Planning Roadmap for Sitefinity 5.3

If you read the tweet, okay, these aren’t release notes\roadmap (but should be) :)

5.3 is supposed to be no new major features, telerik is going back and enhancing\fixing\revisiting old functionality. I would place more pressure on this release than the last couple…it’s a “winning back frustrated developers” release.  People don’t always come to us saying “Use Sitefinity”, but “what should we use”…so the buggier or hard to use devs feel it is, the less likely they are to recommend it…and I want it recommended, everytime.

So what do we want to see?  Post your items in comments…I’m going to list in the blog, perhaps I’ll move them up if they pop in.  This is clearly just a list of what I want to see…

Generalkendo

• GLOBAL Ajax loading notification.  What I see a lot, even looking over peoples shoulders is that when they click a button and nothing immediately happens (to their eyes, but there’s an ajax call going on in the background) they click multiple times.  So either globally the button needs to disable itself and change its text, OR some loading icon needs to be visible.
• Recycle bin…why is this not in Pages?..because it should be on a content level, not just pages :)
• Pages\Templates allow naming of the zones
• Drag\Drop content\page sorting should work…we’re 2 years out from release of 4, this should have worked day 1.
• Markup…god, get Jochem, or Jordan, or some other J-name person to go through the rendered control markup and be ANAL about making it lean.  I’ve posted a bajillion times on this, but if you have 5000 categories, and use the default widget to show that an item is linked to “Bread”, Bread is visible, but hidden in the markup is the other 5000 items plus tons of extra markup.  We shouldn’t just be concerned with backend performance, frontend matters too.
• Just support 4.5, common, perf boost to everyone…get it to work, it almost does except for radsocialshare it seems
• FromName in SMTP, not just the email address…this’d take like 5 minutes, common…common
• Breadcrumbs don’t respect detail items views…very confusing for users
• Radeditor filters can be set in the Appearance settings, but do not get applied to the editor.  The amusing part about this one is that support told us it wasn’t a bug because it wasn’t implemented yet :D …(it’s a bug fyi, if we can set it in the settings, we expect it is applied)
• Include Kendo Web into the resources, it’s significantly smaller than kendo.all.  Moreover we’re running an old-ass version of kendo, so pretty please update it :)
• Test basic SMTP, not just campaigns
• Panelbar Nav Option

Forms

• Permissions on Results.  Someone should be able to JUST see results, not edit the form.
• Ability to define export fields or sort order (ever tried to put in a multi-select with a comments field after and have them sort together in the results?).  The slickest thing I can think of is a UI to create reports, and assign permissions to who can see them…not just “Dump this content item in it’s entirety to excel”
• Upload control
• Hidden Field control, to store things like querystring variables, or whatever…could be set clientside.  I made my own, but see the next point…there’s issues.
• Radeditor as an option on the paragraph control
• Custom controls behave like native in backend results preview(or if this can be done, documentation on how, and\or update the thunder widget to have that code be there)
• Screw webeditors ™, just enhance a bit for bool\Enum in the property editors
• Duplicate forms
• Download list, template selector.  Having there only be one global one for users while every other widget can make new ones on the fly sucks.
• Some way to sort and group the forms…if we have 12 divisions, I have to use horrible form naming conventions for the backend…I can’t imagine just handing over form creation to the users…right now they upload documents and name them “Dr.”

Widgets

• EVERY template should exist in the widget editor
• Revision History for designer edits.  Not only for unwanted user changes, but editing a dynamic content item, might wipe it and you’re screwed if you didn’t backup.

Designers

• Every designer needs to be checked for scrollbars\nested scrollbars, then fixed…looks sloppy.
• Dynamic pickers are often case sensitive

Templates

• Shared Content
• UI for thumbnail images…am I the only one who deletes all the existing built in ones?
• MVC External Template Support…real support.  Right now we can’t control anything.
• Doctype option…common, get us some html5 support

Content Blocks

• Seriously…putting in hardcoded links in the markup?  At the very least if you NEED to do it for perf reasons, make it a relative url “/sf-images/imagename.jpg” not “https://dev.site.com/sf-images/imagename.jpg”.

Layouts

• Html5 Element dropdown in edit mode, let us choose the element type (section, nav, etc, etc)
• Resizing a custom layout with a wrapper, kills the control.  If you want us to extend your stuff, don’t make us look bad to users when we do.

