Changing the default...

Per and I are working hard on getting Umbraco 4 ready for Release Candidate and as a part of testing, we've added some additional "Nitro" packages for testing to get a better feeling on how the whole new Boost/Nitro (still codenames which is will change) concept works.

So yesterday we added Dropdown menus and Gallery - both using jQuery and both are very clean and integrates very smooth with the barebone Boost templates. The Gallery supports multiple albums and you can either upload pictures manually or simply upload a zip file with images on the album itself. An event handler will then create all images in the zip as photos in your album.

It's been lots of fun to make these new packages and even more fun to test them and discover how smooth they work. From creating them using nothing but umbraco objects, to package them using the new package creator bundled with Umbraco 4 to submitting them to the central repository and finally install them on a clean umbraco install.

Extra credit also goes to jQuery which I simply love more and more everytime I use it. As you probably know if you've followed us on Twitter, jQuery is the new black in the umbraco UI and we're updating (almost) all old client script code to use jQuery where it make sense. We also like to encourage package developers to use jQuery and there's no better way to encourage this than conventions. So yesterday we added a new method to the umbraco.library that you can call from XSLT (or .NET): AddJquery(). It'll simply add a reference to the jQuery javascript in the header of the page if it's not already there. It only works in the latest nightly, so our latest nitros doesn't use this before RC.

We need your help

While two additional Nitros is cool, we want more and we think this is an area where the community can help a lot. We've created two free videos on umbraco.tv that describe how to build and submit Nitros as well as a pdf with documentation on the different Actions that a Nitro can use. If you want to help with this let me know on nh AT umbraco . dk. Feel free to add ideas to usefull nitros in the comments - on my own wishlist for new Nitros is:

• News list (including automatically add year/month folders)
• FAQ (including submit a question)
• Event Calendar
• Job postings
• Polls

For inspiration on referring css/js in your nitro xslt, take a look at the gallery or the dropdown menu nitros - it's very easy and without limitations. It's a lot of fun to see functionality you've build install very smoothly on a clean install and it's loads of fun to make a clean install of umbraco and just add a few clicks in checkboxes and see a complete, customized site ready for styling in a couple of minutes. Let's work together on making this a success!

On behalf of the fabulous core team, I'm happy to announce that take 3 of Umbraco 4 beta 2 is out.

In the past week we’ve focused on updating the tinymce3 implementation (the richtext editor), maturing the LiveEditing as well as various usability improvements in the template section.

Most notable is that macros are back in tinymce and working better than ever. You can also add more than one tinymce editor to a tab now and we’ve upgraded tinymce to the latest version which means that it works flawlessly with IE8 as well. We’ve also added two new buttons in the template editor to make it easier to understand relationships between content and contentplaceholder controls.

LiveEditing has also matured and is so stable now that we’ve added a new contextmenu item on every
content node that enables liveediting with a single click.

With this take 3 we’re very close in having all features completely implemented and this means we’ll soon be able to release the Release Candidate. It’s a matter of one or two takes more.

There are still areas that doesn’t visually look as good as we want them to, but in this take we’ve been
focusing on getting the functionality in place and move improved icons, styling and copywriting to the next take.

Download at Codeplex and keep the feedback coming in the forums (if in doubt what's going on), in the issue tracker (if you're sure something is not as it should be) or in the comments. The more feedback, the faster the final release.

Get testing!