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yacs 7.11: AJAX, on-line chats, page templates, Freemind, security and performance

Posted by Bernard on Dec. 1 2007, commented by Bernard on Jan. 7, (popular)  

527 files have been modified or added since the previous release.

Here is a list of new or updated features coming with this release:

Ajax and javascript

 A lot of Javascript code has been added to implement AJAX into YACS. The full prototype and scripta.culo.us libraries have been added to the included/browser directory. And a new shared/yacs.js library has been created for the YACS code executed on browser side.

 To optimize the loading of the Javascript libraries a single script included/browser/minify.php is now in charge of compiling .js files of the included/browser into one single cacheable web object. Another script included/jscalendar/minify.php has been added to optimize the loading of the jsCalendar library as well.

 The browser and AJAX-based part of YACS has been put in shared/yacs.js. That's Javascript, not PHP.

 A new tools/ajax.php has been added to test and to demonstrate basic AJAX features in YACS.

 The computation of surfer time zone is now fully delegated to some Javascript executed in browser window, and transmitted to YACS as cookie afterwards. Same approach has been implemented for Flash detection. See shared/surfer.php

 The Javascript used for Flash detection and loading has been changed from included/browser/flashobject.js to included/browser/swfobject.js

 The inclusion of Flash objects now fully relies on the SWFObject library, as a safe mean to detect and manage browser capability. See codes/codes.php for some examples of this.

 The shared/safe.php has been extended to support JSON encoding and decoding from within YACS, to further support AJAX interactions.

 The contact page for a user has been made fully AJAX, to better take into account the actual availibility of the target person. See Surfer::build_user_contact() in shared/surfer.php

 Many javascript pieces are now bracketed with XML-compliant tags, instead of the previous HTML comments. See help.php for a live example of this.

 The Javascript file used to support smileys has been made XHTML compliant. See smileys/edit.js

 Code that used to be part of tables/sort.js has been moved to shared/yacs.js and optimized

 Auto-completion on user names has been implemented on server-side in users/complete.php and in users/layout_users_as_complete.php. The function Users::get_options() used previously to build drop-down lists of users has been removed from users/users.php

 To better support AJAX updates YACS now provides services/check.php as an easy way to detect page changes remotely.

 A new script categories/complete.php has been introduced to support tags auto-completion. This is the one that is called by shared/yacs.js through AJAX during form handling.

 A new alerting system has been put in place, to use interactive popups instead of mail messages when users are connected to the site.

Interactive pages with chat

 All articles of a section can now appear as dynamic chats, when the option view_as_thread is added in sections/edit.php

 The regular rendering script for articles can now be supplemented by using the option pattern 'views_as_xxx'. For example, use 'view_as_thread' to transform an article to an interactive chat place. This option loads the script articles/view_as_thread.php.

 A new layout comments/layout_comments_as_thread.php has been added to shape live contributions to interactive threads.

 The AJAX back-end scripts used for thread updates are comments/thread.php

 YACS now allows for one-to-one private messages, or chats, and the AJAX back-end for this has been implemented in users/contact.php

 A new parameter has been added to the configuration panel for users (in users/configure.php) to allow for real-time alerts when surfers are connected to the server. These replace email messages sent by default. The actual dispatch is implemented in Users::alert() in users/users.php

Page templates and global pages

 A new field has been added to sections to list one or several named pages as templates. This can be modified in advanced options from the web form used to edit a section (see sections/edit.php). The template will be duplicated (including the overlay, if any) to create new pages in the section.

 The page editor for articles now supports page templates. When a new article is created in a section that has been configured to use a page template, the template is duplicated before filling the capture form. A section can even support several page templates, in which case the editor will ask which one to use before moving forward. See articles/edit.php

 A new select overlay has been created, that is only aiming to select another overlay. It is used in the section for template pages, to allow for the easy construction of model pages that include any kind of overlay. See overlays/select.php

 Previously, YACS was able to manage several cover pages in a dedicated section, and only the newest published article was actually used as a cover page. This has been streamlined, and now you have one single article named 'cover' to do the same job. At least the cover page can be loaded with one single SQL request instead of two.

 Some pages which were implemented as dedicated scripts have been turned to regular named articles. For example, the about.php has been replaced by an article with the nick name "about". privacy.php has been changed to an article as well. See articles/populate.php

 All global pages, such as "about", "privacy", "cover" and "menu" have been grouped into one single section featured at the site map. Of course, "cover" and "menu" are visible only to associates.

