WebCenter 11g PS6 is out - finally fixes firefox!

WebCenter 11g PS6 is out today. (By today I mean April 2 in Australia, but oddly it is April Fool's Day elsewhere. I hope those Oracle guys don't have a sense of humour!)

The important bit is the fix in SiteStudio 809 that allows Contribution Mode to work in Firefox 13 and up. I'm also happy to report the SiteStudio Manager panel works too in the latest Firefox.

But that's about it. Just a couple of other minor bugfixes.

If you're still on 10g you can use this latest SiteStudio 11g, just switch to using Java 1.6 in your intradoc.cfg file.


In Content Server, there is one new feature I'll mention, the internet-style search syntax for metadata fields. (I think it's already available in the QuickSearch but it can now be used on any metadata field.)

DoMetaInternetSearch=true

Spaces are treated as AND, commas as OR, minus as NOT, quotes as exact. They can be combined with parentheses.

SSP Exclude and other quirks

SSP (Site Studio Publisher) is a welcome replacement to the awkward SSPU. Like its predecessor, it is a tool for publishing a dynamic website as a bunch of simple HTML files. But it's got a few quirks you should know about if you want to get it working (and the manuals don't mention this stuff!)

Add a "future release" icon to contribution mode

Ken posed a good question on the intradoc forums. He wrote:

Our editors have requested that we add a "Future Release" indicator to the Site Studio contribution mode screen, similar to the workflow icon that can appear... Does anyone know what the syntax for accessing the metadata of the content is?

I thought it was a great idea, so I looked into it.

Hiding primaryFile for SiteStudio

Kyle has a great article on hiding the primaryFile field from Content Server checkin pages. I just wanted to augment the solution by mentioning a way to hide the field only from SiteStudio checkin pages.

Dynamic Lists & the Mystery of the Missing New Item

A common misunderstanding/complaint about Dynamic Lists on SiteStudio websites is the mystery of the missing new item. An author creates a new item using the nifty "Create New Item" wizard and at the end of the wizard the author is prompted to edit or exit, and save. Once saved, the new item disappears into the ether, never to be seen again! Huh? What is going on here? Try again... same result! Meanwhile some sub-editor somewhere is getting deluged with Workflow notifications for duplicate items... help!

This situation is commonplace on systems that are using Workflow. The newly created item is whisked away to the appropriate Workflow where it cannot be searched for or accessed until it meets approval. To the author, it looks like their item has vanished into thin air because it doesn't turn up in the Dynamic List that they are trying to update. This is an unfortunate but correct behaviour of Dynamic Lists!

Dynamic Lists simply return a list of content items that match a search criteria. The trick here is that Workflow revisions are never included in search results. Most of the time users don't notice because the search service will find the latest approved revision of an item, so if their item is in Workflow but has an older approved revision, the search will find that older revision as the latest approved. The situation faced here is that there is no older approved revision - the new item is trapped in workflow at revision 1, there is no latest approved revision! It cannot be searched for and it will not show up in any Dynamic List. But the item does exist and it can be found - it is parked safely on the Workflow page.

Mystery solved? Yes. Makes the system usable? No! How do we solve this conundrum?

The first revision needs to skip Workflow so that it can turn up in search results. Sounds simple enough, except now every new content item in the system is getting released without approval! Fortunately SiteStudio has an ace up its sleeve. It uses the "DontShowInListsForWebsites" metadata field to prevent a released content item from showing up on a website.

So, the solution is to:

• Update the Dynamic List elements so that new items are created with their metadata preset to exclude them from the website;
• Update the Workflow so that the first revision of any item is immediately released only if it is excluded from a website.

Done! The new item can now be found in the Dynamic List as an "excluded" item and it doesn't show up on the website. All an author has to do is turn off the "exclude" rule and their item is instantly visible on the website. They can do so directly from the Dynamic List (there are buttons in the list element toolbar that toggle excluded items) or they can update the item's metadata as they save their changes.

Copy a SiteStudio site? Even easier!

SiteStudio 10gR4 (546) is chock full of awesome new features, one of which is a new way to replicate your site. Yes, the previous article I just wrote about replication is already obsolete. Ha!

The new feature is section level replication and it's pretty nifty. It is enabled via the Designer application and it adds a new section property, called "Ready to replicate." If you switch region content anywhere on a webpage, the property automatically changes to false. You can see this on your webpage in the contribution mode banner as a "replicate" or "don't replicate" button. Now I have to confess... I haven't got a system set up to test this new replication functionality but I assume it is all part of the Manage Site Replication page*. Archiver should rebuild the project file on import and ignore the sections where "Ready to replicate" is false. Why did I say Archiver "should" rebuild? I haven't found a shred of documentation to explain any of this stuff, I'm just guessing (it only got a mention in the release notes textfile.)

