Dave Burke

A Sueetie Forum Fun Link Control for YetAnotherForum.NET

daveburke — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:46:54 -0800

I've been spending quality latenight geek time with YetAnotherForum.NET 1.9.4 beta lately. I am so excited about the new features coming and the customizations I'm working on. The two are feeding off one another; so many new features in 1.9.4, both front-end and back are firing me up to highlight YAF.NET and bring more community services into its domain of cool. It's difficult not to blog about what's coming, but I never blog about something until it's on the page. The only thing I can say is prepare for an avalanche of blog posts when YetAnotherForum.NET 1.9.4 goes live on Sueetie.com.

There are many custom ASPNET controls in YAF.NET, but not a generic <ForumLink /> control that did precisely what I wanted, support Sueetie-oriented properties with accompanying Intellisense to crank them out in a hurry.

Okay, enough with the foreplay. Here’s the control in action.

<SUEETIE:ForumLink runat="server" TextLocalizedTag="VIEWFORUMS" Linkto="RecentActivity" />

Simple, economical, does the job in Sueetie Style.

ForumLink source lives in the Sueetie.Forums project shown below, which also gives you an idea of some of the controls and objects involved in custom coding to either extend or integrate YAF.NET with the Sueetie Framework. Not much there, really, which is the way we like it.

I patterned the control from the YAF.Controls.ThemeButton control, particularly its use of full Localization support for Tags and Titles, along with support for styling, NavigationUrl and additional properties common in YetAnotherForum.NET controls.

Using the ForumLink control is real simple. You'll notice the LinkTo Intellisense. Nice. I'll add more pages as I need them. The LinkTo is based on YetAnotherForum.NET's ForumPages enumerator in the YAF.Config library, a basic ingredient in YAF.NET navigation.

You can see a number of other properties supported by the control in the screenshot below, particularly the Localization properties for the url text and title at the bottom of the list. YetAnotherForum.NET uses a [Page:Tag] structure to serve up localization strings. So the logic would be [TextLocalizedPage:TextLocalizedTag] to produce the string. Because this is a Sueetie-optimized control, both "Page" properties default to "SUEETIE." One less thing.

And that's tonight's Forum Fun Link Control for YetAnotherForum.NET. Thanks for reading.

Everyman Links for November 3, 2009

daveburke — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:41:15 -0800

In the future, monitors will be wider. This Future of the Web in Five Years article goes out on a limb and says monitors will be wider in the future. Get OUT! Seriously, we might want to start thinking beyond 1024x in Web Interface Design, wayyy beyond 1024. Other future thought points include micropayments, more collaboration, and “even more Social Apps” if that’s possible.

Bloggers work harder than Twitterers. Obvious points made in 20 Reasons Why You Should Blog Before You Twitter, but valuable none-the-less. “Twitter is popular because it is easy. It is easy to setup, easy to copy-paste links into, and easy to write 140 character bits. But, having your own blog remains the strongest platform if you’re serious about sharing ideas and having a continued dialog with the world. Blogging is the antithesis of easy, however it is far more rewarding.”

Digital Marketing Mixer Mix. 33 Social Media and Digital Marketing Tips with 8 “killer” quotes from Jay Baer in reviewing a recent Digital Marketing Mixer in Chicago. Liked “Think about your web site’s front page as a collection of pages, not one home page.” “Clean up your landing pages.” “Insert retweet buttons into PDF files.” (extreme maybe?) “Humanize your blog.” (I should try that one.) “Let your members decide how they want to use ‘their’ community.” “Use trackable links to measure success.” “Don’t train. Simplify.”

Twitter backgrounds for the well-balanced Twitterer. In the year or so since I’ve been tweeting I never once touched my Twitter page settings, its background, theme, anything other than adding my avatar and description. There are cool backgrounds available, for instance, but I just can’t do it. I don’t want anyone to know I actually look at my Twitter web page, and a souped-up background is a dead giveaway.

Solar Panels in Space. Fun article (with pictures!) titled “Five Technologies That Could Change Everything.” I particularly like the space-based solar power illustration. Interesting summary and additional considerations on energy futures from Next Big Future, where one informed commenter GoatGuy says, “NO compelling economic argument can be made for space-based solar power over a larger ground-based, diurnally limited array.” Yeah, I should have considered that, but it was still a cool picture.

