September 2011 Archives

During the summer, classic car shows are popular. The week after the classic tractor show at the Coshocton County fairgrounds, a classic car show was held with several types of car ranging from Model T Fords to VW Beetles, to an army jeep, monster truck, several large American cars dating from the 1950s-1970s, and pick-up trucks. These photographs were taken on the 16th of July in Coshocton, Ohio.

Before summer comes to an end, we decided to walk from Beaulieu to Bucker's Hard. The walk is through meadowland and forest, and part of the path can be followed around the Solent to get good views over the water and to admire the little boats docked in various places along the river. 

Normally, there's some criticism from users when Facebook updates its website, and the users eventually get used to the new quirks of the user interface. (In fact, here was a redesign only weeks ago). However, yesterday, when the most recent Facebook redesign and new features went into place, there was even more of a backlash.

Virtually everyone on my Facebook friend list that posted a status update, including myself, were critical of the new layout. In fact, I feel that the changes made were massive changes, and changes that users can no longer customise or have much control over.

The most widely-complained-about change was the inclusion of a new "news and updates ticker", which displays most recent updates in the upper right-hand side of the screen. (I am not sure how this looks on a desktop computer, but on my MacBook Pro, it was difficult to read as it constantly scrolled, scrolled too quickly, and only provided a small window for the displays; virtually this was unreadable to me.) The main area of the news feed has been transformed into an area of 'top news', so many updates are now hidden from view. Now, I like to read my friends' updates; I am unable to log into Facebook regularly, but when I do log in, it's in the evenings, and I catch up on the day's events by browsing through the news feed. I am unable to get onto Facebook during the day. According to Mark Tonkelowitz at Facebook, the updates to the news section with "top news" was to mimic a newspaper with the most popular stories, so that users with varying levels of Facebook usage are clued in to the most 'important' updates (1).

I wonder if this is an attempt by Facebook to ensure that they keep users, as Google+ social network (a new Facebook rival) has been launched. In fact, the Google+ interface looks remarkably simple, and this reminds me of how Facebook used to look years ago. (Google is the expert on simplicity, though, and the reason that Google became more popular than the likes of Yahoo! was down to its simplicity.) In fact, many users wrote on their status updates yesterday, when the changes went into action, that they would be switching to Google+.

I also feel that if Facebook intend on making changes, they should do it slowly and make minor changes, while testing these changes through A/B testing techniques. I feel that this more complex and less-customisable and less usable layout is trying to be too clever, and this is alienating many of its users. (Certainly users should be able to choose and customise what news they want to see - either 'top news' stories or 'most recent'.) Although I have not had much time to play with the new Facebook interface due to working hours and other committments, I am basing much of my feelings on first impressions and feedback from others, and I do feel that changes may have been accepted more positvely (or less negatively) by users if they were not all introduced at once. (I did notice many other new security/privacy-related options under the administration section of Facebook last night, and I am curious to know what else has changed.)

Facebook will be making more changes in the coming months, and I have read rumours of different buttons, similar to the popular "Like" button. They will be releasing more information at their annual conferencem, which takes place today (22nd September).

I predict that Google+ may be increasingly popular. It's done well in the search arena, and I believe that this, coupled with social networking aspect, could become a very powerful tool. Imagine being able to conduct a search and receiving websites that are relevant to you and your interests, or the ability to share interests based on others with similar interests and introducing yourself and your friends to new music/movies/popular culture based on those interests? (It is a little worrying, however, when the web knows so much about you and your interests.) For now, I will wait and see how this plays out, but I do predict that Google+ will be more popular in the future. Let's see!

1) Bates, Daniel and Wraugh, Rob. "Omg it's horrendous! Facebook revamp promps furious user backlash. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2040377/Omg-horrendous-Facebook-revamp-prompts-furious-user-backlash.html?ito=feeds-newsxml [22 September 2011].

On Friday last week, the "Wow! Gorillas" sculptures, which I first became acquainted with in Bristol last month (Wow! Gorillas in Bristol), were on display near Tower Bridge. During my lunch break on Friday, I took a walk across the river to have a look and get a few photographs. Upon seeing each one, I remembered where I saw it in Bristol, and they brought back so many memories of that weekend and the people who admired them.

In short, Wow! Gorillas is a charity event that aims to provide funding for gorilla conservation. The event brings community, business, and the arts together. The gorillas were painted by artists in Bristol. Similar large animal sculptures were seen in London and Bath last year. (I blogged about these here: Spot the Lions in Bath and Parading Artistic Elephants in London.)

