evolution? revolution? ho-hum .... really? ... think not though ...

Very good points and sharp analysis Shane... we’re definitely at a turning point for modx and many would be users/contributors are yet unsure which direction they should go now that Revolution is a reality with a beta in sight. Hopefully the new website, the beginning of the beta will help sending a signal that the direction is forward.

I am a little unclear myself about Evolution’s future and I tend to see Evolution as a transitionnal product until Revolution is mature. This being said I am eager to actually have Evolution 1.0 out of the door, the "old" 0.9.x branch still being here raises quite a lot of question for modx outsiders ever since we officially rebranded.

I believe a lot of our effort should go towards attracting developpers/coders to Revolution, addons being ported or created for Revo will be key to people adopting it and/or migrating their website.

And as for Revolution’s manager, I am pretty sure the theming capabilities will bring some very interresting UI alternatives. I have seen how easy theming is with smarty when I tweaked my activecollab install, Revo will be a breeze to theme compared to Evolution’s manager.

As for groundbreaking concepts for a CMS UI, I am not endorsing this concept or anything but using Twhirl and Analytics Reporting Suite has gotten me thinking and I have started doing some search about desktop applications as alternative to browser’s UI (we already have ScottyDelicious Command and Control but it’s Cocoa thus only for us Mac Users) .

I have found out that WordPress has AirPress built on Adobe AIR (it’s ugly and not a good feeback but...) and Drupal has something in the works with Adobe AIR too (http://groups.drupal.org/node/10008) but someone suggested Google Gears.

Just throwing ideas here but thought it was worth mentionning...

All great points, everyone.

Without speaking out of turn, MODx needs to be challenged by our users. We need people, users, to take ownership in a way that pushes it forward, whether it be the 0.9.6 branch or the upcoming Revolution it has to come from the users as much as it is formed but the development team.

Many of the points made are about catching up to the other guys and a few are about jumping ahead. The question is how do we get there? By passionate users taking control and finding solutions, ripping it apart and putting it together again. MODx official releases comprise not only the dev team’s efforts but the efforts of passionate users who found solutions the foundation didn’t even know were possible. Sometimes commenting or constructive criticism is enough and sometimes it is the attempt at building the thing that makes the difference. Just looking at an example like JoCo (the comment module for jot) who the heck even thought this could be done so easily, it was by someone who solved a problem they had on a project.

Yes we need more developers/programmers but people who want to turn our square peg into a round hole because we love using MODx are the ones who are going to make the most change. I’m hardly a developer and certainly no one will accuse me of being a programmer but I build snippets and push the envelope on every project.

I’ve got some ideas and some things I’d like to see in MODx but I don’t have the skill or wherewithal to make them happen on my own. I’m thinking that small volunteer groups like the crew who have taken over KiweeCommerce is the real way to go. Start a project get some folks interested in building it out and do it and put it back in to the community.

A website will not make modx better, renaming it won’t make it better or only the biggest asset it has will do that: The Community. Coming together to challenge each other--taking chances and not fear breaking something in the process.

Go, find some passionate folks and start your own mini-revolution!

Quote from: dev_cw at Dec 11, 2008, 05:45 AM

Where I think things are getting a bit behind the times is regarding the snippets, in particular the user input snippets. This is 100% not a modx problem but a community one (therefore I share the blame). What I mean is for example there should be more ajax (yes a buzzword) to at least keep up with the stuff available in other platforms. This is by no means a criticism of any snippet developer, what has been done is fantastic and much more than i have contributed. One example is the clunky pop-up windows for QuickEdit, other cms are using modal or even edit-in-place technologies. (Will there be a QuickEdit for Revo?)

For an "ajax cms" the only real ajax add-ons are AjaxSearch and to some degree MaxiGallery (I am referring to front end add-ons, there are several back-end add-ons that are ajax rich). I hesitate to make suggestions since I don’t have the ability to do better myself (who am I to criticize), but in order to make it main stream the add-ons need to be as strong as the application itself. I feel that modx is in an exiting but strange point in time. With Revo on the horizon, new site within reach, and a general anticipation of a new direction in the air, I feel that there is a bit of "should I put effort into developing an add-on for Evo or wait and do it for Revo" going on (at least I have considered this myself and have had clients take this into consideration as well). How to instigate an overhaul of a few key existing snippets for Evo to bring them up to date with current trends. Do the snippets need to be for one or the other, can’t they be developed for both versions?