Popup Tent Fever. By this time each year my desire for a popup tent subsides, though the force is strong during the warmer months of potential New England camping. Here is a new type of popup tent that I’ve never seen before. Not sure if I like it or not.

Zune Boomboxes! Oh wait, the docks in these boomboxes seem to support iPods only. I just assumed…

The Wii Exercise Bike. Another Nordic Track Ski Machine wannabe.

Doc Searls is liking Ice Rocket. Doc likes Ice Rocket for blog searching. I’ve been using Ice Rocket’s BlogTracker for several months and like it a lot. BlogTracker is a scaled-down Google Analytics, but provides useful information in a snap and pretty much in real time.

IPhone today. NUDE IT for iPhone is finally here (video.) And if you haven’t seen the dancing guyPhones in your neighborhood on Halloween, that video is here.

100 Ajax and JavaScript Techniques. You didn’t think I’d leave you without a gonzo list of javascript slideshows and navigation tabs did you?

New Sueetie Site: Sportsaurus.com

daveburke — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:10:57 -0800

I’m very excited to announce the first community site based on the Gummy Bear release of Sueetie: Sportsaurus.com.

Sportsaurus.com is the work of Simon Bartlett, or “Bitterstar” to the Sueetie.com Community. This is exciting news for me because I didn’t have anything to do with the site. Simon took the Gummy Bear web package and re-themed it with the fresh look you see below. As a bonus he added Captcha and Email Verification signup to the site’s registration process. Because of Sueetie’s simple architecture and the fact that it uses the Website Project model, Simon was able to add both Captcha and Email Verification signup without the Sueetie source code libraries. Simon generously shared his code which I’ll be adding as a member registration option to the framework.

Sportsaurus.com is a complete community site with blog, forums and a wiki. Those are displayed below. From reading the site announcements a gallery apparently is coming as well. Seeing this beautiful site motivates me to keep hacking away at the Sueetie Framework to see what other talented people like Bitterstar will create with Sueetie in the future.

Nordic Track Book Club Review: Tuned In

daveburke — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:37:23 -0800

Tuned In: Uncover the Extraordinary Opportunities That Lead to Business Breakthroughs. The title pretty much does my job of describing the book to you. A light-weight Nordic Track read with good marketing advice. 2.5-out-of-5 Nordic Track Ski Stars.

_______________

p.9 An idea that people immediately understand has value to them even if they have never heard of your company or its products and services.

The tuned in company constantly listens to, observes and understands the problems that buyers are willing to pay money to solve.

p.12 What business are we in? What businesses are we not in? Who are our buyers? What’s unique about our offering? How can we compete? What’s our positioning strategy? How can we turn a profit?

p.25 Because the customer-driven organization relies on existing customer requests for endless extensions to existing product lines, the company can’t develop breakthrough products and services that resonate with non-customers.

p.29 Your opinion, although interesting, is irrelevant.

p.32 Tuned out. Make them groan when they open it. “Packing peanuts.” Tuned out. Force them to do it your way. Tuned out. Make them work to find you.

p.45 Instead of just pushing your product you see market problems through your buyers’ eyes and can understand and respond to how they make decisions.

p.63 Tuned in buyer interview checklist. Remember, your buyer is the expert. You are there to observe and to listen. Don’t talk about your company or your products.

p.64 Categorize your buyers into three segments: customers, evaluators and potential customers. You’ll need to spend most of your time with potential customers to find your next resonator. Understanding the needs of these three classes of people will give you a broader perspective on the market potential of your future offerings.

p.76 Identify the unresolved problems of a particular group of people.

p.94 All that matters is your prospective customer’s perceptions. The impact of your product on their lives, relationships or jobs.

p.108 Tuned in organizations create marketing materials that people actually want to consume.

What makes some products easy to buy while others are an uncomfortable hassle? The packaging experience. Breakthrough experiences are simple to understand and implement.

p.112 What are your organization’s unique abilities to deliver value to your customers. We call these abilities your distinctive competence. Your core competency is simply what your organization is good at. Distinctive competence is what you excel at that your competitors do not.

p.115 Going out for ice cream is an event. Most importantly its a group event. Cold Stone.

p.124 Refining the resonator. The elevator speech is your starting point for developing a powerful idea. The final step is to distill it into a hard-hitting and memorable concept.

p.135 The most powerful ideas for communicating with the market rarely have anything to do with what a product or service actually does. Look at your marketing materials. Count the number of “we” “us” “our” then count “you” “your.” Which counts wins?

p.169 Does your website focus on market problems faced by your buyer personas and solutions to those problems instead of egotistical nonsense about your products and about the mission and vision of your company?