The gorilla sculptures were only in London for a few days, and at mid-day, many tourists and workers on their lunch break swarmed to get photographs. (The riverside walk is always popular over lunch with many City workers getting a breath of fresh air, exercise, and with tourists visiting Tower Bridge). In my short time there (twenty minutes), I saw many smiles and photographs being taken of the sculptures. One of the sculptures was being painted; on the partially-white-gorilla-canvas, a portrait of a gorilla beginning to take shape. The artist, Nicole Antrobus, specialises in painting wildlife; her website can be found here: http://www.wildlifeartistlondon.co.uk.

A weekend away in late May, I expected to get some colour in my pale skin by booking a long weekend away to Portugal. However, the weather did not cooperate with its rainy skies and cool temperatures, so a relaxing holiday turned out to be a primarily sight-seeing one. That was alright by me, though I wish we had been a little luckier with the weather. On the other hand, Portugal (Lisbon) is a beautiful place to visit with plenty of sight-seeing opportunities. I booked four nights to stay in a hotel in Caicais and was not far from Lisbon and not far from Sintra, a National Heritage area in the moutains north of Cascais. The palaces and castle here were the highlights of the trip. Additionally, I enjoyed Lisbon's cobbled streets, the castle, the elevator (built by the same man who built the Eiffel Tower), and the quaint trams zipping around (and up hills). Lisbon is a fairly small city, and the central sights were easily viewed and walked to within a day. Another collection of tourist sights are located just west of the city, along the coast.

Cascais ended up being an excellent base for exploring. The village is on the coast (west of Lisbon; this was about a thirty minute journey on the train) with beaches, a shopping mall, and restaurants within the main square. The food was delicious here, and the prices were good value; the wine was also delicious and cheaper than the United Kingdom, but then most places are cheaper than the United Kingdom.

Although Adobe's CQ5 CMS has many quirks, it can be a powerful tool once you discover the how to achieve certain tasks. For example, one of my tasks recently was to obtain a list of users in a particular group in CQ5 and to display all users in a drop-down menu in a dialog. The Content Editor could then select a user, and the user's name and other details about the user would be displayed on the web page. (This was built to associate a particular user, that may or may not be the Content Editor, with specific content.) The component created would display automatically within the page template, and the Content Editor would simply be able to edit the component directly.

This article explains how the task can be achieved. This article also assumes that you have created a group and added users to the group.

Create the Component and Include it in the Template

1. Create a folder (type cq:Component) for the component, and name it mygroup-users.

2. In your template, include the new component directly, as below:
<cq:include path="users" resourceType="[my project]/components/mygroup-users"/>

Create the Dialog

3. In the mygroup-users component folder, add a new dialog (cq:Dialog) named 'dialog'. (Add a 'title' property for the dialog and an xtype of 'panel'.)

4. Underneath your dialog, add a new node - cq:WidgetCollection. Name it "items".

5. Underneath the 'items' node, add a cq:Widget, and name it 'users'. Add new properties, described in the list below:

• fieldLabel = Select User: (String)
  
• name = ./users (String)
• xtype = selection (String)
• type = select (String)

6. Add one last new property to the 'users' node. This will allow the dialog to look up the script that processes the data. The property is known as optionsProvider (String). The path is to the JSON code, which will be created in the next step, with a cachebreaker.

function(path, record){

return CQ.Util.formatData(

CQ.HTTP.eval(CQ.HTTP.noCaching(

 '/apps/[path to component]/users.list.json?' 

+ (new Date().getTime()))));

}

Create your JSON, JSP and a Reference

7. Now, you will create a JSP file (nt:file) to include the Java code that you will write to obtain the data. The file will be placed in the root of your mygroups-users component. (It should be named mygroup-users.jsp.) Here, you will write the code to output the data onto the web page. (I'll let you sort this yourseldf, but I used the UserManager class.)

8. Now, you will create the JSON code. This file (nt:file) should be named list.json.jsp, and it will be placed in the root of the component (mygroup-users). The naming is important to specify the component's default in CQ5; we're extending this list component. The code simply is a loop to list all users to print them out.

• Initialise the content type: response.setContentType("application/json");
  
• resolve the UserManager: final UserManager um = resourceResolver.adaptTo(UserManager.class);
• Get the Groups: Iterator<Group> groups = um.getGroups();
• You'll need a framework, as below:
  

%>[<%
String delim = "";
while (groups.hasNext()) {
   // get the name of the group, and extract all the members from that group.
  // the member is an Authorizable class.
%><%= delim %><%
%>{<%
%>"value":"<%=  member.getProfile().getAuthorizable().getID() %>",<%
%>"text":"<%= member.getProfile().getName() %>",<%
%>"qtip":""<%
%>}<%
if ("".equals(delim)) {
}
    delim = ",";
        }
    }
}
%>]

9. Now, you'll need a reference (sling:Folder) to your users. Underneath the mygroups-users component, create a new sling:Folder, and give it the name 'users'. Add a new property called sling:resourceType, and it should be the path to your component: [myproject]/components/mygroups-user


Test

10. Test your changes.

The JSON should be output to http://localhost:4502/apps/[path to component]/users.list.json.