Freemind

 The content tree can now be displayed at site front page as an interactive Freemind object. This is one option of the new configuration panel for the front page, and other layouts can be selected as well, including customized PHP classes implementing the layout interface. See index.php

 Index pages of sections can now be rendered as an interactive Freemind map built dynamically by YACS based upon section content. Actually, this can be configured as a new layout option for sub-sections, in sections/edit.php. The actual computation of the Freemind map is made in articles/layout_articles_as_freemind.php

 Any section index page can now be configured to appear as Freemind map (see sections/edit.php). In this case YACS builds a map out of dynamic content (see sections/layout_sections_as_freemind.php) and displays it in the middle of the index page. This may use the browsing of complex content trees.

 An updated version of the Freemind player has been integrated. See included/browser/visorFreemind.swf

 A new script has been added to package the full content of one section in a dynamic Freemind map, in sections/freemind.php

 New codes have been added to integrate Freemind maps into pages. You can ask YACS to create a map dynamically, based on actual content of one section, or reference a Freemind static file attached to a page. In both cases YACS will include an interactive Freemind player (Flash or Java) to allow for interactive browsing of the map. See codes/codes.php and codes/live.php.

Enhanced security

 The cascading mechanism of access permissions has been streamlined in shared/anchors.php. The code used to load an anchor instance has been moved to this script from shared/global.php.

 The Anchor interface has been extended to better support the new cascading scheme for access permissions, and to allow for easy AJAX support. See shared/anchor.php

 Permission mask used for files and for directories is now displayed in the system test script, at control/test.php

 The permission system has been tested extensively, and a number of changes and improvements have been made to the software.

 In case you experience some file permission issue you can trigger the control/chmod.php script to have all file permissions set at once.

 The list of users who have not authenticated for a long time, or who not contributed for a while, is now visible only to associates. See users/review.php

Performance

 Pages generated by YACS now better conform to standards set by the Yahoo! performance team. Javascript are integrated at the end of pages, etc. See shared/global.php

 The rendering module for YACS codes has been improved with more efficient patterns, and positive results have been observed thanks to the new script dedicated to performance testing, at codes/codes_test.php.

 Code that replaces smileys by images has been entirely revisited to improve overall response times. Regular expressions used for string replacements have been profiled and optimized as well. See smileys/smileys.php.

 The loading of anchors has been transferred from shared/global to shared/anchors.php, and cache has been implemented there consistently

 A new lightweight function has been introduced to beautify titles, with the aim to save on CPU cycles and memory during the construction of large and complex pages. Therefore Codes::beautify_title() is now used instead of the regular Codes::beautify() throughout most of the software. See codes/codes.php.

 YACS now integrates bare profiling support, to help identify performance issue, if any. See shared/logger.php

 Cache management has been entirely revisited, with scalability and performance in mind. YACS now allows for stable objects, that will be preserved during cache updates, except on full clearance. Also, only one SQL request is used to update the cache instead of two previously. See shared/cache.php

 Cached components have been consolidated in articles/view.php to reduce the burden on the database.

 This has been done in a number of other scripts as well, to further streamline the caching approach. There is no full-page cache anymore, because this creates per-user records in the cache, which definitely is not scalable for large communities. See for example dates/month.php

 All special calls to the MySQL library that were spread have been moved to shared/sql.php to finalize the virtualization of the database engine.

 Many SQL statements have been streamlined to reduce the burden on the database engine. For example, most SELECT using id rely now on numeric comparisons, instead of the LIKE operator used before.

 Many statements using LEFT JOIN syntax have been changed to a natural and straightforward joining approach, as in comments/comments.php for example.

 Also, the small SQL requests used to count items attached to articles and to sections have been streamlined to execute as fast as possible.

 To allow for better performance YACS now supports the mysqli extension if available, else it falls back to the regular mysql extension.

 The information panel for the database now displays if YACS uses the basic or the improved MySQL engine, and also if data are stored as Unicode or UTF-8 in tables. See control/info.php.

 YACS uses less strings than before for basic error messages, and the usage of these strings has been made more comprehensive throughout the software. For example, in actions/actions.php, the message "No anchor for this action" has been turned to "No anchor has been found." Also, the names of parameter files have been extracted from strings in configuration panels, to limit the number of reference strings to a very minimum.

 Cache requests to the database are now also cached to reduce the stress put on the back-end database server. See for example Files::get() in files/files.php

 An Expires: header has been added to web responses on stable objects such as the streaming files, etc. See collections/play_audio.php for example.

 YACS is also making a better usage of the HTTP protocol, by reflecting in status codes errors described in pages. This idea is to further help automated tools and search engines to detect and process abnormal conditions. See for example categories/set_as_thumbnail.php.

 YACS now always attempt to compress Javascript created dynamically, such as the outcome of included/browser/minify.php, even if compression has not been explicitly allowed for other kinds of web objects. See shared/global.php

 Pre-computed of compressed Javascript files are provided in the archive file, just in case they could not be generated automatically at some site. Look in the temporary directory of the archive file.