A Lovely Wiki

daveburke — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 18:13:56 -0800

I took some time over the weekend to spruce up my newly updated ScrewTurn Wiki 3.0.1.4 at Sueetie.com. I've been planning on adding a good bit of new content now that Gummy Bear is alive and I wanted something pretty to look at. Ask any of my clients and they'll tell you that before I do any serious coding I first need some pretty to look at. Those are the rules.

I also wanted more document real estate, so the first thing I did was get rid of the sidebar and move the navigation links to the top of the content area. Search is on its own page. The old home page on the left, the new is on the right.

A nice navigation menu is in its new location showing the cool wiki features. Some day I'll figure out what "Navigation Paths" are and play with namespaces.

More breathing space now on the All Pages listing.

The same search results with the old layout and the new. Much nicer.

But the most important update was the Screwturn Wiki Editor. It's difficult to see the differences, but I'm happy with it and that's all that matters. No more Courier font in the editor text area. I hate Courier. And better looking buttons. I'm big on buttons.

I also styled the popup windows, like the Image Selector window shown here. What, you didn't know ScrewTurn Wiki had an Image Selector window? Pretty cool, eh? There's more you'll find out about ScrewTurn Wiki now that we've got some pretty on the page.

Sueetie now running ScrewTurn Wiki 3.0.1.4

daveburke — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 12:07:18 -0800

I spent a couple of hours this morning upgrading my development environment and Sueetie.com to the latest version of Screwturn Wiki, v3.0.1.4. I've upgraded ScrewTurn several times, along with Gallery Server Pro, BlogEngine.NET and YetAnotherForum.NET. I honestly enjoy going through the process. With each upgrade I feel I know the application better, which was a main driver for Sueetie in the first place.

ScrewTurn 3.0.0.3333 to 3.0.1.4 was a minor upgrade, but any upgrade in Sueetie requires downloading the solution source and doing the Sueetie integration. I decided this morning to begin documenting the process of upgrading the apps going forward. This blog post is the first step.

Below is the ScrewTurn Wiki Visual Studio Solution. Each Sueetie application uses its own solution. In yellow are Sueetie-specific items, the \Web root website, Sueetie.Core, Controls and Wiki class projects. WebApplication in red is the ScrewTurn Web Application project which references Sueetie.Controls and Sueetie.Core. Sueetie adds an application-specific class project, here Sueetie.Wiki, which references various ScrewTurn libraries.

Below are the files in ScrewTurn that the Sueetie Framework touches and which must be applied for the update. The trick, of course, is to touch them as little as possible. Given how much is gained by integrating with Sueetie, this isn't bad at all.

Now with ScrewTurn 3.0.1.4 locked and loaded I can make a few changes I've been wanting to make. One change is to get rid of the sidebar area and relocate those links in the content header. Wiki document real estate is precious, and I want more of it. The second thing I'm going to do is dress up the wiki editor page. Unlike BlogEngine.NET where I exclusively publish from Live Writer, I'm in the ScrewTurn editor a lot. I need to look at something pretty. Once it looks good I can start changing how it works. I guess I'm superficial that way.

Gummy Bear +48 Hours +YetAnotherForum.NET

daveburke — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:35:04 -0800

I wasn't blowing smoke up your skirt when I was talking about the great feedback to Gummy Bear. At the bottom of this post is a screenshot of my inbox of YetAnotherForum.NET forum post notifications over the last couple of days. And NO, none originated from me. YAF.NET doesn't have a self-notification "feature." Inside joke…

YetAnotherForum.NET keeps on ticking and I spent a lot of time in it the last couple of days. I was somehow able to bill 8 hours today, but then again, I walked into the office at 6:00 AM and it's now after 7:00 PM, so only 8 hours billed is pretty pathetic if you put it in context.

Tomorrow is Sueetie Saturday, as my wife and daughter are in Hawaii, leaving me "alone with my work." (And they say they love me.) Life will get back to normal on their return Sunday when balance will return to my world. But back to Sueetie Saturday, I plan on updating Screwturn Wiki in Sueetie from 3.0.0.333 to 3.0.1.400 because I spend so much time in it. I was going to update Gallery Server Pro, since I discovered the other day that I was a couple of minor versions behind on that. However, considering that I now live in YetAnotherForum.NET, I think upgrading to 1.9.4 Beta 2 wins.

