Wow, a lot has happened since my last blog post. Highlight of the July being the Sauna Sprint 2011!

Tom Gross worked on improving TinyMCE integration with JQuery plugin, javascript combiner and compressor. Now plain Plone 4 production site has 1/3 less requests in edit mode.

Kai Lautaportti refactored ploneimage.js from stratch with JQuery, no globals, documentation and jslint.

Roel Bruggink was really helpful with improving user stories and overall experience.

Also thanks to Peter Čuhalev for work on amazing redesign of image/link browser dialogs. His work was kindly sponsored by Hexagon IT, you guys rock! If you do like his contribution, it's best to offer him more proper open source craziness.

Changelog:

• pluggable (ZCA) shortcuts in browser dialog [iElectric]
• livesearch is now actually usable in browser dialog [iElectric]
• provide JQuery in plugins [iElectric]
• various bugfixes from tinymce upgrade [iElectric]
• refactor ploneimage to use JQuery and not fail at all javascript caveats, satisfy jslint, docstrings [dokai]
• properly use plone.app.imaging [iElectric + dokai]
• configurable thumbnails for in browser dialog [iElectric]
• json views return correct content type [iElectric]
• JQuery plugin, compressor and javascript combiner [tomgross]
• UX improvements in browser dialog [iElectric]
• improved upgrade procedure [tomgross + dokai]
• fixed #10803 [iElectric]

I plan to provide following (under GSOC section) until the end of GSOC2011 (or a bit later, if time bites me): http://ie.ietherpad.com/61

Other features may be implemented somewhat in the future, don't hesitate to contact me if you have a need to prioritize. As a reminder, changes to be merged in svn trunk are compatible with Plone 4.1+, mainly for depending on plone.app.imaging thumbnail generation.

Release is coming soon, I will be rolling out public beta sometime in next week. Feedback appreciated.

I'd like to thank again sponsors for my last years Sauna Sprint trip, it was an important stepping stone. This year was twice more amazing, woooohoooo for Sauna Sprint 2013!

University was quite successfully killing my overall productivity. Past week was grand finale, so I'm completely back to TinyMCE and Plone.

For few past weeks I was working on upgrading TinyMCE to version 3.4.3 (Plone currently uses version back from 2009). Fully automated upgrade procedure is now as easy as running a shell script. Upgrade was twice (or more) as painful as I originally anticipated. During upgrade many walls were hit and I questioned the whole approach. The conclusion is more or less: this is not maintainable. Few thoughts:

• we maintain separate branch from TinyMCE guys and make changes directly into the core -- correct approach would be to merge important changes upstream and keep our plugins separate (although this is near to impossible with current TinyMCE architecture)
• every Plone change to TinyMCE should be commented (explained atleast briefly) and noted where it starts and ends
• I created github fork of TinyMCE to keep merging easier. It will brings a little bit painful development, but that can be solved.

Mockups for browser dialog are finished! I'm quite satistifed with the result: screenshots. Following things were kept in mind while redesigning the interface, to keep it more inituitive:

• elaborate icons
• separate shortcuts and link types (also add explicit "internal" link intead of clicking "home")
• more clear idea that "current folder" is a place where uploaded file will land
• image thumbnails
• less fragments of window to make it less confusing
• few new features like external image upload

Until the midterm evaluations (15. July) I will try to get new design converted into HTML/CSS ready for backend changes and merge upgraded TinyMCE to github. Would love to hear comments on redesign, what can be further improved?

Another year, another Google Summer of Code, another project! This time I'm working on most needed and used part of CMS — text editor.

Following has been done on Products.TinyMCE:

• pep8-ified the product
• ported all doctests to unit/integration tests
• added product to jenkins with coverage/pep8/lint reports on Plone 4.0/4.1/3.0
• wrote specifications for new UX of image/link browser in TinyMCE and forwarded it to Peter Čuhalev for mockups

Next week, I will work on current tickets at plone.org tracker. Time to shoot some bugs!

PS: Changes were commited to svn collective, although I keep them at github.

PS2: The Sweet Vandals were my spiritual company for past week, wonder what funk is coming up for the next one :)

At last, so called Sauna Sprint 2010 has been announced. First of all, cheers to Nejc and Joni for all the work done.

What is the story behind the Sauna Sprint? At the end of 2009, EESTEC IT team had a sprint at Chairpersons meet in Skopje (we had a great time, big thanks to organizers!). We created from scratch the new eestec.net portal (fully open-sourced and documented).

So, the idea came to make a sauna sprint, hosted by Joni in Helsinki, that would eventually make Plone itself a tiny bit better world by our small team. Some of our experienced Plone developers will be introducing newcomers to Plone CMS. More details about the whole week can be found at plone.org.

Leaning to the darker side of the story, I'm still a student and returning airplane ticket for Ljubljana <-> Helsinki is about 400$ 300$ at the moment. As I currently don't see an option to collect the money in given time, I have opened chipin account for anyone willing to give me a hand. Nevertheless, I have been contributing to Plone in the past.