I can speak for MaxiGallery and what I have planned for it. I won’t port MaxiGallery to Revolution, if someone wants to do that, that’s ok by me. But don’t fear, you will certainly see a "gallery" application for Revolution when 2.0 is ready and it’ll be billion times better than what MaxiGallery is now.

I could have ported MaxiGallery to Revolution already if I wanted, but I personally don’t like to do it because I see Revolution as such a good platform to do things much better now and would hate to release "garbage" for it. Don’t get me wrong, MaxiGallery works and many people seems to use it, but I have said this many times that as it’s developer, I know how it’s built and it’s very much hack together. It also has certain problems when galleries grow big, etc. and I don’t like to spend my time fixing it. I rather start all over from scratch with a brand new framework, so I can desing my "app" to take full advantage of it. I think that some other add-on developers think alike and that’s why there hasn’t been much 3rd party development on it yet. I also know that 2.0 won’t be final for a while still, so currently I have just played with it and will possibly start to develop on it when it hit’s beta.

And as a quick plug: the new "gallery" resource will consist of smaller reusable components and should support pictures, videos, music, pdfs, etc all kinds of media. It won’t be just a gallery... What I envision is that you could use it to create simple download lists for files with download counters etc, for example. It will be a system what can be expanded later on with all kinds of file info parsers etc. easily. I think that better expandability and configurability (are those even real words ) is the general theme for Revolution, at least in my mind.

And as a comment to the AJAX things you said. I really have a problem how that word is used usually. AJAX, as a term, is understood very differently between users/desingers/marketing folk and developers.

The first group thinks that if something fades, moves smoothly or looks just "cool", it must be AJAX and Web 2.0 coolness. Developers on the other hand usually think (or know) that AJAX actually means the techniques what are used when javascript is used to make requests to server that in turn responds with xml or json or similar and javascript updates the info ultimately to the client browser (with optional fade effects for the first group just for the fun of it).

So keeping that in mind, you know that the usage of AJAX has actually increased dramatically between Evolution and Revolution. The whole Revolution manager runs on AJAX. But I think your point was that you’d like to see more "flashier" or "web 2.0" components in MODx... not really AJAX necessarily. Although I guess that you already knew what AJAX really meant.

And, by the way, only one display type in MaxiGallery uses AJAX, and that’s the slidebox display type that I haven’t seen anybody actually using anywhere. I think that was actually the first embedtype that I added to MaxiGallery, but of course people wanted to use lightbox v2 instead as it has animations and all the other "web 2.0" things... (btw, dont’ get me started on that web 2.0 term, that vent would never end )

Quote from: davidm at Dec 11, 2008, 06:31 AM

And as for Revolution’s manager, I am pretty sure the theming capabilities will bring some very interresting UI alternatives. I have seen how easy theming is with smarty when I tweaked my activecollab install, Revo will be a breeze to theme compared to Evolution’s manager.

As for groundbreaking concepts for a CMS UI, I am not endorsing this concept or anything but using Twhirl and Analytics Reporting Suite has gotten me thinking and I have started doing some search about desktop applications as alternative to browser’s UI (we already have ScottyDelicious Command and Control but it’s Cocoa thus only for us Mac Users) .

What I have been thinking, and actually already started to work with way back when Revolution was just a start of 0.9.7 with evolution manager, is a plugin for Eclipse to use it as an alternative UI to Revolution. Revolution has an xml-rpc server what can be used to create alternative UIs as separate applications and it wouldn’t be too hard to create a plugin for Eclipse. But... it needs time to develop such thing... and that’s what I my self don’t have much to spare. In any case, I think that we will definitely see some desktop applications like "command and control" for Revolution at some point. It’s also much easier with Revolution to create an alternative HTML UI for back end as there are ready api’s to use, for example at very high level, the ones that current ext js implementation uses to get it’s JSON data.

Just wait till you see the 3rd party package component releasing tools in post-beta.

