Quintagroup at The Plone Conference 2008
Document Actions
2007
Plone 3.0 release. My own impressions
I've recently had a possibility to work with new long-awaited release of Plone - 3.0. It was a great experience I should confess, so many new features, such nice and necessary things that previous releases lacked, just amazing amount of new functionalities. Having read some documentations about Plone 3.0 features, I've tried everything by myself. So, what impressed me the most in this much more productive Plone release...
- Every text field is clickable, thus - editable, i.e. it became much easier and less time-consuming to make changes. It's pretty nice that I can now click on any part of a document to do a quick update, correct a spelling error or do changes to any field in events items. There is no need now to reload the whole page to make corrections — simply edit it directly by clicking on it.
- Versioning support - one click on History green tab takes me to the full history of a document edits, as simply as that. Edit notes can be put down after every page edit so that to remind yourself what particularly have been done. Even if no notes were left, there is a nice tool Comparing to other revision that clearly displays all the changes done, in different colors for better orientation. It is possible to revert to an earlier version of the document if needed, just by clicking on the corresponding version. All the old versions are kept together, called "working copies", and can be reached any time. Isn't it amazing? No more numerous undoes!
- Plone 3.0 comes with a a new portlet architecture, more capable and higher performance portlets engine. There is no need to shift to Zope interface any longer to set any portlets you need. Everything is done simply and easily in Plone interface. This is especially convenient when setting portlets for a particular folder, different from what are there in the parent one. On the left and right side of every page there is a link to Manage portlets page.
- WYSIWYG editor working here is new version of Kupu - 1.4, that has lots of new features implemented.
- Plone 3.0 checks links and references, preventing potential link breakage. In case you want to remove any item from the site, Plone checks whether this item has been linked to from somewhere else. If this turns to be a working item, a warning appears, telling that this item is used somewhere, and that items you are attempting to delete may cause links in the site to break. There is even a listing of the documents that will get a broken link. I think that is a great idea to have this feature developed and implemented, getting rid of the risk of having broken links!
- Sharing permissions have been also changed - now it is easy to control who has access to the content, who can add, edit, view, or review it.
tags:
Plone Book updates - Kupu 1.4 version released
Plone Book for Content Managers has recently been updated due to the fact that new stable version of Kupu WYSIWYG editor was released - Kupu 1.4. This new Kupu release is compatible with Plone 3.0.
Kupu 1.4 has the
drawer interface substantially changed, with this new drawer interface
it became easier to select folders. Clicking on the title of a folder will navigate into the
folder rather than selecting it. Kupu now uses radio
buttons (or checkboxes for a multi selection drawer) to indicate the
selection.
So, what changes have been done?
- In Insert Tables with Kupu chapter information about paragraph styles was added, namely paragraph styles within tables are now available. Kupu allows setting paragraph styles within table cells. Different paragraph style can be set for every separate table cell. This new feature of Kupu is nicely described here.
- There is a new anchor drawer which lets you create tables of contents for the current document, or simply link within the document. This renewed drawer is displayed and explained in How to Create FAQ Page with Kupu. What is more, management of anchors is now advanced: Kupu 1.4 allows creating and deleting anchors without directly creating links.
- Internal and external link drawers also support linking to anchors within the remote documents. Thus, Insert Internal Link chapter has been updated, as well as Insert External Link, that was enlarged with an example about embedding external objects to the page, i.e. some support was added for inserting Flash content.
- Image captioning now has a customizable template. Kupu insert image properties explains how to configure default image size.
- Kupu now has a 'Save' button available straight near the rest buttons. More information about this can be found here.
tags:
New Chapter in Plone Book
Plone Book for Content Managers is continuously enlarging. We are trying to keep you close to what new appears for enlightening content manager's work.
This time the thing is about Kupu paragraph styles. In case you need to change the size of letters or their color in Kupu WYSIWYG editor and you know that preferable way to do it is with the help of new paragraph styles. But how to do it correctly, so that generated HTML code does not have its specific bad tags.
The answer to this question you may find in How to add a new style to Kupu Paragraph Styles - a newly added chapter of Plone book. This article is devoted to adding new styles to Kupu, that can definitely give much better look to your content.
Enlargement of Plone Book
Plone Book for Content Managers is becoming larger and larger with more and more useful information for Content Managers working with Plone-based sites.
Kupu chapter has recently been enlarged by an article concerning Kupu Toolbar Customization, in addition to this two articles about how to insert different content types into Plone site were published: Insert External Link and Insert Tables with Kupu.
If you are still unsure what is happening with HTML code read HTML filter, so to familiarize yourself with filters available for HTML code validation.
Another new article is How to Edit Footer. And the ways of organizing a navigation tree and navigation tabs on Plone site are described in Navigation on a Plone-site.
tags:
Plone Book Expansion
Plone Book for Content Managers is expanding! One more chapter has lately been added to this book. New article titled Insert Internal Link
with Kupu Visual Editor throws some light on creation of internal links
within Plone site. Clear illustrations and screenshots make the process
more understandable for content managers.
With the help of Kupu Resource Types internal links to different content types may be created: these may be a simple linkable object, collection of them and even a link to the exact part of the document (if it contains anchors) can be created.
_____tags:
Publication of Tutorial about WYSIWYG Editors
Quintagroup has recently published tutorial Content Creation with Kupu and other WYSIWYG editors on plone.org. This tutorial consists of several articles about text editors, that are frequently used in Plone (Kupu, Epoz, and FCK editor), their peculiarities, the way content can be edited with their help.There is a description of the toolbars and icons in Kupu, of the options available for inserting images with Kupu. One article is an illustration of how to create FAQ page with this WYSIWYG editor. Besides, we tried to throw some light on what ResolveUID is.
This tutorial consists of articles taken from Plone Book for Content Managers. This Plone book has lately been expanded by description of Plone site, we also tried to explain with the help of clear illustration what default Plone page consists of, and which Plone Portlets are available. Two article appeared about how to Add content in Plone and what can be achieved with the help of Display View option.
_____
tags:
