MySource Matrix Developer

MySource Matrix Developer Newsletter Issue 7
Friday 21st January 2005

covers versions 3.2.1 stable, 3.3.1 beta, 3.5.0 development

News

Benchmarking

We have started the process of gathering real benchmarking data for MySource Matrix, which should be available next week. If all goes well, the next release of MySource Matrix may include some benchmarking statistics that can be released to clients and the general public.

New Features

Bodycopy Supports Shadow Asset Links

Added to: 3.5.0 development

Changes have been made to the bodycopy to allow for the insertion of shadow assets as hyperlinks and images. Previously, links to shadow assets could not be inserted into content of assets (either through the WYSIWYG or raw HTML editing interfaces). The bodycopy now supports this feature to compliment the changes to LDAP last week (web accessible LDAP groups) and in preperation for a few more changes to the image asset.

The result of this change is that IDs of shadow assets cannot have a dollar sign in them. The dollar sign is used as a terminating character for shadow asset links and so must not be present in the ID.

An example of the normal asset references in the content is: ./?a = 1234 (they remain the same)

The new shadow asset references look like this: ./?a = 4321 : uid=gsherwood,ou=Staff,dc=squiz,dc=net$ (note the dollar sign)

Only User And File Assets Can Be Morphed

Added to: 3.3.1 beta, 3.5.0 development

Morphing was available for almost all assets in MySource Matrix, but only ever worked for the user and file assets due to the complexity of asset type transformation. The interface used to morph assets has now been removed from all but the following asset types:

User Backend User System Administrator File Image Thumbnail Word Doc PDF File

Image Varieties

Added to: 3.5.0 development

Image assets can now how multiple size varieties created. An image variety is a shadow assets that sites under the main image asset in the asset map. The variety is a resized version of the image that can be used as if it was an image itself, such as being inserted using the WYSIWYG popup. When created, image varieties resize to a specification supplied by the user, and do so automatically. This allows you to upload large images and resize them for use on your web pages.

To create image varieties, you first upload an image and then go to the Varieties screen of the image asset. Here you specify the width and height of the name image as well as a name to use in the asset map. You can leave either the width or hieght filed as zero to have the Image asset preserve the aspect ratio of the original image.

WYSIWYG Auto Populate Image Settings

Added to: 3.5.0 development

When inserting images into the WYSIWYG using the insert image popup, the ALT text was being generated from the name of the image. For example, an image called "home.png" would get the ALT text "home". This ALT text is now sourced directly from the image asset, using the data defined on the Details screen of the image. If no ALT text has been defined, the auto generated text (from the file name) is used.

As well as the ALT text, the width and height of the image are also populated at the same time. This information is sourced from the image asset directly and is automatically generated by the image asset when an image is uploaded.

New Thumbnail Keywords

Added to: 3.5.0 development

Two new keywords are available for use in Asset Listing pages, and potentially other assets. The new keywords are bothed focused on the thumbnail asset that can be associated with each asset in the system. The keywords are:

- prints the URL of the asset's thumbnail - prints the caption attribute of the asset's thumbnail

Asset Listing Position Formats

Added to: 3.5.0 development

The Asset Listing now has the ability to define a format for a particular position in the list. For example, the first asset in this list can look different to the rest to make it stand out. This can be used with the new column listing options to create more customised asset lists.

This change has also resulted in a new Display Formats screen being added to the Asset Listing page, where these position formats can be defined. This screen also allows you to edit the default asset type format, as well as customised type formats. It is the screen to go to for anything to do with formats and layout of the listing.

This upgrade requires four database queries to be run. Run the following queries to upgrade your existing Asset Listings. It does not matter if you do thiss before or after you update the source code.

UPDATE
    sq_ast_lnk SET value = 'position_formats'
WHERE
    value = 'asset_formats';

UPDATE
    sq_ast SET name = 'Position Formats', short_name = 'Position Formats'
WHERE
    assetid IN 
        (SELECT
             minorid
         FROM
             sq_ast_lnk
         WHERE
             value = 'position_formats');

UPDATE
    sq_rb_ast_lnk SET value = 'position_formats'
WHERE
    value = 'asset_formats';

UPDATE
    sq_rb_ast
SET
    name = 'Position Formats', short_name = 'Position Formats'
WHERE
    assetid IN
        (SELECT
             minorid
         FROM
             sq_rb_ast_lnk
         WHERE
             value = 'position_formats');

New Bugs Added To Bug Tracker

New Feature Requests Added To Bug Tracker

Bugs Fixed In The Bug Tracker

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