We’ve been developing a tool at the Web Transport Facility that hooks into your Package Management system. It’s basically a revamp of the current repository on modxcms.com (but much more streamlined, easier to search, and just overall better). It acts as a Provider for Revolution, meaning that when we add a package to it, it shows up in your Package Downloader panel.

The tool also has a front-end, like the current repository - so basically, if you’re a developer, you’ll log in, upload a new version through the front-end of the new site, and then a moderator will approve it, and it will automatically show up in anyone’s Revolution Package Download page. Packages can also be added through the back-end.

This is currently available in SVN, and the front-end new repository will be launching near the beta release.

It will be good to be a developer for modx.

Good points Doze. What I was refering to was acutal ajax as in "no page reloading" and some cool effects in the process. That is why I singled out user input snippets (eForm, Weblogin, Websignup, Jot, etc..) I am not saying that ajax needs to be built in but an ajax processing add-on for these sort of snippets would be ’cool’. It has been done for every one of these but on a private basis and not made easily redily available. I know that Jot is being worked on for a 2.0 release but it will be only for Revo and I don’t know what goodies are in store.

With all the other mainstream cms (and most of the up and comers) are using ajax for adding comments, login forms, content editing (in the form of live editing)

Maybe the solution is to create hubs for these snippets and have individual ’add-on’ repositories for each snippet (this may already be in the works). Like what there is for the Wayfinder configs (which also need some updating). So if a user wants to use ajax with eForm there is an easy way to get that information or add on to existing methods. As it is, many users will start from scratch each time this is needed and the snippet itself (and the community) does not benefit.

Go, find some passionate folks and start your own mini-revolution!

Sorry, but I do not understand this. Am I to start a fork of my own? The passionate folks I know are you guys and the revolution has been started and I thought I was part of it already.

And as a quick plug: the new "gallery" resource will consist of smaller reusable components and should support pictures, videos, music, pdfs, etc all kinds of media. It won’t be just a gallery... What I envision is that you could use it to create simple download lists for files with download counters etc, for example. It will be a system what can be expanded later on with all kinds of file info parsers etc. easily. I think that better expandability and configurability (are those even real words Smiley) is the general theme for Revolution, at least in my mind.

YES! Database driven file manager.... YES! ;-)

@Desktop app, AIR etc.: AIR seems to be a powerful cross OS development platform with which cool things are possible. But first step before the second...

@Backend UI: Like mentioned in the other thread I’m digging deeper atm in the revo backend templates, ext and all the stuff. But this is only a proof of concept and the result will be ONE template among others. The reactions differ, the more design related guys like the approach while the technique related guys want a more "coder view"... And: It is not revolutionary to build some kind of template. What Carsten means would go deeper. But at this point there are only a few people who really understand revo. And just a few cant rewrite everything and have an "apple envelope" in mind. I think things must be developed step by step. If revo keeps the promise to let users easily develop extensions, then we will see the innovations coming... I hope

No don’t fork Revolution start building the addons and enhancements in small teams of folks who want to push it to the next level. It will be the users who bring change to the branches by showing the developement team what can be done.

Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla and every other major player in the CMS world is pushed forward by its users. User generated addons that get wrapped into the core. Our job is to set the vision of building the best, most flexible, developer/designer friendly CMS/CMF out there. The MODx community is no different. Its not about more users necessarily but more passionate users trying crazy things and infecting others to do the same or help out or make it better.

Those user generated winners could end up changing MODx in ways we haven’t thought about yet.

So no don’t build your own fork but challenge us with change, daring or crazy change. Ask the what would happen if.. questions or build a proof of concept.

It there are ways that this could be made easier let us know.

Quote from: smashingred at Dec 11, 2008, 02:10 PM

No don’t fork Revolution start building the addons and enhancements in small teams of folks who want to push it to the next level. It will be the users who bring change to the branches by showing the developement team what can be done.

Those user generated winners could end up changing MODx in ways we haven’t thought about yet.

So no don’t build your own fork but challenge us with change, daring or crazy change. Ask the what would happen if.. questions or build a proof of concept.

Absolutely! I’m working on a Revolution add-on right now that will re-grout the tile in my bathroom.