Taxa

• Hierarchical taxa should function like a hierarchy.  If I choose to filter by a parent, then the widget should show me content in that and it’s children…or at least have it be a default option to set in the content.  Why?..well if you have one parent and 42 children, and you want to show the parent and children, that’s 43 checkbox clicks, then what if you add another category…good times
• Implement extension methods to navigate the taxa.  Like finding parents, flattening, etc.  Talk to georgi, I gave him a bunch already (noticed a bug or two since then, but still, they’re there. :)
• Link images to taxa…very common nowdays
• Look, I know we assume most people use categores and tags only, but the widget designers should let us use\choose custom taxa.  I know on the new SF.com you’re using custom taxa, do you think your content editors like going into advanced and writing manual filters with GUIDs?

Analytics

• Ok, lets call this one…DOA.  Nobody likes silverlight, we’re just re-exposing the google analytics site, and burning dev time doing it.  Google doesn’t even expose everything they show internally.  Just change analytics to link to google, and SSO me into the results.

API

• Simplify the API…a lot.  .Publish() should publish, no extra code required (as an example)

Pages

• Custom Fields…they’re working now, but no UI…get us one please :)
• Option to exclude from search, not just “Show in Nav”
• How is there no permission for “Moving” pages?
• Native filters for workflow

Media Libraries

• Hierarchical library support
• SORTING of the libraries (checkout markus’ many images)
• Permissions need fixing.  I should be able to give someone CRUD to only a specific library item.  I don’t believe there’s even delete permissions right now, and you have to re-edit permissions for all newly created libraries.
• Remove fancybox, impliment fancybox2…it’s responsive, you guys always push “responsive” but you’re using a lightbox that isn’t…doesnt mean the old one has to go away, just link in the new one too.

Scripting\Styling

• Choosing a file shouldn’t prepend the domain to the script name.  In fact I’ve given you the code to fix this 2 releases ago, so there’s no excuse to not finally put it in.
• Show some sort of title or something in the widgets…just being a plain blank widget in the markup sucks if you have multiples.
• Fix the CDN support
• Fix multiple jQuery loading.  RadControls have had the ability to kill the embedded for at least a release or two.  So enable that option in the webconfig once you start 5.3 and just let the guys fix it and get us back to working.  Boom 30k off the download of the site.
• There’s at least a post a week or more on people having issues loading jquery plugins\kendo in sitefinity.  Take the rendered page markup out to any other cms, plain html, or asp.net project and it will work…in sitefinity, nope.  I would like the ability to put a series of placeholders in my masterpage and have SF render the scripts I want into those…and in the backend have a UI to choose the scripts (to be loaded in the proper order), and then perhaps leverage the new MS bundling.  If we’re gonna touch this again (and Ivan says hes on it)…then do it right b/c we both know it’s not going to be revisited for a while afterwards :)  Gotta move onto new things right.
• Minify the transform.css SF is sending down…its affecting everyones YSlow.

Content Items

• Look, module builder is badass, you spent a lot of time on giving us tons of options for new fields…however the default types like adding custom fields to Profiles do not have this ability.  We cant say use a multi-select and have it be radiobuttons, single-select dropdown, or LongText using a regular textbox (not radeditor), etc etc.
• Revision History

Dynamic Content\Module Builder

• Multi-lingual: Huge task, I know people do need it, so not downplaying importance, but I don’t want to take away dev time from the already huge list ahead of telerik…so don’t implement yet. **Edit: Jochem makes a good point…first time for everything ;)
• Duplicate Content Items
• Date & Time options, not just DateTime…this is confusing to admins who just want to say things like "This session happens on Oct 18th…“well there’s no time, why do I have to pick a time”…“Dont worry we’ll hide it on the front-end”…“well why is it there”?
• Functionality for backend should replicate the built-in content types.  If news can do it, a type I make should be able to do it.  Sidebar filters, yada yada
• Masterview cannot show linked content like taxa names, only GUIDs, and my users dont speak GUID ;)
• Allow for UrlNames to not be needed (somehow).  The content doesn’t always need to be surfaced as a Detail item\related item.  Think like 1 Recipe->* Ingredients…each ingredient doesn’t need it’s own urlname…however the relationship (and UI) is exactly the functionality we need.

Search

• Google-like search…no user on the planet earth outside of a linux nerd uses wildcards in search boxes :)

Lastly:  Do you have someone who can just go through PITS and consolidate items and mark some complete.  Looks bad being at 845 open when it should be way less than that (even now).