Some other awesome features in recent SiteStudio releases include:

• Compare renditions - any renditions, not just the latest! On the Content Information page, in the revision history table, a new column is appended that allows you to compare the current revision to any other revision, future or past.
• Setting a default page name (instead of manually changing index.htm)
  SSDefaultUrlPageName=default.html
  
• Downloading images and documents from a friendly URL (the current directory) not the WebLocation (buried in the /groups/public/documents directories.)
  SSEnableDirectDelivery=true
  
• Oh and those stubbornly clinging to the Ephox editor, don't forget the "ondemand" editors option that was included a few releases prior. It lets you say how many elements get loaded automatically and how many must be clicked on to load. If your page has more than three or four elements then Ephox (Java) is likely to hang your machine, so this setting is a godsend.
  SSUseOnDemandEditors=true
  

There's more great features too, so do yourself a favour and upgrade.

* UPDATE
Section Level Replication works great! I was right, it works via the "Manage Site Replication" page with Archiver. Note that the project file's native file is modified to exclude sections but not the weblayout file. Strange but true.

SiteStudio10gR4 - Region Definitions & Region Templates

Forgive me for back-dating this post but I wanted to mention my excitement over the upcoming release of SiteStudio 10gR4. There was a webcast/webinar/webthingy where Oracle announced a new version (hopefully due in Jan09) where the main new features are region templates and region definitions.

Currently all layouts contains content regions that are defined and styled by settings in the layout. Editable elements in the region are also controlled in the layout. It leaves heaps of non-web code on the page and it is awkward to customise the display of content items. My real-world example is trying to maintain identical element settings in over 40 separate layouts, phew.

The definition of a region is now a separate "Region Definition" xml file. It has all the usual options (edit, info, approve, view differences) plus it now has the element definitions. Element definitions have been expanded, like allowing people to insert Flash as easily as inserting an image. It's separate to layouts, so in my 40-layout example all I would need to do is update the one definition file, instead of each of the 40 layouts. The region definition also controls the assigning of selected region templates.

The "Region Template" is also a separate xml file. It controls the presentation of content inside the region. An example they gave was a template that took a static list content item and displayed it as tabbed panels. Applying a different template changed the list into a flat page of heading & paragraphs. Hmmm... this looks ideal for creating navigation that is not section-based. Yay! They had another example that loaded a dynamic list query of images into a flash object. All the contributor had to do was change the query. Neat.

Other points of interest:
* Easy choice of FCK or Ephox editors
* Override the chosen editor's config or css, per element
* More element types (querys, dropdowns etc)

This brings some real power to contributors and yet it gives tighter control to designers. Impressive! I can't wait.

*****
UPDATE - Oooh oooh the new docco is now available on the Oracle site... it says they updated the LinkWizard! Yay! I can't find a picture... but it seems to work the same? Bah!

correcting links with a validation script

Ok, my personal war on dodgy UCM links continues... had a win when our Oracle consultant visited last week (I know he's reading this :)) and showed me some new tricks with validation scripts.

A validation script is just a bit of JavaScript that can be executed when a contributor tries to save their changes. There is no documentation on validation scripts so I never tried to use them myself... but all they do is run a defined function and throw an alert if the function does not return true. Well our mate suggested we just implement a script that silently rewrites dodgy UCM links and return true.

It's so simple and yet so liberating! Thankyou James.

The achilles heel of Oracle UCM - hyperlinks

UCM is a great document management system but its websites are sure awkward. The most obvious blunder was the editor so thank god that's been fixed! This leaves us with the biggest weakness in the system - hyperlinks.

Let's look at exhibit A - the Hyperlink Wizard. The new UCM spots a brand new fully AJAX interface for creating links. There's an amazing amount of code and effort put into it - just to make it work exactly like the old one! Fair dinkim guys, it took a pHD* to understand the old one so why replicate its horrible functionality? Did you expect your users to be so fully engrossed in the old way that they would be incapable of doing it any more simply? Why did you waste your time reinventing the wheel when it is just as square as the old one? I wonder if they have ever tried to create a link...

The first thing it does is ask "do you want to link to a section, file or URL?" What? Why do I have to choose? What's the difference? I want to link to another web page... who knows? Click on file. "Do you want the current item, existing file from server, upload a file, new file, or new word doc?" Hmmm, I'm editing this link so I don't want the current item (duh). Why would I create a word doc? I'm trying to make a link to a web page! I guess I'll have to choose existing, good thing I already know the content id. Once the initial search results finally load, i have to search again using my content id. Ok, I have selected my content item. Now it asks "use default web section metadata, choose a section or just link to URL?" Do i care? What does a section mean anyway? I think i want a URL but I know my page is already used in website x, so I'll drill down into that website until i find a "section" that sounds like my page. Click click click click click. Click next and it displays some ugly code and calls it my "link URL" (i thought i chose a section!) asking to me confirm. Hmm that looks nothing like the link i expected to see. Click finish and hope for the best.

Wow, what a pointlessly verbose experience (and i even removed a step!) Steve Krug says, "DON'T MAKE ME THINK!" so my contributors skip all that by simply pasting the published URL into the first "URL" field. The system however does not recognise published URLs, decides there are no links to that page, and deletes it from the published site. D'oh!

And take a look at the URLs it publishes. Every one ends in some seemingly random number! Why? Because the system must give every page a unique id. C'mon guys, most free CMS software generates human-sounding URLs even before Web2.0 happened. Is it really that hard?