Gummy Bear +48 Hours

daveburke — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 05:20:07 -0800

It's been about 48 hours since Gummy Bear has been in the wild and the feedback has been excellent. The detail of observations tells me that people see Sueetie's potential and are testing every function and reporting each appearance of weirdness they find. That means a lot, to me personally and to the project being successful.

An example of the detailed observations was the default "admin" user not being assigned a Display Name in the site setup script, which was causing the greeting on the Forums area menu to read "Greetings, !" instead of "Greetings, Administrator Dude!" Another observation was that the site menu "Inbox" link did not work correctly when using a non-80 port configuration. Fellow Vermonter, Tonster321, reported that and even provided the fix after I sent him the essential source for generating the Inbox url.

The first 48 hours of Gummy Bear have been very positive all around, which brings us to yet another aspect of Open Source Project Development they don't teach you in college: how to manage updates. So I began a Gummy Bear Updates wiki page. I also decided on how to release updates in relation to versioning. From the wiki page, "cumulative updates will be made available as minor update releases. Gummy Bear versioning format is Major#.Minor#.Update#, example 1.1.15. This denotes version 1, with 1 cumulative minor version release and 15 updates to 1.1."

Gummy Bear is currently at 1.0.3. On the Gummy Bear Update page I list the update, its contents and a description of the changes. These will serve as incremental updates as issues are identified and enhancements added. Gummy Bear 1.1.0 will contain all updates as a cumulative release.

I'm also instituting Gumdrop Awards for Outstanding Sueetie Achievement. The members who are responsible for the updates are listed in the Update's Gumdrop column. Gumdrops will factor into Sueetie's evolving Member Points system. Gumdrops are good.

If you're interested in earning your very own Gumdrop points, Gummy Bear is available at Sueetie.com.

Gummy Bear Theme Packs Ahoy

daveburke — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 04:03:08 -0800

The Theming Gummy Bear document is complete, for now. Grooving in Wiki-think, no document is ever "complete," but I think there's enough information there to create Gummy Bear Theme Packs. I won't repost the full document, but will touch on the highlights to describe Sueetie Theme logic and how I recommend creating a site theme.

From Theming Gummy Bear:

The most basic description of Sueetie Site Theming logic is that all applications use shared .master pages unique to the application. Each theme's image and .CSS files are stored separately for all apps, but in locations unique to the app. For review, .master pages: shared, theme image and CSS files: separate folders.

At the Gummy Bear site root are the /masters, /images and /style folders, pertinent to Sueetie theming. sueetie.master is used as the main Master Page, alternate.master for contents in the /members area (login page, my account, register, and so on.)

Here you can see the shared .masters in the web root area and the separated theme images and stylesheets for the example Lollipop and Licorice themes. The folder names for the theme contents must be identical for that theme across the site.

The Theme Changer in Sueetie Administration sets a SiteSettings property and updates the theme setting for the apps across the site according to their individual logic. Each determine the current theme differently, but we don't have to go into that now.

The Sueetie SiteSettings Theme property is used to link to the theme's stylesheets for all apps. The app and its pages will specify its .master pages, which is not changed in Sueetie Themes.

In the screenshot below you'll see how the .master page loads its area- and page-specific .CSS files. For the top web area those .CSS files are shared.css and sueetie.css, or shared.css and alternate.css. shared.css is, as its name implies, shared across all Sueetie applications. All applications load shared.css.

The CSS loading order found in all applications across Sueetie is

The application's own .CSS file(s)
shared.css
Sueetie application .CSS file (sueetie.css for non-app pages, alternate.css for member area, message pages, and so on, forum.css, blog.css, media.css, etc...)

A word on Sueetie Theme Packages. My hope is that a clearly defined Sueetie Theming process will give birth to beautiful Theme Packages. As I said earlier, .master pages are shared, so with shared .master pages it is likely that the prior theme's .master pages will be overwritten. For the sake of a simple design across 6 uniquely architected applications we're going to live with that fact. Change the .masters as you see fit. We will either add backup capabilities or simply educate site administrators, whatever works. I do not advise creating .master files with new names, as the applications have their own conventions.

Here is the Lollipop Theme Pack as a ZIP file to use as a reference and a theme pack template to help you get starting creating a Sueetie Site Theme. Here is a suggested approach to creating a new Sueetie Theme pack.

