Future of Webassist after ADDT is dead

[mkoch217778]

Now after Adobe said they will discontinue and not support ADDT anymore (obviously after buying Interakt) I would suggest the following general feature additions:

1. Image resizing and multiple image upload
2. conditional regions behairvor similar to ADDT with other additions like show region if user is logged in, conditional region based on if file exist or filed exist etc
3. More form controls similar to ADDT
3. More custom triggers and more development in this area
4. Page and record navigation
5. Improving integration into DW. I don't like that the different tools are all over the place as I have everything from webassist

Let's go guys. Now you are the only real provider for dynamic extensions for DW because Adobe dropped ADDT!

[carlene]

I agree...can you also add the Export XML feature also. That's invaluable. I also like ADDToolkit's Validation and login functionality better than yours, but that's just me.

Oh yeah - and what about NON table based forms in your wizards? Some updated CSS styled forms that don't look circa 1998?

[Danilo Celic]

First off, thanks for the suggestions, I'll be sure to add any that we can get specific wishes for into the appropriate product's bugbase as feature requests.


1. Image resizing and multiple image upload


We are planning on having image resizing in the next version of Digital File Pro (DFP). Sorry, no timeline as yet.

You can currently upload as many files as you want with Digital File Pro; you would need to apply Digital File Pro once for each file filed you want to upload from. You could also loop over the DFP code if you wanted to work on an arbitrary list of form fields, but you would need to write the looping code and customize the DFP function to pass in the form field referenced in the current iteration of the loop. I do understand that that isn't automated, but at least currently possible if you can dig in a little into the code.


2. conditional regions behairvor similar to ADDT with other additions like show region if user is logged in, conditional region based on if file exist or filed exist etc


I don't have access to ADDT, so not sure what conditional regions it has available. Could you describe them, or even provide a link to a help page that lists out what you're specifically asking for?

SecurityAssist (http://www.webassist.com/software/securityassist/) does have the ability to apply show regions based upon rules, a default rule created by SecurityAssist is a logged in user. So you can wrap a selection with a show if logged in, or show if not logged in. Rules can contain some custom code, so I suppose that you could extend them to check for the existance of a file, but you'd would need to write that specific one yourself.


3. More form controls similar to ADDT


Again no ADDT access, so please explain specifically what types of form controls you're missing out on in our tools.


3. More custom triggers and more development in this area


Please explain what triggers you'd like to see. Our current Triggers are fairly powerful for initiating the action of our server code, but there's always room to consider something useful. If you have a few sample uses and any code chunks would be quite useful if there is something that you find you need to do a lot of (or even what you find you're doing a lot of that you don't have ready solutions to are great as well).


4. Page and record navigation


We have thought about this in regard to DataAssist results pages. Do you have any specific suggestions that would be good to have some sort of automated solution for?


5. Improving integration into DW. I don't like that the different tools are all over the place as I have everything from webassist


We do put a good bit of thought into where our extensions are accessible from within the Dreamweaver user interface, but we're certainly open for improving the user experience. What specifically would be "improving integration" mean to you? DO you have some examples of what you'd put in a different/new place?

[Danilo Celic]

I agree...can you also add the Export XML feature also. That's invaluable. I also like ADDToolkit's Validation and login functionality better than yours, but that's just me.


Exporting XML is fairly easy task to do by hand, and Adobe provides sample code for ASP, CF and PHP (http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/spry/samples/utils/query2xml.html) that can be modified quickly to add you own recordsets into. Keep those around as snippets, or code template files in your code repository, and away you go.

I know that we've discussed an export XML extension in the past, but it just hasn't moved up in the list of products to work on recently. Of course, if more people were requesting it, that story might change.

What about the ADDT validation and log in functionality that makes them better for you? Specific instances are better than


Oh yeah - and what about NON table based forms in your wizards? Some updated CSS styled forms that don't look circa 1998?

We've certainly heard this one a few time, so I know that we've looking at doing something along this line in the future (sorry no timeline I'm aware of).

