Sitefinity 4.0

News on 4.0!

https://www.sitefinity.com/support/forums/sitefinity-3-x/general-discussions/4-0-eta.aspx

Looks like about May for a release date. I’m glad they aren’t rushing this thing out so I hope the extra dev time is being spent overhauling some of the more cumbersome features (page editor, etc) and not new tech getting in the way (like the new ORM).

Wishlist for 4.0:

In page editing (apparently coming)
Wiki markup for the wiki module, otherwise they’re just linked dynamic pages
A Table control of some sort, the radeditor is easy enough for a developer or designer to use, but administrators have a hard time
Page manager in the backend is really hard to use
Better workflow system, if I’m an approver I shouldn’t need to send approvals to myself to then publish
Built in File Manager is pretty bad, RadFileExplorer is the way to go
More Ajax or webservice integration to boost the backend performance.
Global styles, it would be awesome for the radeditors to automatically inherit styles from the parents
etc, etc :)

Lets keep our fingeres crossed

Sitefinity 4 CTP Released to the public!

Here we go people, finally a public trial of Sitefinity 4!

LINK

Good

It’s a huge leap forward sitefinity-wise. The back end administration panel is lightning quick and responsive, whereas 3.x was a tad postback heavy.
The designer is drool-worthy. Being able to dynamically come up with new templates using the layout controls will save HOURS upon HOURS of development time.
New project manager\installer is nice, better than having to play with IIS for 20 minutes making sure the settings were right.
Design…very clean and slick. I remember when the Sitefinity Skin showed up in the Telerik.Web.UI, and now it all makes sense. The Editor looks especially good with the transparent header.
Upgradability! The sitefinity directory is just a handful of .svc files, everything is now embedded into a DLL! If you’ve never had to update a sitefinity site you wont understand how much of a nightmare it was. Instead of getting the handful of changed files, you got all X thousand files and had to windiff them to see what changed. Now hopefully it’ll be as simple as updating the bin directory.

Bad

No Web Site mode; I guess at least for now. I prefers a Web Site project because (at least in my environment) I need to work independently of others, so it’s hard to manage all the smaller files and items part of a project I don’t necessarily need to care about. So having to re-deploy the site to accommodate a minor change is super annoying, especially if it breaks something.
Its just not ready yet, so I can see why it’s been re-labeled the CTP instead of Beta. The modules are nowhere near done, there’s lots missing (lists, news and events need better editors).

Concerns

Modules don’t feel different enough yet. News and Events have always felt like Generic Content with different meta fields and a different front end. I want maps, features, extras to make each look like its had a bunch of polish
Beta will be all the way in the summer, so probably a fall release
Still uses the RadEditor. Ok, now I love telerik products, but the RadEditor is just terrible sometimes at trying to change content. I hope the telerik tools team is listening to the SF guys and tweaking the control somehow to work better as in CMS
There’s no wiki in the CTP, but I fear its going to be like the 3.x Wiki, which was just editable pages linked “wikily”…nobody I talk to takes it seriously unless its WML.
The headers on the designer RadDocks are terrible. They remind me of a bad java app…oddly enough the ones on the telerik demos site are much improved. Hopefully those will make it in, if not a look into the future of what they look like NOW at telerik.
The RadEditor Images and Documents “tool” doesn’t appear to link back to the modules…which sucks if you’re trying to use the Libraries as a repository (no libs in the CTP FYI)
Upgradability of the Telerik components. The CTP is using Q1 2010 as the Telerik.Web.UI and as you may know they current version is Q1 2010 SP1. I tried updating with an assembly binding and it was throwing errors allover the place. Telerik releases updates (new controls, fixes) rather quick and I always like to stay on top of the latest release. Not only that, but I use OpenAccess a lot now. Will there be version conflicts? Will I need to build my DLLs against sitefinitys version of OA? Please god I hope not…sucks having a premium\ultimate collection and not being able to update anything.
Were not going to get an update until the beta hits…this CTP is missing a ton of stuff…and I want to start building my components\modules :)
Scripts and Resources: Default page with a copy controls dropped on (no text or images) is running me 20-25 AXD files…and most of the ones coming down don’t appear to be minifed (backend performance is great, but we want a lightweight front-end too)

Findings

Yahoo YUI is embedded in the Telerik.Sitefinity.Utilities namespace…dynamic minification or something perhaps?

Overall I think it’s shaping up to be pretty sweet

Sitefinity 4.0 is not pushed back to 2011

Well, good bye 2010 it seems :/

After seeing the functionality in the initial CTP it probably was a bit optimistic to think it would be out this year.

Update

So as you can see by the comment below here, looks like christmas is coming early for developers!

Thanks Vassil!

Update 2 Nov 11 2010

Official release date of January 14th, 2011

Sitefinity 4 SDK Released

Hey Guys…

Happy Friday the 13th.

Telerik has released to us a cool new SDK to make it easier to create sitefinity gizmos

Comes with a TON of goodies including

Telerik Ajax Controls
Telerik Silverlight Controls
Telerik OpenAccess ORM

According to the documentation we’ll also get visual studio templates (finally) to create widgets and modules!

About the SDK

Download the SDK

Happy Sitefinity 4 Release Day!

It’s been a looong time coming, but it’s finally here :) …well the day anyway, no download as of yet here on the east coast.

By the Beard of Zeus

Thanks to everyone over at Telerik for all the hard work (and all the help)