Open the lollipop.ZIP and extract the contents to an empty working folder.
Rename all lollipop folder names to the name of your new theme, let's say it's called RootBeer. Oh, one thing. Important! If you plan on sharing or selling the theme, could you come up with "sueet" name? Something having to do with candy, sugar, that sort of thing. Thanks!
Do a global Search-Replace in NotePad++ (my favorite, any text editor that can do search/replace over multiple files), changing any appearance of "Lollipop" to "Rootbeer."
At this point you can copy the theme on top of your development web site.
Go into the Control Panel and set the new site theme to "rootbeer." If we both did our jobs correctly, there should be no change in your site appearance whatsoever. By the way, theme changes may not display immediately due to caching, so if you're not sure if a theme was updated, touch the app's web.config.
Start theming! At this point you can start changing CSS classes, backgrounds and colors, and they should begin to display for you.
If you wanted to package the theme you would repopulate the renamed Lollipop folders accordingly. Zip and go!

The Theming Gummy Bear document continues with details and screenshots on theming the individual applications. If you like theming, you'll love Theming Gummy Bear! Or not.

Gummy Bear is officially in the wild

daveburke — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 10:03:00 -0800

It's official, Gummy Bear has been released into the wild. I received some great feedback on the initial release of Gummy Bear over the last week where a few folks in the Sueetie Forums saw the news, downloaded it, installed it and got back to me. Exactly what I needed. Thanks again, guys. As a result we now have a clean SQL2005 setup script, an improved theming model, and no bugs yet to report.

The original release was for 64x-bit systems and I provided 32x-bit DLLs in a separate ZIP. In watching the download stats and it seemed that almost everyone was using 32x-bit systems and had to downloaded of second 32x DLL zip. With the official release I decided to provide two complete versions, GummyBear.Web.1.0.2.32x.zip and GummyBear.Web.1.0.2.64x.zip. That also allowed me to remove an installation step, which is always a good thing.

I'll be updating Theming Gummy Bear on the Sueetie Wiki over the next couple of days, as I know one of the first things people will want to do with Gummy Bear is replace the Lollipop theme with a candy theme they can call their own. I hope there will be lots of playing and experimenting with the great apps in Sueetie, so I provided instructions on how to clean the site and start fresh in Gummy Bear Reloaded.

Gummy Bear is available in the Sueetie Media Gallery. You'll need to register at Sueetie.com to have access to the download folder. (Sidenote: I really need to create a document-specific Gallery Server Pro format to display more document description information. The current thumbnail display as you'll notice is pretty limiting.) If you have any thoughts, problems or questions, there are several Gummy Bear-specific forums for feedback and support.

I know this is an official announcement and everything, but I feel like the nerd Kent at the end of the movie Real Genius (okay, when do I NOT feel like Kent), when he was in Professor Hathaway's house standing at the huge mysterious vat covered with aluminum foil. He looks up to heaven and says, "Okay, God. Let me…have it!" The laser fires from above and hilarity ensues.

New Sueetie Theme: Licorice!

daveburke — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:59:56 -0800

Gummy Bear has been available for about a week to those who’ve been following the Gummy Bear Forums at Sueetie.com. I’ve been getting some great feedback. With Sueetie actually in people’s hands I realized I needed to revisit theming for the official release of Gummy Bear. I wanted to provide a bit of theme content isolation and put in place simple theme creation and packaging logic that even I could understand. Licorice is the happy byproduct.

Theme images and CSS files are now separate throughout the site, very few underlying code changes were required, and there’s a one-click site theme changer to simplify the setup process. While I needed to put a site theming structure in place, this was also a great opportunity for me to do something I’ve been wanting to do for a while now, update Sueetie.com. Sueetie Groups are supported in the new theming system as well, which is pretty cool. Without further ado, here are a few screenshots of Licorice. You can go to Sueetie.com to see Licorice in action.

Licorice is very similar to the Lollipop theme, but it’s different enough to give me the change I needed so I can enjoy looking at it while I crank out more Sueetie Documentation, starting with updating the Theming Gummy Bear wiki page.

I mentioned a one-click theme changer function. Here it is. After the theme package is applied to the site, you would use the Administrative Theme Changer to update a Sueetie SiteSettings property and change the theme settings for all of the site applications and groups. As a side note, the Licorice administrative pages use the default Lollipop theme. It’s easy enough to style Admin so it’s the same as the rest of the site, but I wanted to do final Gummy Bear testing with the new theming system and get it out the door so I could move onto other things.

