.NET 4, ASP.NET 4 and Visual Studio 2010 Support

In April 2010 Microsoft released the next generation of .NET and with C1 CMS you can use it right away. This release have been fully developed on .NET 4 using VS2010 and all the .NET 4, ASP.NET 4, MVC2 etc. features are ready to use.

Page Types

The concept of ‘page type’ have been added, giving site developers control over meta data fields attached to a page type (and not just based on page structure), what Layout Templates a page type should offer, if a page type is for new home pages or subpages, hierarchy of interrelated page types (enabling user guidance). Also spported is default HTML content to set on a page type and Page Folders / Applications that are automatically attached.

This enable the developer to empower users to do a guided selection of page type when adding a news page, get page type related meta data fields show up, get access to the Layout Templates that make sense for the selected page type, have default content handed automatically and get required page folders automatically attached.

A typical use case could be a "Blog Page Type" - to create a blot page, specific meta data fields and Page Folders for holding blog posts could be required, along with a Funtion call in the page content to render the blog. All these prereuisites can now be described as a page type, reducing the users work to selecting the "blog" page type when creating the new page.

New logger

We have replaced the previous 'TCP Logger' which had to run on the server with a HTTP based logger enabling developers and administrators to get verbose logging across networks. You can download the logging client here: LogViewer.zip 

When you start the logger, specify the URL to the site (like "http://www.composite.net/") and the administrative password.

The primary features of the new logger is remote support, better performance, filtering options and easy access to copy log data for dbug purposes.

New Applications feature

It's now possbile to define 'CMS Console Applications' via an XML document. The document allow a developer to declaratively define a tree structure consisting of 'static' folders, data folders and grouping folders which should empower XML oriented developers to build trees exactly to their liking. Generic data commands (add, edit, delete, publish etc.) can be attached to elements and it's also easy to invoke your own ASP.NET pages of XSLT Functions to get customised editors up and running.

Features include:

• Intellisense (XSD) and validation with verbose logging
• Flat XML file in ~/App_Data/Composite/TreeDefinitions/
• CMS Console pick up on new files and changes automatically
• Declare what structure you want using nested XML elements
• Mix elements of different types in one tree
• Define simple elements, data elements or data element driven grouping folders
• Commands: add, edit, delete, custom workflow, ASP.NET page or XSLT Function
• Use the CMS Function system to use or create advanced data filters
• Use customized editing forms where needed
• Sort items as you desire
• Group by variable depth date driven folders, reference fields, ranges etc.

New tree based widgets for pages, media and images (with preview)

It has been a repeadly requested feature that we replaced the simple drop downs for selecting pages and media - on sites with many pages or media files the selector got very hard to use. Now selectors are tree based, enabling users to browse the same structure as they norally do in the navigation area.

Redesigned Function Call editor

The function call editor used in a number of key areas in C1 CMS have been 'visually refacored' so it no longer uses pop-ups to configure nested function calls. It's now possible to see the entire tree. XSLT developers will also find it much easier to pass input parameters on to function calls.

XSLT caching and debug features

These features are also available in C1 CMS 1.2 SP5, but so new they are wirth repeating.

The Get(Data)Xml function calls now cache automatically - can be turned off, but is on by default. Cache automatically flush if data is changed and cache untill then which yield a huge performance gain on sites that primarily use XSLT and Get(Data)Xml functions, which a fairly typical development patten in C1 CMS.

We have also added performance details on XSLT previews enabling you to measure the time it takes for of your XSLT Function to execute. Measure the time to build up the XML input in whole and measure the time used to execute individual functions. Use the existing ”Test value” feature on input parameters for simulations and find your bottlenecks faster.

.NET 4 Parallelization improving performance

Developers hosting C1 CMS on multi core systems should find system startups and page rendering performance improved. The more cores, the better performance.

Major breaking change

Previously C1 CMS has shipped with the Microsoft Enterprise Library in asseblies that was built by us - they have been replaced with the 'official' assemblies that Microsoft ship with the EntLib source code. This should make 3rd party integrations easier if both systems use EntLib, but if your site contains custom built assemblies that referenced our custom built EntLib assemblies, those assemblies will 'break' after the upgrade.

If you have written your own .NET based providers for C1 CMS, we suggest that you:

• Test that your providers can load and run
• If required, rebuild your provider project in VisualStudio 2010
• Use the assemblies (DLL’s) that ship with C1 CMS 1.3 when rebuilding

We acnowledge that a breaking change of this magnitude is problematic and will lend the support required for you to rebuild any custom providers you may have created.

Severity: High – if affected custom functionality will be broken
Impact: Low – only highly customized sites (custom providers) are affected.

Download

C1 CMS 1.3 Beta 2 download and upgrade .