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2013 Oct 30

What's New in Dotclear 2.6 — Chapter 1

The new version of Dotclear, 2.6, which should be published in about two weeks (unless a blocker bug is detected but not fixed by then), sports a brand new administration interface; new in looks, and new in a few of its features. In the following entry and two more posts after that, we will present you what has changed since the last stable version (2.5.3).

Graphic design and ergonomics

An admin console adapted to all screens

As announced when 2.6-RC came out, Dotclear has a brand new look. New color palette, new icons, new forms, and, last but not least, the administration console adapts itself to the size of your screen. Here's what it looks like on a cell phone, on a tablet and on a computer screen:

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A retractable menu

In order to make the most out of your screen, we have made the left menu retractable. It can be unfolded or collapsed by clicking the vertical band bordering it to the right:

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A new visual identity

The new visual identity is presented in details as an appendix to the documentation embedded in your Dotclear installation. This can be very useful to those of you who develop plugins and configurable themes. To display it, go from any help block to the global help > Documentation développeurs > Conventions (bottom right box) > Charte des pages de l'administration. (We're working on a full translation of the documentation, I promise.)

A permanently available search function

You will also note the search box that appeared on top of the main menu. It is therefore always available. For now, it can only search through blog entries, but in the future it will be extended to make it possible to search through all contents.

A contextual help for each page

The contextual help has been enriched: you will from now on find help for every single admin page. Help is accessible through a link in the upper right corner of each page, illustrated by a small life buoy icon.

Development and code

There's also been many modifications and improvements on the development side of things. Particular care was put into introducing a minimal amount of mandatory modifications for developers. Most of the known plugins have been tested with this new version and work perfectly fine. A large number of them have already been adapted to integrate those changes as well as possible.

Items organization in the global menu

The global menu is, as before, divided in "Blog", "System" and "Plugins", but the organization has been updated to be more logical from the user's point of view:

  • "Blog" contains the features that pertain to blog contents and the plugins that act or are set on a per blog basis;
  • "System" contains the features related to the settings of the global installation;
  • "Plugins" contains global plugin settings.

Multiple plurals

Some languages have plural forms that differ from those of French, or multiple such forms. For example, zero is plural in English and singular in French; Russian has three forms of plural while French only has one. Dotclear can now deal with these specificities.

And more...

You'll find on this page (currently only available in French) an exhaustive overview of what has changed for developers.

Recently updated plugins take those changes into account. If you are a plugin author, think about it for your next update!

2013 Oct 20

Dotclear 2.6-RC — codename: Traviata

It is not without emotion, as Violetta would say, that we are getting ready to unveil before your astonished eyes the candidate release of the next version of Dotclear. This version precedes the final one by a few weeks. We were so eager to expose it to your rigorous and nevertheless gracious testing that we indeed decided not to wait until the final version to make it public. Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce to you Dotclear 2.6-RC.

The set

Because every show needs an appropriate set, we have entirely repainted the stage. We therefore present you with a new visual identity, together with a set of icons that match the new color scheme:

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We have also taken advantage of this opportunity to create an additional variation to the Blowup theme, Plumetis. Let it be known that our secret plans to take over the world include projects for major improvements in the development and configuration of themes in the next version (2.7).

Stage direction

We have also carried on our ameliorations in terms of ergonomics and accessibility. There is still a long way to go—ARIA, ATAG and others aren't fully there yet—but we have made a number of noteworthy improvements in this domain.

The administration area will also be easier to use on various supports. Our objective for this version was to drastically improve the usage of the administration on mobile devices and small screens. Mission accomplished! A few pages aren't fully optimized yet, but we will work on them in the future.

The orchestra

Dotclear 2.6-RC is brought to you by a beautiful, merry, and prolific team work. We have sustained a few minor storms, but the mood was (almost) always delightfully good. While JcDenis, baby bottle in one hand, kid in the other, and keyboard on his lap was entirely recoding the maintenance and backup interface as well as the management of plugins and themes, nikrou was lovingly cooking up categories and media management in between two javascript implementations. Kozlika was making icons and torturing DOM, CSS, coders and users together. Lipki was aflutter around the widgets, closing ticket after ticket with artistic dexterity; so did sogox and bernardleroux. Dsls delved once again in the deepest of our basements to secure the stage and prepare the shows to come.

Franck Paul directed the whole with the big booming voice of the irrascible and grouchy dictator he ought to be. Cherry on top of this masterful production: a commit by Pep himself!

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In the meanwhile, community managers Samantdi, Guillaume, Krazy Kitty (smoothly acknowledging yourself: one of the perks of translation) and Otir were, well, managing the community on the digital waves. Pinkilla, Tomer, Llu_ne, BG, mirovinbien, Jean-Michel, Aide Pour—yes, that's an odd name even for us—, Sacrip'Anne, Lomalarch, Philippe, xave, anthom, Patidou, Tetsuo, Cunégonde, Denis, Gilsoub, Pierre, brol, Armony and others also put their shoulders to the wheel, documenting, testing, animating the mailing list, writing whimsical minutes of our weekly IRC meetings, making coffee, updating the server's Dokuwiki, geolocalizing photos, and much more.

(Now's the point where we realize with utter dread that name-dropping will necessarily result, as we cannot but have forgotten people, in bitter chiding... and a few beers!)

The singers

That's you!

We need you to test this version, to report bugs, to help updating the documentation, to report potential translation mistakes (in French, English, and other languages while you're at it), to send us marshmallows.

So, in short: download, install, use, and let us know all about it!

We will publish here, before the final version of 2.6 comes out, more detailed information on the changes brought by this new version, particularly on the code side.

Overture

Paa, paa, paa, paa, papam... you can download version 2.6-RC here. Avanti la musica \o/

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