Taking Umbraco V4 for another test-drive | Wibeck on Web - About Web Publishing, User Experience and Software

Taking Umbraco V4 for another test-drive

At the end of June I did an evaluation of Umbraco CMS version 4 alpha and promised to revisit that article later..that is now!

The core developers have been working hard during the summer to bring Umbraco V4 closer to a release candidate and there have been about 100 check-ins in CodePlex since my last test-drive.

Despite some bugs I have found, this is a far better build than the last one. Some bugs might be “show-stoppers” in my opinion, but that is compensated by other great additions.

This time I’ve used a clean install of the nightly build from August 11th and I’m going to follow up some of the things I ran into last time, as well as present some new issues and features. All testing has been done using Firefox 3 on Win XP...


“ - What has changed since last time… ?”

Installation Experience

The installation went very smooth and the only errors that appeared this time was due to me not setting any file permissions at first, when that was corrected the Installation including the Boost and Nitros packages got installed very nicelly.
It would have been even nicer if the installer noticed that I had modified the connection string in web.config before I ran the auto-installer, it didn't and therefore I had to enter all data again...

I've walked through the Umbraco backend one Section at a time and written down what I've noticed whilst doing that. I'm sure there are plenty of stuff that i have missed since I haven't done anything advanced at all this time.

Here comes the different secions:

Content Section

Menu tree

In the Content section I noticed that the tree-menu icons doesn’t lose it’s position any longer and that the little star for unpublished changes finally works in Firefox… now I’m only waiting for the faded “unpublished-page” icons to fade in FF as well  ; ).

If it was possible to “fold in” the menu tree that would be a great feature to maximize the working area on smaller screens (1024x768 and below).

“To fold-in, or not to fold in…”

 

Modal Dialogs

Last time I tested the inline modal dialogs had an annoying “slide down slowly” transition that took ages (1.5 seconds) to display. That sliding effect has now been removed, making them appear much faster, good one Per!

Rich text editor

The node picker still doesn't work in Firefox from within the “Insert Image” dialog.  Still a JavaScript error when you select a node in this view:

 
JS Error in Firefox: “parent.opener.dialogHandler is not a function…”

And I find it a bit annoying that the editor don’t auto-fill the whole width of it’s area like everything else in Umbraco does…

 
Is this a wide enough editor for any screen size?

 

Media section

Image upload bug

Uploaded images and files doesn’t get their properties set at all. This causes a missing image in the editor since the file extension is removed. Definitely a show-stopper this one... And it seems that the “Insert/Edit Image dialog” from the editor doesn’t have this bug when you upload a new image, strange one!

Users section

New feature: Permissions Editor, wooha!

One major improvement is the new permissions editor by Shannon a.k.a. Shandem. Basically it gives you the ability to modify the built in user types as well as defining your own ones.

It also features one single place to edit node permissions on a user level, very nice indeed, well done Shannon!! Not only does this provide a way better permissions editor, it’s also a great way to explore the difference between the built-in User Types!


User Type Editor


User’s Content Tree Permissions editor

Can’t save users or create new user types

Currently you’re unable to create a new User Type due to a .Net Error*. It’s also impossible to save a user if you don’t fill in the “Change Password” text boxes, but I guess that will be fixed in a later version…
Once you’re able to attach different groups (multiple) with defined permissions to a user (like you can do with members) there isn’t much left to wish for in this section.

Feature request for the Permission Editor: It would be great if modified permissions was somehow indicated on each parent/ancestor node to easier see that something is changed. I would also like to know what happens when you change User Type for a user, will the user keep her current permissions or will they be overwritten?

*) .Net Error: “System.ArgumentException: ERROR CREATING CONTROL FOR NODETYPE: userTypes”

 

Settings Section

Content Types

This Content Type editor is redesigned with a fresher look but the feel is still the same, sadly. It’s still impossible to place the cursor in the textboxes (without right-clicking) since they becomes part of the click target for the drag’n’drop. And you still can’t sort the order of the properties if you have more properties than what fits in your screen. What happens here is that if you drag a box, the “drop gap” between the other boxes will appear 3 boxes up or even off screen!? Hmm, what if I only want to move it up one step?

On the other hand it’s now possible to sort the tabs by entering the preferred sort order, this is one feature I’ve longed-for, nice to see it!


“Tab sorting…”

 

Developer Section

I can’t recall if this were implemented in the last version I tested but, you now get a list of all your installed packages as well as information about available updates for the installed packages. You even get a nice uninstaller for your packages! Of course a roll-back for modifications in the config files and/or the database would be nice as well, but I guess that’s a bit trickier to implement.

 

Members Section

No, no changes at all what I can see. But I noticed that you can click create in the Create dialog without any defined Member Types, that throws an empty string exception.

If you change icon for a Member Type it will still use the same icon that all Member Types uses, guess that isn’t by design.

In my wishlist for the Members Section I will add:

Summary

Umbraco V4 is an awesome CMS! There are so many great additions that it would have made sense to skip a version number and go straight for V5.
Right now I can only come up with one feature that would make a great difference; Basic image editing from the editor and the Media Section...

 

// ; ) Kalle

 

(Still no comments, but this time I'm at least working on it ;)

 

Technorati tags: umbraco v4 asp.net opensource  .net cms