To use the Administrative Theme Changer you would simply enter the theme name. The theme name matches the /style/[theme] directory name that will be used for the theme across the site apps.

I don’t plan to release Licorice with Gummy Bear, since the Sueetie flagship site should probably be a little different, and you know how I like to be different. Sorry. Hopefully the new theming structure Licorice produced will mean a lot of even cooler Gummy Bear Themes will be available soon.

The Donuts of Code Camp 12

daveburke — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 20:58:54 -0800

Back in Vermont after a wonderful day at Code Camp 12. A big thanks to Chris Bowen, Chris Pels, Microsoft, and everyone else who helped organize another successful New England Code Camp. I thought I’d share some of the highlights with you in…The Donuts of Code Camp 12.

You can view the entire Donuts of Code Camp 12 album on Flickr.

Everyman Links for October 14, 2009

daveburke — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 21:50:14 -0800

Coding After Hours. I started this Everyman late tonight because I was doing some Gummy Bear coding, but the older I get the less I want to hammer away all day in Visual Studio then code some more after hours. I guess that’s why I blog so much at night. It’s still geeky but it’s not coding. Ted Dziuba posted I Don’t Code in my Free Time espousing a similar theme, though in his distinctive style. “You know what's more awesome than spending my Saturday afternoon learning Haskell by hacking away at a few Project Euler problems? Fuck, ANYTHING.”

It’s all about usability. Twenty seconds should suffice to get something from Scott Monty’s post on Usability and UI design titled Why Apple and Google Win – and Your Company Doesn’t.

Presentation Redux. Jeremiah Owyang on integrating the social into presentations. Interesting anecdotes of Twitter audience revolts, but what struck me was the image of presenters with a cell phone in one hand, monitoring the flow of the audience conversation and adjusting the presentation accordingly. I think I’ll do that for my presentation at Code Camp on Saturday!

Content is free. Formats are not. An Open Road piece on where to place the economic value of free content. “Good content is a necessary precondition to getting paid, but it's not going to be the reason we pay anymore. That reason for payment is the format in which the content is delivered.”

More Microsoft Surface Cool. 3D.

The No Filter Digital Culture. Mark Evans uses the recent verbal trashing of San Francisco by Twitter’s lead developer to suggest that the current digital culture is one in which anything goes. You think it, you say it. It is a massive noise box out there if you think about it.

Losing digital data 2.0. I mentioned that I started posting to Posterous. It’s a great publishing tool, but I’m already reconsidering it. The idea was to post lighter stuff on Posterous that I either didn’t care about or was outside of the normal content I post here at dbvt.com. The key is “stuff I don’t care about,” as we have to remember that the Cloud isn’t forever. There’s also an interesting comparison (in the bottom pull-out in the article) between how Google organizes the web using authority over time, while the real-time web works completely opposite, through trending topics.

Buy a frozen pizza. Pizza Hut sales dropped 13% during the 3rd quarter compared to the same period last year. Apparently people are buying high-end frozen pizzas to save money. Don’t know why I found that interesting, but I noticed yesterday there are a ton of pizza varieties at the grocery store to explore. Life is good.

53 CSS techniques You Couldn’t Live Without. This is a Smashing Magazine post from 2007, but I happened upon it this week. These are always great to scroll through for tips and ideas. The sad thing is that the post is two years old and I still have something to learn from it.

Other New Sueetie Wiki Docs of Note for October 14, 2009

daveburke — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:41:06 -0800

The pre-release Gummy Bear documentation concludes with three installation items. I say “pre-release” as I’m sure the Gummy Bear experience of users in so many different environments will warrant more Gummy Bear-specific documentation.

The three installation items that won the lottery and got their own illustrated documents are

Do not fear, the docs are mostly pictures, like this one showing which boxes must be checked to enable read access for Registered Users in Gallery Server Pro.

New in the Sueetie Wiki: Theming Gummy Bear

daveburke — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 21:55:32 -0800

The first thing I’d want to do if I just downloaded Gummy Bear, after exploring its great apps that is, would be to theme the heck out of it. The look of Sueetie.com is getting a bit long in the tooth and needs an overhaul. Gummy Bear sports Sueetie.com’s Lollipop theme, so yeah, some Gummy Bear theming info is a good thing. Here’s the new Theming Gummy Bear page in the Sueetie Wiki.

