MySource Matrix Developer

MySource Matrix Developer Newsletter Issue 113
Friday 9th February 2006

covers versions 3.10.6 stable, 3.12.1 stable, 3.13.0 development

News

Two New Point Releases Last Monday

MySource Matrix versions 3.10.6 and 3.12.1 were released to the public on Monday 5th February. Version 3.10.6 provided fixes to 21 bugs, as well as a small interface change to LDAP Bridge which appears when LDAP support is not compiled into PHP. Version 3.12.1 fixed 28 bugs, and in addition to said LDAP Bridge change, provides interface improvements to the "Back to" list in the Admin interface, as well as in the Access History Design Area's Details screen.

The next public releases (3.10.7 and 3.12.2) are due to be released on Monday 5th March.

Feature Reversal From Last Week

An additional erratum to the previous newsletter, which mentioned the replacement of an Asset Finder with a Parameter Map on the Set Parameter trigger action. It was determined that the Parameter Map attribute should not be used as a primary source of data, rather it should only be used to replace it (such as the "Replacement Root Node" option in the Listing Engine - and, as you will see in the features section this week, now also in Site Map). Therefore, the Asset Finder has been returned to the trigger action.

New Features

Form Submissions No Longer Dependant

Added to: 3.13.0 development

Custom Form submissions were originally marked as dependent and exclusive to a form, in order to keep them underneath the form so they can be listed. This is no longer the case; form submissions can now be moved and linked at will.

Please note that if you move (rather than new-link) a submission asset from underneath its parent form, it will no longer be listed on the Submission Logs screen - this screen requires assets to remain linked underneath the Custom Form to work. Furthermore, If you move a submission underneath another form, it will likely be listed underneath that asset's submission logs, but be aware that its results may not be meaningful in the context of that form.

Simple Edit Layout Improvements

Added to: 3.13.0 development

There have been a number of improvements made to the Layout assets used in Simple Edit (and more recently, in customising create screens used in Asset Builder assets).

Firstly, work has been done to make more screens accessible to Simple Edit layouts. Most screens (both static and asset-specific) should now be available for use within Simple Edit layouts.

Secondly, a new popup has been added to the Edit Contents screen of a layout that will allow you to select an asset type and return all layout keywords that apply to that asset type. This should save you having to hunt down the System Administrator manual each time you need to create a new layout because you've forgotten all the keywords.

Content_Attachment Design Variable

Added to: 3.13.0 development

This new design variable adds a "Content-Disposition: attachment" header to the top of the design. This should allow users to be able to save the content first, or allow display of the output in another application. The name of the file shall be the name of the asset with an extension specified in a tag attribute.

It should be accessed through the following design code:

<MySource_PRINT id_name="__global__" var="content_attachment" extension="abc" />

Please note that because this code adds a header to the response, it must be placed at the top of the design file, before any other content (including white space).

Dynamic Root Node Option in Site Map

Added to: 3.13.0 development

The "replacement root node" option that is available in Listing Engine-type assets is now available . The existing Root Node option has been renamed "Static Root Node" and will be overridden by the Dynamic Root Node. The same rules apply as to other "replacement root node" settings - that is, any replacement must live beneath one of the static root node(s).

Explicit Root Node in Normal Menu

Added to: 3.13.0 development

The Normal Menu (or rather, menu_normal) design area now accepts an optional explicit root node. This removes the requirement for a workaround using, for example, nested asset listings to display a menu from a certain point. It also allows styling for current and hierarchy attributes, which was not readily possible previously (however, for this to work, the root node must be within the same site as the asset being displayed).

The root node can be specified in a customised design area's Details screen, or through the parse file using the following code:

<MySource_SET name="root_node" value="1234" />

Where the value attribute specifies the asset ID of the root node.

Please note that you must also set the "menu_level" parameter to "top" for this feature to work. Also please note that compared to a normal menu set-up, it will run slightly slower due to the requirement to find the current asset lineage based on URL. However, it may still be quicker than the aforementioned workaround.