 Cron is now desactivated when the server has been switched off. See cron.php

 Credentials sent by e-mail are now structured as JSON arrays to save on space. Of course, old credentials relying on PHP serialization are still accepted by users/login.php

 Most layouts for sections have been reviewed to streamline the code. See for example sections/layout_sections_as_jive.php

 The loading of the Google Maps API has been streamlined in locations/locations.php

 The table for links has been extended to speed SQL requests. See links/links.php

 The validation script now reports on memory consumption in scripts/validate.php

 Two new external scripts have been included in the standard YACS archive: included/jsmin.php to compress Javascript files, and included/json.php to help PHP scripts send Javascript arrays to the browser.

Other changes

 Information stored in user profiles has grown dramatically, and it is now displayed progressively through a tabbed interface that loads content on-demand. The main tab show assigned sections and most recent posts, to get an immediate understanding of contributions from one user. Look the updated users/view.php and the new AJAX back-end users/element.php.

 Real-time notifications are stored temporarily in the database and managed in users/notifications.php

 When YACS is configured to mask e-mail addresses, it also prevents direct mailing between users (in users/mail.php). The goal is to avoid "internal spamming" from within public communities. One-to-one chat sessions are still allowed in this case, though.

 The heartbit script has been entirely revisited to also allow for real-time notifications. On one hand it tracks user presence at some page. On the other hand it pushes back alert messages, if any. See users/heartbit.php

 Real-time presence at one page is now managed, in the back-end, by users/visit.php. Transient records of user presence are saved in the database, abd managed through the library users/visits.php

 List of users now distinguishes between active and idle users. A different CSS class is given to idle users to allow proper rendering through cascaded style sheet. See users/layout_users.php

 YACS now supports Google Analytics. Add the Urchin account to use in the configuration panel for web services, in services/configure.php and related Javascript will be generated automatically.

 The configuration panel for skins now has many parameters related to Freemind visual rendering. Also, an important part of the code has been moved to the configuration panel for the home page, which is now separate. See skins/configure.php and configure.php

 YACS now uses digital as the default skin on any new installation.

 Reference skins have changed, partly because of the introduction of global pages ('about', 'privacy'), and partly to optimize response times. See skins/joi/template.php as an example.

 A new skins/_reference directory has been added to store reference files used by YACS in skins. The purpose is to simplify the integration of new styles and visual elements in existing skins. Now, you only have to add a directive @import url("../_reference/yacs.css"); at the bery beginning of an existing style sheet to benefit from future evolutions.

 The nicetitle style rules have been moved to skins/_reference/yacs.css, so there is no need to have a separate directive to load nicetitle.css anymore.

 On the other hand, the nicetitle Javascript, which used to be systematically loaded by YACS, is now an option of each skin. To still benefit from the nicetitle effect you will have to copy nicetitle.js to the directory of your skin, and to add loading directive to template.php.

 E-mail address obfuscation has been removed in skins/skin_skeleton.php

 All calls of split() have been changed to explode() instead.

 Links generated by icons in layouts for the home page now support URL rewriting. See skins/layout_home_articles_as_daily.php for example.

 Titles of PDF files generated by YACS now support accented characters and UTF-8 input. See shared/pdf.php

 The form to change a user profile has been entirely re-structured. It now features several panels, to ease the job. See users/edit.php

 The page used to link users to a page or to a section now features auto-completion, to ease assignments. See users/select.php

 Directories skins/images/avatars and users/authenticators have been added to tools/build_i18n.bat, the script that extracts strings from YACS source code to prepare for translation.

 Tags have been added to user profiles (in users/edit.php) for easy categorization. Also, categories now list jointly tagged users and pages, where applicable. See categories/view.php. The purpose is to have a straightforward approach to link people with content, through categories.

 User workstations can now be reached through an external network address set in user profiles (in users/edit.php). This is used by YACS to drive people to one desktop shared in VNC during an on-line discussion, despite firewalls or reverse proxies. See articles/view_as_thread.php

 Watch lists have been extended to users, meaning you can monitor what others are doing. Visit any profile of interest and click on the Watch link to expand your social network (in users/view.php and users/track.php). Also, the list of watched people is built in users/layout_users_as_watch.php

 Several libraries are now loaded in shared/global.php, reducing the need for many include_once directive in all scripts. Code to handle values, visits, articles, sections, smileys is now available by default.