Gummy Bear Site Theming Layout¶

As you know, Sueetie is not a single website application, but 6 separate applications that the share Sueetie Framework libraries. They also share CSS and theming, but only to a limited degree. However, once you see the simple logic involved, theming 6 applications isn't as big of a deal as you may think.

A bit a history before proceeding, if you've seen "Introducing Sueetie Themes," please skip ahead to ”Introducing the Death of Sueetie Themes." The architecture to support site-wide theme packages was actually finished, but I pulled it because it added complications that I didn't think brought enough value, plus it made theming more difficult. Keyword: simple, particularly since we're theming 6 apps, like I said.

Top Level Root Web Area¶

The top level of Gummy Bear contains the root web site contents, which includes the /admin area. Theming particulars are /masters and /style folders. sueetie.master is used as the main Master Page, alternate.master for contents in the /members area (login, my account, register, and so on.)

In the screenshot below you'll see how the .master page loads its area- and page-specific .CSS files. For the top web area those .CSS files are shared.css and sueetie.css. shared.css is, as its name implies, shared across all Sueetie applications. All applications load shared.css.

The loading logic which is found in all applications across Sueetie is

The application's own .CSS file(s)
shared.css
Sueetie application .CSS file (forum.css, blog.css, etc...)

Blog¶

One thing to remember about Sueetie in general and Sueetie Theming in particular, each of the applications exists as independent of the Sueetie framework as possible. Member-centric, loosely application-coupled. This means that the theming architecture of the apps is supported in full and only supplemented by shared Sueetie theming logic. You'll see that in the screenshot below. Lollipop is the name of the sitewide theme used with Gummy Bear. When you create a new site theme you will copy Lollipop and customize accordingly.

Also notice the standardized .CSS loads as we saw above: The application .CSS's, shared.css and the Sueetie application .css (blog.css). As for the Master file, all apps will use their own .master files. You would most likely theme the top level masters and apply that style to the various .masters on the site applications. For BlogEngine.NET, the /themes/theme/site.master is used. I added a contact.master because I like having more control over the contact page.

Forums¶

YetAnotherForum.NET's theming architecture is similar to BlogEngine.NET's, as a selection of themes are listed in the /themes directory, for our purposes, /themes/lollipop. All of YAF.NET uses /forum/default.aspx and loads the appropriate controls. (Gallery Server Pro is designed similarly.)

/forum/forum.master is a Sueetie addition, as YetAnotherForum.NET 1.9.3 out of the box does not use a master file. CSS files are loaded using the same logic and order as other applications, though in YAF.NET forum pages in Sueetie derive from a base class file in Sueetie.Forums. (This is to support the site-wide integrated inbox feature.) Here is what that looks like.

Wiki¶

Screwturn Wiki supports /themes selection like YetAnotherForum.NET. It uses three .master files in the root (MasterPage.master for your wiki pages, MasterPageSA.master for editor and certain other utility pages, and admin.master for the Wiki Administration area.

CSS files are loaded in the master page .CS codebehind and because ScrewTurn Wiki is a Web Application, those files are not included in Gummy Bear. The order of .CSS files loaded are 1) /themes/theme/print_styles.css, 2) /themes/theme/screen_styles.css,' 3) /style/shared.css, and 4) /style/wiki.css. Here is that Master codebehind source.

Media Gallery¶

Gallery Server Pro uses a single default.aspx like YetAnotherForum.NET. The stylesheets loaded, in order are 1) /media/gs/styles/gallery.css, 2) /media/gs/styles/ca_styles.css, 3) /style/shared.css, and 4) /style/media.css. Media.master has been added, like Forum.master in forums to more easily transfer an new layout from the top level web site /masters/sueetie.master (or some other .master you create.)

CSS files are loaded in the source class file /media/gs/codefiles/gallerypage.cs. Because Gallery Server Pro is a Web Application Project like ScrewTurn Wiki, the file is not included in Gummy Bear. Here's that code.

Marketplace¶

The Marketplace is themed similar to the root web area. Because it is based on the ASPNET Quickstart Classifieds application, and thus no longer actively updated like the other great apps in Sueetie, it is more tightly integrated with the root web area contents--a process that will most likely continue going forward. Marketplace uses two themes, like the root web area: /style/shared.css and /style/marketplace.css. It uses a Sueetie-provided Marketplace.master layout file.

Stylesheets are loaded in Marketplace.master.