Ratings in Comment Assets

Added to: 3.13.0 development

This new development allows a rating to be applied to a Comment asset. Ratings are stored as percentages of the maximum rating, and can be displayed as either a scaled rating (eg. 2.6/5), a scaled rating rounded to an integer (eg. 3/5), as a percentage (52%), or as a set of images, defaulting to a bright and dim star (however this can be changed). Percentages and scaled ratings (if the integer keyword is not used) will be rounded to 2 decimal places when displayed through keywords.

New preferences for the Comment Asset allow you to specify the default maximum rating, rated image, and blank image. The latter two default to a gold and grey star respectively, and can be set to a URL. Changes to the maximum rating will affect the rating of already-rated assets, but only to the extent that the rating percentage is maintained (eg. a 3/5 rating will change to a 6/10).

Trigger Events Section Refactored

Added to: 3.13.0 development

The section of a Trigger's Details screen that allows you to select the events a Trigger should fire on has been refactored slightly, with events appearing in four columns rather than one underneath the other. This should reduce the amount of white space on the already rather-long Trigger Details screen.

Planned Development

No new generic features are currently scheduled for development.

Upgrading

3.13.0 Development

Additional queries: No additional queries are required for upgrades.

Additional comments: No additional upgrade steps are required.

New Bugs Added To Bug Tracker

Notes:

Bug #2066 (Asset map "delete asset" confirmation popup invisible) was reported by Tom Barrett but was marked as Can Not Replicate. The bug related to Java pop-ups such as the delete asset confirmation not appearing, or appearing at the bottom of the window stack. It appears that it could be an issue with multiple monitors, which appears to be a Java or Java/Firefox issue and not something that can be fixed easily. In any case, the reporter could no longer replicate the bug after updating his Firefox install.

Bug #2079 (URL changes don't regenerate cached CSS File assets) was reported by Avi Miller but was marked as Will Not Fix. The bug related to cached CSS File assets containing a deleted URL for images. A feature request (#892, "design_css file caching with multiple URLs hard-codes URLs to first one", reported by Luke Wright on 31st August 2005) remains outstanding that will likely fix this bug when completed. Until then, the bug will not be fixed by another method.

Bug #2086 (Linking below long asset listing pages causes Java asset map to crash) was reported by miriam.clinton but was marked as Can Not Replicate. This issue suggested that if a simple asset map in a WYSIWYG popup (such as Insert Link) selected an asset that was on the second or further pages of an asset's children, the asset map would crash if that popup is displayed again, as the asset map tries to find the asset from the first page. Multiple attempts were made to reproduce this issue on a developer's system however the issue wasn't able to be replicated.

Feature Request #2095 (FR: Give Paint Layouts a "Cascade" or "Override" option) was submitted by Avi Miller. This feature request is a duplicate of #1231 (Set preferred inherited paint layout and metadata schema) that was submitted by KateN on 4th April 2006. The duplicate feature request has been marked as a Duplicate and closed.

Bug #2105 (Thesaurus Term details problem) was reported by Kim Colbourne but was marked as not being a bug. The originally alleged bug suggested a locale problem in the Thesaurus Term asset, however the issue was eventually traced to a problem in system installation specific to the system.

Bug #2116 (Redirect Page is resizable) was reported by Deborah Sherwood but was marked as not being a bug. The alleged bug suggests an issue regarding new windows created by Redirect Page being resizable in Firefox, despite the "Not Resizable" option being set (the page was not resizable when tested in IE7). Firefox requires a width and height to be set in conjunction with this option to be valid.

Bug #2118 (Custom Form source string for "Error message format" not found) was reported by Avi Miller but was marked as not being a bug. The issue was likely to be a case of the compile_locale.php script not being run before step_03.php upon initial install.

New Feature Requests Added To Bug Tracker

Bugs Fixed In The Bug Tracker

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