Symphony.

Official? No. There’s a usability argument for both approaches: on the one had, consistency is crucial. On the other hand, user expectations are crucial. I’m not sure there’s a wrong or right answer in this case.

I will say, though, that Subsection Manager already introduces several UI components that are unique in Symphony, and I don’t think may people would argue that it’s a problem. If you can’t make something consistent (because, for example, the functionality is unique), then the important thing is to make sure it’s obvious.

Solution: Check box in the section manager for auto-save.

Why decide when you can let the user decide? I would probably turn it on for most of my users but others might not.

Why decide when you can let the user decide?

Because the Subsection Manager has so many settings, that I have to think about creating an own UI for it. Just think of the preferences for Stage (constructable, destructable, draggable, droppable, searchable) to mention only a few. The Symphony section editor has not been made for fields with that many settings. The lessing settings needed, the better.

I would probably turn it on for most of my users but others might not.

That’s another problem: The more settings we have, the more complex the support will be. So far, most of the problems were the result of missing Stage or Draggable files - but think of 10 switches in the preferences that might be the cause of a “misbehaviour” …

Naja, ich hab’s nicht anders gewollt :)
But back to work now :)

Subsection Manager 1.0beta2

This morning I pushed a lot of fixes to the GitHub repositories of Subsection Manager and Stage. Please update your test installs to Subsection Manager 1.0beta2 and Stage 1.0 and report bugs in the GitHub issue tracker. If your using Git, please don’t forget to fetch the latest versions of the submodules.

Thanks a lot,
Nils

Known Issues

• The upgrade from Mediathek to Subsection Manager does not work yet.
• The settings for Stage are missing in the preference panel
• Due to a change in the Symphony core the Custom item caption does not work correctly in the preferences.

Today I tried to improve the Subsection Manager preferences which now look like this (right click and open in new window/tab to see the screenshot full size):

As usual, feedback is welcome:

• Do you understand the new preference panel?
• Do the labels and the text make sense to you?
• Are there any typos?
• Case sensitivity: Which words should be written with uppercase first letters? Is it “data source” or “Data Source”?

Thanks for your help!
Nils

What an improvement! The CSS you’ve used here would be great in the core to allow for extra flexibility of other extensions that have many options. A couple of small things:

• “click alt for negation” should this read “alt+click for negation”?
• the “Data Source” label could read “Data Source XML” to be more explicit
• I would always uppercase first letters so “Data Source” seems more correct to me

Great work :-)

Thanks Nick :)

The CSS you’ve used here would be great in the core to allow for extra flexibility of other extensions that have many options.

The styles will need some clean-up but they will be available for everybody to use when the extension is released. I mainly used fieldsets with legends and a unordered list with a few tweaks. I’m not sure if the team would incorporate these additions into the core as it seems that development will now focus on Symphony 3.

I’m not sure if the team would incorporate these additions into the core as it seems that development will now focus on Symphony 3.

I imagine not, but in the meantime we can always just include them in our own stylesheets?

Yes, that’s what I thought, too. It’s just a small file and I will push it to GitHub the next days.

I’m going to try the new version now. I don’t know if you have fixed the bug as described in the previous page, but the new preferences certainly look good! I will report back on any spellings / issues.

Edit:

The bug I’m getting is still there unfortunately. However I did notice you have fixed the Firefox bug when you add an image; it now shows the file you are uploading, great stuff!

Nils, I am just starting with Symphony and your subsection manager looks like a great extension.

You explicitly state that it’s not ready for production, but I’m just starting with a new site and I wonder: could I start using SSM already? I’d love to be able to, since it adds nice functionality over MediaThek (and upgrading from MT to SSM seems unfinished).

My impression is that it’s ‘nearly’ ready. By the time the site I’m working on is nearing completion, chances are SSM will be stable, right?

Sorry if this is not an appropriate question, but can you say anything about the process?

I use it regularly.

I think that warning is because things are going to change later with Subsection Manager. As long as you keep that in mind and know that there still are a few lingering bugs it’s fine.

David, just a few words on the status of this extension:

I’m only able to work on the Subsection Manager in the evenings or on the weekends. So while there are days where development moves forward in a fast way, there might be weeks where I won’t find time at all to work on this.

These are the main things I need to do until I can release 1.0final:

• Find and fix a bug that prevents newly created items from being attached to the Subsection Manager field.
• Complete the Mediathek Upgrader.
• Save Stage settings to the database and create Subsection Manager instances based on these preferences.
• Write a decent readme and basic documentation.
• Get some sleep.

I’m using the Subsection Manager for my own website and beside these missing bits it seems to run quite stable. But I have the advantage that if something is not working, I know how to fix it as it is my own code :)

Why you shouldn’t use the extension in production environments

• Over the last days I have been working on the Subsection Manager’s preferences. The new implementation will result in a few database related changes. As this is a beta, I won’t provide an upgrade script for these changes.
• I’m working on an upgrader that will automatically replace all Mediathek instances with Subsection Manager fields. So while there might always be changes during the beta that will break a direct update, there will be an officially supported upgrade script for Mediathek users bundled with the final release.
• There might always be changes that break everything that was working in the beta before. There is no guaranteed support in these cases until the final release.

Get some sleep.

Nils you are showing signs of weakness!

I’m getting old :)

Nils, are you trying to tell me you are not a super-human code-crunching extension-spewing Symphony-machine? I’m disappointed…

However, from a human point of view you make some good points. I guess I’ll go with Mediathek for the moment. Hopefully there will come a day that I will join the ranks of the Symphony half-gods, but for now I’ll lurk the forums and try to make some text appear through the magic of XSLT.

#hoorayforrealisticexpectations :-)

:-)

So I installed the latest everything and it didn’t work. The search bar that should be below the gray list didn’t show. After playing around with multiple installations trying to get it to work, I found the problem. There is a conflict with either the CSS or JS file with the Calendar Overlay extension. Hopefully someone can resolve the conflict or update one of the extensions. It would be cool if I can use both at the same time.

Marc, can you please post a screenshot of what’s happening?

One note concerning the Calendar Overlay: My Date and Time field and the Calendar Overlay are using a quite similar layout. The next version of Date and Time will also feature an overlay option so you can use the default date field. Subsection Manager and the next version of Date and Time will both be using Stage for their general layout so both extensions will be optimized to work side by side.

Please be aware that each field that you are using inside a subsection that relies on JavaScript might break in the Subsection Manager context. This is due to the interface changes needed to make inline section display possible. I’m not sure yet about the best way to handle this but the final 1.0 release of Subsection Manager will only guarantee support for the core fields. Other field will be added on request and one after the other.

The problem is with the Calendar Overlay extension. It causes conflicts with other extensions. I did mention it a while back to the developer, but no movement as of yet.