Hi, I'm JT and these are my thoughts on community, content management, Plain Black, and WebGUI.
Hi, I'm JT and these are my thoughts on community, content management, Plain Black, and WebGUI.
In the past few years we've been getting a lot of requests to add features from one asset into another. For example, recently someone asked if we could add comments to the Wiki, and of course comments are used all over WebGUI. And before that we've had RFEs for adding Subscriptions to virtually everything. We've also had many requests for RSS feeds on lots of assets.
These common subsystems have always created a lot of work for us because we have had to copy and paste code from one asset to another. This also means if we fix a bug we have to fix it in multiple places, and if we update the feature we either update it everywhere, or one asset gets an enhanced version that the others don't get.
Luckily in WebGUI 7.6 those hardships will be coming to an end. The thing that will close an era will also open a new one, and it's called Aspects. Aspect-Oriented-Programming (AOP) is an extension of object oriented programming. It has been around for a few years now and it goes by many names. Some call it an aspect, others call it a role, and many call it a trait, and still others call it a mixin. If you have heard any of these terms then just know in WebGUI they are called Aspects.
NOTE: Though this is technically a programmer benefit, know that if you aren't a programmer, anything that benefits programmers means that you will get more features faster, and those features will work better.
The first aspect that we've implemented is Comments (WebGUI::AssetAspect::Comments). The comments aspect allows a programmer to add Bazaar style comments to any asset with about 3 lines of code. Starting in 7.6.1 this aspect has been attached to Wiki Pages, so wikis will have comments. Later in 7.6 development you'll also see this aspect used in the new Matrix asset. I'm sure eventually this will also be added to the Calendar and Gallery.
Next we'll be working on the Subscribable aspect, which will allow Collaboration System style subscriptions to any asset. And beyond that we have planned about a half dozen aspects. I'm sure more will come up as we progress.