And so ends another rant. Hopefully my next post will be about a replacement Hyperlink Wizard that I have written for you to download and enjoy.

* I work at a uni, my contributors are academics and they screw up the links all the time.

Unlocking the power of Ephox

The geniuses at Oracle have added Ephox as the new Contribution editor - but crippled it to make it look like their old editor. Newsflash to Oracle - the old editor sucked, why are you making the new one pretend to work the same as the old one?

Ephox comes with a WordCount feature, Find/replace, forms editing and even multimedia support. It has a menubar and can be configured for multiple toolbars. Why did Oracle remove these features?

Anyway, to turn that stuff back on you just need to edit the XML config file. Naturally the Oracle guys thought that was too simple so they generate the XML "on the fly" from a Javascript file. To edit the config for the wysiwyg element, hack this file:
/weblayout/resources/wcm/sitestudio/elements/wysiwyg/wysiwyg.config.js

The XML syntax you need can be found in the Developer guide at the Ephox website.
http://www.ephox.com/developers/editliveforjava/v60/DeveloperHTML/index.html

Overall I'm pretty happy with the Ephox editor. My big gripe is that it uses a Java applet - Ephox seem to have abandoned any non-Java versions. Applets are horrible on websites - all your contributors will need Java on their machines. I've seem some weird repainting from the applet and it can be unstable, it's slow to load, who knows which Java version to trust. I mean, I'm on a webpage, I'm editing a webpage, it's rendering a webpage - why force it through Java? Hmmm I appear to be ranting, let me start again...

Overall I'm pretty happy with the Ephox editor. Apart from relying on a silly applet :) the code it produces is clean and well structured. Ephox have some nifty features like Accessibility reports, thesaurus and WordCount. I've upgraded to SiteStudio260 and the Ephox java is quite stable. The only hiccup I've had was that it couldn't tell the difference between a print and a screen stylesheet. I put a few support requests through to the Ephox people and they responded promptly and helpfully. If you're considering an upgrade, go for it.

Finally - the new Contributor Editor!

After much pleading and praying Oracle are finally ready to release the upgrade to the Contribution Editor. It has not yet been released but I got a pre-release to play with.

It uses Ephox (java-based) to provide a wysiwyg editor that works on any computer. It required two or three CS upgrade/patches to get running but that wasn't a big drama.

Highlights include the ability to write headings (yay!) easy switch-to-code view, enhanced table & image formatting options (includes deleting cells & rows) and overall the generated code is nicer. It also features an Accessibility Report. I like the way that the metadata screen is now available as a tab instead of popping up before every save.

So far I've found the java-based ephox to be a bit flaky - no word on the preferred java version (I'm using v6.5). Hopefully I can dump it for the javascript-based ephox.

Get Enhanced Contributor Editing!

My contributors can add headings, delete rows and auto-insert image ALT text. Can yours? No? Ha!

Well, now they can too, using these replacement HTML Object Properties forms. I have rewritten the standard forms and bundled them together for you to download.

List of new functionality:

• Apply "auto-styles" (CSS class) to text, paragraphs & tables
• Convert or remove text formatting (FONT, SPAN, BOLD etc)
• Convert paragraphs from/to headings (H1 to H6, P, DIV etc)
• Convert table cells from/to table header cells (TD or TH)
• Edit or delete table rows
• Calculate image download size & time (popup alert for oversized images)
• ALT text for image auto-inserted from the image's "Title" metadata
• Set image dimensions & keep aspect ratio
• Set type of numbered list & starting number

Note that no core CS or SS code is modified.

I included a readme.txt file with instructions, disclaimers and other fancy words. Enjoy!

• Download Replacement HTML Object Properties forms (ZIP, 19kb)

How I got H1 Headings into Site Studio pages

One of the biggest frustrations of our users in the inability to insert a standard HTML heading.

"I beg your pardon" you say, "no headings?"

Yep, the Site Studio Contributor application window allows you to only write paragraphs. You can insert tables, horizontal rules, bold text and even classes*, but not headings.

To get around this deficiency, I started by modifying the HTML Object Properties Forms. Being the logical programmer that I am, I tried to create a function that allowed me to replace a <p> tag with a <h1> tag, using the standard HTML replaceChild() method. Unfortunately this throws an error.

It turns out that any attempt to insert a new node in the HTML DOM will be rejected... oddly enough it didn't mind me deleting nodes though. After a while I gave up and forgot about it.

Then the other night as I was trying to sleep I thought "instead of being a nice boy and respecting the DOM, why not just treat code as dirty text and do a simple string replace?" and vola! it works.

I simply grab the node I want to work with and replace its outerHTML with its innerHTML , wrapped in my heading tags. Like this:

g_obj.outerHTML='<h1>'+g_obj.innerHTML+'</h1>';

Now if only I'd thought of that last year...

Oh there's one final twist... you can't use outerHTML on table cells, which sucks when you need to change a TD into TH. To get around this problem you need to replace the entire table!

* When applying a class it uses a FONT tag!? Crazy.