During the 2013 SDL Tridion MVP retreat I’ve worked on the FBI extension, also known as the BFF framework. Now some of you might think that all the MVPs do during that event is drink and have fun, which is actually right. The MVPs, love SDL Tridion, they love to code, they like to have fun and they enjoy a drink while they talk. So while at the retreat, they are actually in their natural element since everybody likes the same things and those things are all actually done during their stay (sometimes at the same time). Mind you coding and drinking don’t always mix, liquids dripping out of a laptop is one of the least fun things we actually saw this year.
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Author Archives: Bart
Using .NET Resources for localization in UI extensions
As by now you all have gathered, the annual MVP retreat has started and 16 MVPs are currently hard at work in a castle in Óbidos, Portugal. Our team, is working on what was defined on LinkedIn as Custom Editor Screens, for which we chose the working title Tridion Field Behavior Injection (available as open source on Google code of course).
Querying ECL Metadata in the Broker
In my previous article about ECL, I’ve discussed the possibilities of using product information in your CMS. This sort of a setup cries out for Dynamic Component Presentations and Broker queries, which isn’t a problem, unless you want to query the ECL Metadata in the Broker.
Having fun with Experience Manager, Page Regions and Widgets
I have been working on a demo image for a workshop I had to give about 2013 and Experience Manager. To make it a true educational example, I didn’t just reuse bits of existing implementations, but basically redesigned most from scratch. Keeping an eye on simplicity to make it all easy to explain and thus simple to understand, while still following the best practices. For most this was still quite straight forward, but when crossing the topic of Experience Manager I actually came to a few new insights which I thought where worth sharing.
Managing product information in SDL Tridion
Managing product information in your CMS is always a big topic for discussion. Typically a CMS is not suited for managing product data like price and stock, on the other hand not every PIM system has the ability to manage multilingual descriptions of your products that you might want to display on your website or product catalog. So combining two systems is obviously the thing to do here. Nothing new under the sun there, but with the release of SDL Tridion 2013 we have ECL which can shed a complete new light on this topic.
And we have Lift Off
February 13, 2012 at 10:50 UTC Dave Houlker proposed a new site idea on Area 51, the Stack Exchange Network staging zone.
Today, March 13, 2013 after 22 days of private beta, the new Tridion Stack Exchange site is now open to the public! Continue reading
Extracting Keywords from PDF on Multimedia upload
I came across a nice library that allows you to create and manipulate PDF documents. Apart from creating PDF documents from scratch, you can also read existing ones, convert XML to PDF, fill out interactive PDF forms, stamp new content on existing PDF documents, split and merge existing PDF documents, and much more. The best part of it is that there is a C# port available which is open source, it’s called iTextSharp. Now I haven’t explored all features of it, like PDF creation, but so far it already looks very usable.
Extending the SDL Tridion dashboard in both the CME and Experience Manager
When you open up the SDL Tridion UI for the first time you are directed to the SDL Tridion tab which shows you a welcome screen, this is sometimes also referred to as the SDL Tridion dashboard. If you open the Experience Manager view, you actually see that the first tab is called “Dashboard”. This dashboard contains useful information for an editor and is even extensible, allowing for a rich user experience on your extensions. Typical things are settings for your own extensions, or perhaps user specific pages (like a custom page, but then tailored to the logged in user) since you have all the UI capabilities available here.
Complex is not difficult, just like simple is not always easy
The word complex in English means the exact same thing as it does in Dutch, although the Dutch dictionary simply puts it as: “compound, complicated” where in the English dictionary I at least find “composed of many interconnected parts” as a first description and the words complicated and hard to understand are following much later.
How to say goodbye to your migration tool
The question is simple: “How to say goodbye to your migration tool?”, the answer could be diverse. Dump it in the trashcan, store it in a safe, pay its bill, but my favorite one is: “with a handshake”. Now some of you might wonder what I’m rambling about, so let me explain myself.