The JSON will be returned in the browser, if working correctly. It will look like below:

[

• -
  {
  • value: "john_doe"
  • text: "John Doe"
  • qtip: ""
  }
• -
  {
  • value: "joebloggs"
  • text: "Joe Bloggs"
  • qtip: ""
  }

]


I hope that you have fun building your own custom components based on the JCR.

Google have launched an animated "Google Doodle" featuring Freddie Mercury (lead singer of the 1970's band Queen) and his music. Freddie would have been 65-years-old on Monday. 

Over the past four months, I have been involved in a project using Day's (now owned by Adobe) Comminique 5 (CQ5) Content Management System. In the past, I've used several off-the-shelf and custom Content Management System. CQ5 is most comparable to Magnolia, a product that I used last year. CQ5 uses the Java Content Repository and Apache Sling to create a powerful tool. This Content Management System is being used by General Motors, McDonalds, Volkswagen, and Audi (1).

When installed, the application comes with a default project to base ideas on. CQ5 also allows marketing campaigns and the ability to serve up content across multiple channels, such as mobile. It also comes with social networking aspects, including blogs and forums and the ability to set up custom workflows for publishing and approval of various aspects (2).

Here are a few of my thoughts about CQ5 over the past three months:

1) I think the tool could be a powerful one, but there is a steep learning curve involved, and I've had to pick this up myself, without any training or guidance. (The same happened last year when I learned Magnolia.) Unfortunately, there's little of documentation available and a lack of a support group; there is a Google forum and an API.

2) Lack of consistency with the code.

3) Stability issues with the environment.

4) Lack of up-to-date and correct documentation available. On the Day website, there are tutorials to help you get started, but these tutorials were out-dated and simply did not work when followed. This was not due to user error as it was also reported by all of my colleagues. (At least there is an API to help guide you, but a lot of the comments are out-of-date or non-descriptive.)

5) The development environment that you need to use to develop is CRXDE, which is based on Eclipse, but it is buggy and adding a file manager (Vault) to the process causes even more complications. I was also getting many crashes using this, and a lot of Java "Out of Memory" errors. (This mainly seems to have been solved with a new machine, however.)

6) Ability to make content editing easier. Despite the product's downfalls, I think that the finished product can be customised enough to give more freedom to the content editors. They will still need training, but the ability to drag and drop components around a page and copy and paste them to a new area is more flexible and quicker. However, there are areas where it can be just as slow; for example, I am not quite happy with table management aspect. It does not give the content editor enough freedom to copy and paste multiple rows/columns and apply styles across multiple rows/columns.

7) Extending components is fiddly.

8) Incomplete and incorrect code. For example, I wanted to create an Accordion-style layout by using a Multifield component that takes a CompositeField, consisting of a 'richtext' component and a 'text' component. Although this is meant to work, it didn't. A quick look into Day's code showed that this feature had areas commented out with "//TODO" comments to get the multifield working with other combinations. (I decided to find another way to accomplish the task, and I must have tried three other ways before brainstorming with a colleague to come up with a completely different solution that wasn't as user-friendly for the content editor, but it worked.)

9) A lot of patience is needed as well as a lot of fiddling around and trial and error.

10) There's generally been a lack of support from Adobe or a lack of training/consultants available from Adobe to get started or fix issues initially.

Here are a few thoughts from other developers.

Guseva, Irina. Day's Software CQ5 WMS. http://irinaguseva.wordpress.com/review-day-softwares-cq5-wcm/ [2009].

(1) Websmart. What is Adobe CQ5? http://websmart.tv/learn/what-is-adobe-cq5/ [2011].

(2) Taft, Darryl K. 10 Ways Adobe is Transforming Enterprise Digital Experiences. http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Messaging-and-Collaboration/10-Ways-Adobe-Is-Transforming-Enterprise-Digital-Experiences-591898 [February 28, 2011].

Adobe have launched a new tool (known as Adobe Edge) that allows developers and designers to create interactive content (in place of Flash) by using HTML5, CSS3, and Javascript. Many mobile devices do not use Flash, so Adobe have developed this tool to bring animation and interactive content to users on all devices easily, and without needing to code extensively. Adobe Edge is laid out like a standard Adobe product and works similar to Flash, but instead of ActionScript, the coding is completed in Javascript.

A free preview of the Adobe Edge tool, which will be released sometime in 2012, is in development, but this in-progress tool can be downloaded and explored via the Adobe Labs website: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/edge/.

Let me know what you think if you downloaded or have used Adobe Edge.