As is appropriate given its name, I’m a bit scared of Revolution.

I have been very reluctant to try it out because I’m already overwhelmed with day-to-day work and I gather that there will be a fairly substantial learning curve in making the transition (and I’m sure to forget how to maintain my existing MODx sites once I get hooked on Revo). Plus I’m going to have to port all of my code over to Revo and wait for other resources to be rewritten for it, and given that it’s still in (final) alpha stage there will probably be major changes to the base code as well. Which to me means that it’s unlikely that I’ll be creating any live sites with Revo in the near future, and given my current results-driven mindset that means that it’s been pushed off my radar into the distant future.

I know that you’ve probably already heard this too much already and you’re sick of it, and I’m sure that you’re already doing everything possible to make it happen, but the best way to get fence-sitters like me off their rumps and contributing to the project is to release a beta that we can test on live (non-critical) sites and develop code for without having to worry too much that the fundamentals will shift underneath us and break it all.

The thing that has always set MODx apart in my mind is its modularity, and I think that will be exponentially true with the Revo release. The danger that I see in too much flexibility is that it might be overwhelming to the majority of users who are used to Joomla-style faux modularity (Chinese food menus: put the menus in column A, content in column B, and a login form and poll in column C). I’ve found that people I’ve referred to the current version of MODx have been confused by its apparent simplicity and not known how to proceed after installation. So I think that the key to people adopting Revo and taking advantage of its modularity³ will probably be a package manager or theme installation process of some sort that people like me can easily develop downloads for. Think of this as being sort of like a CMS Zen Garden.

For example, imagine that in the installer you are asked not only whether you want to install the default content but also whether you’d like to install a package of resources and themes related to a specific purpose or type of site? You want a blog? An eCommerce site? A corporate portal? Photo galleries with eCards? Check the appropriate box and the installer will give you a head start towards doing what you need. And if you want to share a preset installation (theme/manager skin/resources/sample pages/etc.) with other users, there could be an easy way to shrink-wrap all of that up and upload it to the MODx website (or in-manager package browser) so that others can easily download and use it. To me this would be a way to both demonstrate and leverage Revo’s modularity with the masses, without limiting folks who want to start from scratch and build their own systems using it.

Please stop me if I’m expressing something that you’ve already discussed/rejected/implemented long ago, because as I mentioned I’ve been out of the loop for quite some time on this...

I’ve been working with Revolution for a while and the transition to it was surprisingly smooth. As far as creating web sites, it’s just like Evolution, only easier. Your work in the Manager is almost exactly the same. There’s still a document tree, and you create documents (now called Resources), templates, and chunks the same way you did before. There are some minor changes to the tag syntax ( [!snippet!] becomes [[!snippet]] ) but they are very logical and easy to remember (especially if you put a cheat sheet above your desk ).

When you want to install or update an add-on like eForm, you just get it through the Package Manager, right-click on it, and select "install." Done! Believe me, this is like dying and going to heaven. Don’t like the wording of a text string in the core or in an add-on? Just go to Lexicon Management and edit it on the screen. Want to change a System Setting? Go to the System Settings grid, type its name or a keyword from the description into the search box and there it is, ready to edit.

Imagine this: You want a simple contact form on your site. You go to Package Manager, browse to SPForm, and click on "install." During the install, you see agree to a GPL license, you see the readme.txt file, and you’re asked where you want the email sent and you enter your email address. When the install is finished, you have a working contact form at your site that send users to a "Thank You" page after they submit. If you’re using Wayfinder, Contact Us most likely appears in the menu.

I think some people have been frightened by the high-level discussions of Revo design and features, but these really only affect add-on developers and, after the issues are settled, even developers won’t have to deal with much of what was discussed.


The only down side I’ve found (aside from putting up with surprisingly little Alpha shakiness) is that it’s now a drag to work on my 0.9.6 sites in the old clunky Manager.

I think things will go a lot faster once Revo is stable and secure enough to go on a shared public server. I will then start porting all my sites to it ASAP. It’s not a huge job -- I ported bobsguides to Revo in an afternoon with little trouble and I didn’t use any of the upcoming migration tools -- I just cut and pasted, mostly.