What's new in CPS 3.5.0

CPSDesignerThemes

A new approach to themes in CPS, especially targeting professional web designers: design themes almost like static sites, only with special markers for portlet inclusions. In other words, you get the full expressive power of html and css, and not much to learn. It's also really fast, but graphical rendering isn't the most time-consuming part of CPS.

The basic principles are described in this blog entry:

http://www.racinet.fr/index.php?post/2009/06/10/A-new-themes-engine-for-CPS

The current features include:

• File system themes container (global)
• theme choosing criteria (negociation) identical as CPSSkins'
• CPSSkins export procedure
• Ships with exported CPS 3.4 theme and use it.

The roadmap is here: http://www.racinet.org/cps/designer-themes We are currently short before 0.3.

Administrative tools and improvements

• Switch user facility: the global manager can take any user's identity. Really a must to reproduce actual users' problems or check complicated rights configurations. It's much less a of a burden to test new developments or setups involving different roles (workflow...)
• Cps jobs: ready made script harness to launch scripts. Makes it easier to launch administrative tasks. Already leveraged for meta_profile replaying, catalog reindex and tree cache rebuild. cpshousekeeping and cron system are planned.
• Big error log cleanup: now most error logs are actually errors and it makes sense to get them in the mailbox.
• Centralization of ldap connexion information and passwords. Typically just one will be needed for a portal. Easy to update password or switch server.

User-level features

• Nested groups of users, a.k.a. groups of groups.
• Social bookmarking portlet : Digg, Redit...
• Integration of TinyMCE, a powerful Javascript HTML WYSIWYG text editor
• Notification emails originate from the person that triggered them (can be changed); also more control over html rendering of document inside them, and support embedded images. Can be, e.g, forwarded to a mailing list.
• No more mysterious Zope authentication popups for users: people stepping on unauthorized ground now get a proper Unauthorized page. This made a lot of user mistakes (sending links without checking permissions) look like software bugs.