Web Development News & Articles

Looking for an easy way to create dynamic, data-driven content in SharePoint? SharePoint Solutions (news, site) is offering a new free tool to help you out: SharePoint Data Zoom Web Part.

It looks like its going to get crowded out there in mobile web land very soon.

While this might draw a wry smile from those involved in traditional website development, a (very) quick search across the web would indicate that we could well be surfing on a cresting wave that is only starting to grow.

Only this week, mobiSiteGalore (news, site) was selected as Honoree in the Mobile Applications category for the 13th Annual Webby Awards.

Google Analytics is a very popular website analytics tool. This is partly because it's free, but also because it offers a lot of useful analytics on what's happening with your website. But people have been asking for just a little bit more from Google.

Now they have delivered. Google has made available a Google Analytics API that provides you with read-only access to your analytics data to integrate into your own custom applications and mashups.

Visual Studio is a great tool for the SharePoint Developer. But what about the SharePoint Information Architect? You don't write code, so Visual Studio doesn't cut it for you. Still it would be nice to have some kind of product that let's you work on SharePoint designs without having to have your SharePoint test environment up and running and without having to create that design only to have to change it because it isn't quite right.

MetaVis Technologies is offering a solution for all you SharePoint Information Architects that you need to take a closer look at. It's called the MetaVis Architect for SharePoint and it's only one of several new solutions they are publicly bringing to market today.

Last month, when ADAM software (news, site) released its v4.4 of its enterprise Digital Assets Management(DAM) platform it had its eye on a bigger piece of the content management pie.

With the announcement today that its newest release is to be integrated with SDL Tridion’s (news, site) Web Content Management System, it appears to have done what it set out to do.

Packt Publishing (news, link) has released its first book published through RAW (Read as we Write) program, where customers read pre-publication chapters and offer comments before the book goes to press. The RAW experiment could offer an interesting publishing model at a time when many publishers are struggling to survive.

When we published our review of Telligent's Graffiti Web Content Management System we were made a little uncomfortable when we caught wind from the community that more than a few people considered the product to be dead.

Following this up, we double checked with Telligent (news, site) CEO Rob Howard that this wasn't the case. And now Telligent has officially confirmed it on their own website -- the product will live on.

Previous to this update, the Graffiti Web CMS blog had not been updated since February, when Graffiti 1.2 was released. So there has been a bit of radio silence.

Houston, We Have Contact

Silence is golden, but not always. The community wanted some answers.

Now we see some activity in the form of a general update plus some details on future plans for the Graffiti CMS. We're happy to re-confirm here that Graffiti does indeed have a future.

The post states that Telligent was not prepared for the response it received to Graffiti -- especially since it was created to be a sort of "test bed" for ideas and concepts. That being said, the plan is to go forward with version 2.0, just not in the time frame originally stated.

Telligent goes on to say that they also weren't prepared for the effort to get the next version off the ground. The cutbacks in staff -- many of whom were on the Graffiti team -- did not help.

Graffiti Web CMS is not Telligent's primary offering, Community Server and Community Server Evolution are first and foremost with their Harvest Reporting Server safely in tow.

That's the story for now. If momentum continues to build around Graffiti, perhaps this will change. But the only current promise is that we will see v2.0 of Graffiti sometime this summer.

Editor's Note: About Graffiti (June 23, 2009)

Waiting for this one, weren't you? We asked Howard what was happening with Graffiti, their web content management system. We expected to see a new version or some kind of news coming out this month related to it's future development.

We now find we must wait a little while longer. Howard said that complete focus has been on the community and analytic solutions and not Graffiti. They have started some dialog as to what its future looks like (so he is indicating that it has a future, that's good), but he wouldn't go into details, saying it's too early to spill the beans of those conversations.

As the team ramps down from releases of Telligent Enterprise, Community and Analytics, focus will shift to Graffiti. Our only thoughts here are this: if web content management is your primary focus, Telligent does not appear to be your answer, because it is not theirs.

If Community solutions that engage enterprise integration and tight social and web analytics is your focus, then take a closer look.

Those Drupal (news, link) administrators who need to stage or otherwise copy Drupal configurations from one server to another should run out and give the Drupal Deploy module a try.

  If you were to believe all the hype surrounding concrete5, an open source Web content management system, then a remarkable new system has just gone on General Availability (GA).

While its usually a good idea to give every company a hearing and every piece of software a trial run, generally PR emanating from a company about their own product should be taken with even the tiniest pinch of salt.

Especially when they are claiming to be better than Drupal and Joomla, two of the most well known open source web content management systems.

The World Wide Web Consortium's OWL (Web Ontology Language) Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of the "OWL 2 Web Ontology Language Document Overview." Go ahead. Grab a dictionary. We'll wait.

This document is the first in an exciting thirteen volume escapade through the syntaxes, sub-languages, along with other details behind OWL 2 and its differences from OWL 1.

When an open source advocate, open standards advocate, or, well, pretty much anyone that competes with Microsoft (news, site) sees an extended hand from the software giant toward better interoperability, they tend to look and see if the other hand's holding a spiked club.

Even so, the Redmond, WA company continues to push the message that it has seen the light regarding open standards and interoperability.

As designers, we rely on communicating detail to our teammates and collaborators. Sometimes a picture is a thousand words, but often, we need more words and explanation to make those diagrams effective.

We had a chance to sit down with Dan Brown, the co-Founder and co-Principal of EightShapes, to talk about his experience with creating successful annotations. Here's what he shared.

The rumors are true. Microsoft (news, site) has an official open source license that was approved by the Open Source Initiative (OSI) -- the Ms-PL, or Microsoft Public License.

Since they have licensed their latest offering ASP.NET MVC 1.0 under the Ms-PL, we thought we would take a look at the license terms. Is there an evil catch somewhere in the terms and conditions?

Just when the rest of the world is shutting down its presses, axaio is updating MadeToPrint.

MadeToPrint is axaio's plug-in for InDesign and Xpress. It allows users to print to more than one source simultaneously. Now, it has been been updated for InDesign CS4, Adobe's most recent and major update. CS4 offers more complex solutions, as well as options for designers. With MadeToPrint's update, users can create high-volume PDFs, EPS and PS with more flexibility.

London-based company ClearPeople is offering 45-day trials of its new PeoplePoint and CorpCast add-ons for Microsofts SharePoint Server 2007. PeoplePoint makes it easier to find colleagues and their contact information, while CorpCast helps inform users of vital updates in realtime, without resorting to bulk e-mails.