm within the next 2 weeks or the free booth will go to another project.

Below are the details from the email I received from MySQL:

"The 2008 MySQL Conference & Expo will take place on April 15rd-18th in Santa
Clara, California (see http://www.mysqlconf.com/ for more details).

As for the last conference, we are arranging a "DotOrg-Pavilion" where we would
like to give Open Source Projects related to or based on the MySQL Server or
other MySQL Products an opportunity to showcase their work.

MySQL AB will provide the booth space (incl. electrical power and Internet
access) as well as free attendance to the conference and exhibitor hall for up
to 4 people per project. In addition, we will provide one full, (shareable)
conference pass per project, that permits access to the tutorials as well as
all other sessions of the conference.

What you will need to bring/prepare:

- Your own computers/demo equipment
- Banners, flyers, other marketing material (e.g. Demo-CDs, Merchandise)

I was wondering if you or somebody else from the MojoPortal Community would be
interested in representing and demonstrating your project there. If you would
like to learn more about this, please contact me directly or the MySQL
Community Relations team at community@mysql.com."

UPDATE 2007-12-02:

Its official we're going to have a booth at this conference and I will be there demoing mojoPortal both on Windows and Linux using MySQL.

If anyone lives close enough to make it to Santa Clara and could help me man the booth it would be great. Its going to be difficult if I have to man it all by myself. We can get passes to the event for up to 3 more people so getting in is free. Plenty of time between now and then so I'm counting on recruiting some help. Let me know if you're interested in helping.

Huge Thanks to Todd Stone who donated $100 through PayPal to help make this possible!
We still could use some help raising funds to make this trip and jazz up the booth.

I'll be bringing 2 good laptops, one for demoing on Windows and one for demoing on Linux with Mono. I'm going to look into renting a couple of reasonably large monitors somewhere local to the event (unless someone local wants to volunteer to lend them) as I can't see trying to bring them.

This will be an exciting chance to bring  more visibility to mojoPortal and I plan to make the most of it.