[mkoch217778]

danilo:

here the info for conditional regions which I think make sense and will help most developers. Sure, you can write these by hand but it goes so much quicker to just have the menu option:

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/Dreamweaver/9.0_ADDT/help.html?content=MXK3_048100_Conditional_Region.h tm

I think it would be good to add also some feature that George Petrov from dmxzone.com had in his extension:

e.g "Show an image only when it is available, otherwise show a default image"
http://www.dmxzone.com/go?553

Like I said, everything together would really help.

[mkoch217778]

here you can see the ADDT Form Controls which I always thought are really helpful:

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/Dreamweaver/9.0_ADDT/help.html?content=ch5_form_controls_01.html

Any integration with the current Spry framework would be awesome.

I think for any developer there are many more options that could be developed and added to the list. I always thought it makes form creation so much easier if everything is in one place.

[mkoch217778]

We do put a good bit of thought into where our extensions are accessible from within the Dreamweaver user interface, but we're certainly open for improving the user experience. What specifically would be "improving integration" mean to you? DO you have some examples of what you'd put in a different/new place?

Example: Right now if you have several different webassist extensions they show up in several different places under "Applications > Server Behaivors". I think just having 1 point called "Webassist" and from there you go into data assist, universal email etc. Even splitting the product by functions like forms, email, data etc. This way it is much easier to access it and you can actually split each product group into separate functions...

[mkoch217778]

We have thought about this in regard to DataAssist results pages. Do you have any specific suggestions that would be good to have some sort of automated solution for?


I always thought that Tom Muck with his Navigation Suite did such a great job if he would have continued developing it.

http://www.tom-muck.com/extensions/help/RecordsetNavigationSuite/

I think with some nice CSS integration and different display options that would be probably even a separate product for you to sell.
In every development there is always a huge need for filtering. Even if you can add simple ajax functionality to some aspects of it I think it would be a good seller.

[mkoch217778]

oh yes, I still remember the great interakt times as we had a calendar extension that would pretty much help us to build any calendar really quick and connect it to a database with a nice CSS layout. Sure, there are some great calendars in php on the market but all in all it would be great to have again a solution that would just make it easy to add a dynamic calendar to any website with some simple clicks.

[Danilo Celic]

Thanks so much for the links. I'll be able to put them into the feature requests for the appropriate applications.

Regarding putting menu items under a WebAssist flyout in the server behaviors panel: There is a bug in Dreamweaver with multiply nested flyouts where when you have "too many" items in the flyout then for some reason Dreamweaver will stop displaying items in the menu, as well as any menus below the parent menu. So we're not actually able to do it without messing up other things in Dreamweaver.

[Stan]

Well this is strange. My understanding is that Interakt products are all being discontinued and some have or will be consumed into ADDT. I find no mention that ADDT is being discontinued. Do you have a URL?

[David Stringer]

Well this is strange. My understanding is that Interakt products are all being discontinued and some have or will be consumed into ADDT. I find no mention that ADDT is being discontinued. Do you have a URL?

I agree with this Stan. The ADDT product has just been updated by Adobe for CS4 as far as I know. It would be strange having done that to now just drop them!

[Ray Borduin]

I seem to recall Adobe announced that this will be the last update of ADDT.

I don't recall where I heard it, so maybe it was just hearsay from this forum, but I do believe it is true... without any validated proof or link ;)

[Joe Lowery]

Adobe asked that we removed the previously posted message as it contained information covered under a non-disclosure agreement. We've complied with their request.

Best - Joe

[Lee Firth]

Now after Adobe said they will discontinue and not support ADDT anymore (obviously after buying Interakt) I would suggest the following general feature additions:

1. Image resizing and multiple image upload


You can add "Display Dynamic Thumbnails" to this, I use this a lot and it's a real timesaver.

[rdream188601]

Following events since Interakt and Macromedia was alive its scary to see how Adobe is becoming the new Microsoft... face of corporate evil.

I really hoped that Adobe would infuse itself with the Interakt and Macromedia culture where the developer is the most important part of the Company.

But sadly you cant trust Adobe with continuity.
I will not be surprised if in the future they decide to discontinue DW.

I guess Open Source is the only real solution.