 When $HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA is not available, YACS reads php://input instead. See for example services/xml_rpc.php

 Unicode entities are now properly transformed to UTF-8 in RSS feeds. See services/rss_codec.php

 Also, a new encoding function has been introduced to ensure XHTML conformance of links, for example in RSS feeds. See services/rss_codec.php

 The Content Assistant has been extended to create new sample sections, namely: 'global' (for global pages), 'channels' (for interactive chats), 'template' (for model pages), plus 'queries' and 'processed_queries'. Moreover, all queries feature a link to move them to the 'processed_queries' sections, thanks to the new behavior move_on_article_access. See sections/populate.php

 The Yahoo! layout for sections now lists the proper number of sections, in sections/layout_sections_as_yahoo.php

 The TinyMCE library has been modified to make it XHTML compliant. Look at include/tiny_mce/tiny_mce_src.js

 The script used to create a new yacs archive now properly reports the name of the generated file. See scripts/build.php

 The form that initiates a yacs update now reflects the order of preferred methods, starting with the upload of the full archive. See scripts/stage.php

 Two new tables have been added to the database, to manage real-time visits, and to store interactive notifications. See users/notifications.php and users/visits.

 On cache purge, yacs now also deletes files in the temporary directory. See control/purge.php

 An updated version of control/import_csv.php has been provided by Tof and integrated into this release.

 The Control Panel now features a tabbed interface to better structure all commands provided to site associates. See control/index.php

 Staged scripts are now chmod to avoid some tricky issues related to bad file permissions in scripts/update.php

 A number of scripts to be executed only once have been introduced, to further help migrate sites running a previous version of yacs.

 The deletion of a section with some content is now authorized, to ease the management of big sites. See sections/delete.php

 Tags have been added to user profiles, and that means that category pages are able to list people and content related to the same keyword. See categories/view.php.

 XHTML compliance has been greatly improved through a number of small modifications. For example, many forms have been reviewed to insert an additional <div> tags, such as categories/select.php.

 Flash files (with the extension .swf) can now be delivered natively across the wire, meaning a full-page display in the browser window. See files/stream.php

 The export to MS-Word now generates Unicode text, since UTF-8 is not supported natively by the tool from Microsoft. Same change has been applied to the PDF export. See articles/fetch_as_msword.php andarticles/fetch_as_pdf.php

 Layouts for articles have been modified to support live titles, that is, titles that can reflect internal state, as managed within overlays. For example, with the overlay issue, titles of closed cases feature a nice [Closed] suffix to make this explicit.

 Several new layouts have been introduced for articles, including: layout_articles_as_freemind.php, layout_articles_as_select.php, layout_articles_as_simple.php, and layout_articles_as_threads.php.

 The mail function used to process e-mail recipients. Now it can also parse nick names, if any, meaning you just have to remember nick names to invite people to visit one of your page. Moreover, the invitation form supports AJAX auto-completion to help identify target members. See articles/mail.php

 To streamline SEO efforts, YACS now automatically adds titles to page links. Previously this was based on nick names, and page authors had to configure nick names to make it work.

 New code has been add to streamline the deletion of compound objects in articles, sections, cateories, user profiles, etc. Now a full section, and all of its content, can be deleted in two clicks.

 The installation of SecureID adds a suffix to every web requests that prevents YACS to properly detect language in the browser. This has been fixed in i18n/i18n.php.

 Parameters can now be transmitted to layouts used for articles. For example, you can configure a section to layout articles like this: 'simple no_anchor'. This will trigger the articles/layout_articles_as_simple.php script as usual, but also this will instruct the script to not insert links to page anchors.

 When a file is attached to a page viewed as a dynamic thread, the list of files is updated, and the attachment is also referenced in the chatting area. See files/thread.php

 The file readme.txt placed in the YACS archive has been updated.

 Several flavors of .htaccess are provided to easily deal with common situations.

 User presence is now tracked and his record is updated in the database on each page visited. See articles/view.php

 Random names have been added to the script that populate comments in sample discussion threads, in comments/populate.php.

 The backup script now better leverages the intrinsic power of MySQL to reflect the database structure. See control/backup.php

 Two new parameters have been added to the system configuration panel to adjust permission masks used by YACS to manage files and directories, in control/configure.php

 The script included/tar.php has been modified to accomodate for YACS permission masks.

 The behavior interface can now add links to pages. This can be useful to implement bare workflows. For example, to move user queries to another section when an answer has been provided to the initial question. See behaviors/behavior.php and the new behavior behaviors/move_on_article_access.php

 The index.php now loads a different skin variant when it is invoked as the topmost page ('slash') and when it is called as regular YACS home page ('home'). This to give more flexibility to web designers, of course.
 A new configuration panel dedicated to the front page has been added, in configure.php. Moreover, associates have a Configure command directly at the front page itself, to access it in one click. Alternatively, the new configuration panel is also listed in the Control Panel.

 The configuration panel for the front page also allows for customized layout for recent articles.

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