sorted by: recent | see :
popular
Content Tagged User:pollen8
Free getting started tutorial and ‘Creating podcasts with Fabrik’
Hugh Messenger has been a busy in training for the USA’s London Olympic’s “DA MAN” team 
This week he has released a free, introductory Fabrik video tutorial.
He has also been tweaking Fabrik 1.0.6’s RSS feed creation code to allow for the embedding of mp3’s as podcasts. Read more about how to create podcasts with Fabrik
Fabrik 1.0.6 released
Its been several months since the last release in the 1.0.x series, and while a lot of work has been going into Fabrik 2.0 we haven’t been idle with Fabrik 1.0.x either!. So with that in mind I’m pleased to announce the release of Fabrik 1.0.6. This is primarily a bug fix release, however some nice new additions have also been added:
General
We’ve replaced the old config.php file with its own section in the administration panel. This means that you’re settings will be maintained when you update your code.
Forms
You can now use Wordpress’s Askimet to check your form submissions for spam.
We’ve simplified the process of making search forms; allowing you to create a form which filters the table defined in that form’s jump page.
Elements
An alternative to the Slimbox has been added called Highslide.
We have substantially improved the date picker’s date handling and formatting, and added the option for users to select the time as well as the date.
Tables
A ‘NOT IN’, pre-filter conditions has been added.
Filter’s can now be cleared with the ‘clear filter button’. Additionally search form filters are now show in the filter table.
For subscribers the new documentation is also available.
Joomla Day South Africa - Fabrik presentation
Here are the slides for the Fabrik presentation I made last weekend for Joomla Day South Africa. Underneath should also be a copy of the talk I gave as well.
Joomla Day South Africa
I will be doing a one hour presentation at Joomla Day South Africa this Saturday. Also speaking are Ryan Demmer of JCE fame, who will be discussing ‘Commercial Extensions, a business model’ and Brendon Hatcher who will be doing two talks on incremental templating and security issues.
I’ll be covering the basics of how Fabrik works, along with a preview of some of the new features upcoming in Fabrik 2.0.
Unfortunately, for me, I’ll be doing the presentation via Skype so will miss out on visiting Cape Town - perhaps next year I can go in person!
Website FAQ section
If you have a question about the Fabrik site itself, be that how to upgrade your account, or cancel a subscription, I would like to remind you that the site does have a FAQ section that contains a series of answers to some of the most common responses we tend to give people about the site.
I’ve just added a new FAQ today entitled “Why don’t you answer my support questions by PM/Email?”
Hugh hits the 3000 posts mark!
Well Hugh ’support gopher’ is quiet something - today he posted his 3000th post, thats a staggering 9.34 posts a day!
I’m sure everyone, with me at the forefront, who has had their questions answered, bugs fixed and ribs tickled would like to sincerely thank Hugh for the amazing effort he has put in since joining these forums.
Welome on board Hugh!
I would like to officially welcome on board Hugh Messenger to the Fabrik development team.
As
many of you might be aware Hugh has been tirelessly helping out on the
forum over the last couple of months, proposing bug fixes, suggesting
new features, and generally providing a good vibe! So its great news
for everyone that he has accepted our offer to join the team.
Fabrik 1.0.4 Released
We're really excited to announce the
release of Fabrik 1.0.4, this is the cumulation of eight months of
epic bug crushing and daring feature additions and updates. We really
hope you enjoy using this latest version of Fabrik.
Firstly I would like to thank the
entire community for reporting bug issues, and being patient with us
whilst we found solutions for you. Also I'd personally like to that
all the positive feedback and encouragement that we have received
since the beginning of Fabrik in January, this is the manna that we
live off!
Secondly I would also like to extend a
massive thank you to Hugh Messenger and Andre Lewis who have both
over the last couple of months worked tirelessly and professionally
in the forums. Additionally Hugh has been an extremely substantial
contributor to the code base, so way to go Hugh!
Download
the Upgrade to Fabrik 1.0.4
Valid for all previous versions
of Fabrik. Upgrade instructions are in the zip's read me file.
What's New in 1.0.4
-
The templating system has been
moved from patTemplate to use PHP files, this should simplify the
process of creating templates and keeps Fabrik's templates in the
same format as those used in Joomla 1.5. -
The Javascript library has been
changed to mooTools, again to ensure that Fabrik maintains
compatibility with future releases of Joomla -
We've also added the option to use
PHP or HTML templates for formatting the emails that Fabrik sends
out on form submission -
Sub-elements for drop downs, radio
buttons etc can now be reordered via drag and drop in the
administration -
Validations now allow you to
modify submitted data, for example you can strip HTML out from the
data before storing it -
Validations can now be tested from
within the administration. -
Additional element formatting
-
check boxes, radio buttons –
grid layout now available -
fields
-
store numbers with defined
decimal places -
Guess link type – auto-creates
email and url links in the table view -
image / file uploads
-
lightbox feature automatically
added in table view -
now supports GD image library &
Imagemagick
-
-
user id – this now allows you
to choose what user information to store e.g. Username, userid,
name, group, date registered.
-
-
-
Elements now also have a read only
access level, allowing you to show static data inside a form. -
Large number of bug fixes for
table rendering, especially with repeat groups and joins -
Groups can now be unpublished or
published -
Improved CSV import/export –
joined tables now fully compatible -
Front end CSV export now possible
-
Improved form and table mambot
handling -
Tables - Right and Inner join
types now supported -
Improved
RSS feed create, with control over the number of records to show in
the feed, which columns contain the feed title and date
Future Development
With the dust slowly settling around
the 1.0.4 I thought it would be time to outline where we will be
taking Fabrik over the next couple of months.
First of all we will be continuing to
fix bugs and add small feature requests to 1.0.4. We feel that 1.0.4
is pretty darn stable, and that it is an ideal solution for people
running Joomla 1.0.x sites. So we envisage releasing a 1.0.5, most
likely within a shorter time frame that the jump between 1.0.3 and
1.0.4.
With the fact that we will be
continuing to support the 1.0.x series, we have decided that Fabrik
2.0 will be for Joomla 1.5 only. I know that this is not what I
initially stated in January, however, there are several reasons why
this decision has been made
-
Whilst you can run Joomla 1.0.x
components in Joomla 1.5 with the legacy plug-in enabled, Fabrik's
code base still had several compatibility issues. -
The legacy plug-in gives a
performance hit on your website, as Fabrik is already quite
intensive a component, we felt it would be good to avoid this
additional speed hit. -
Coding for Joomla 1.5 is fun! -
Yes, the 1.5 framework is great, and should allow us to focus on
providing features rather than fixing low level bugs.
I've slightly updated the road map to
conform with the new direction we are taking with the code.
Subscription renewals - an appology
We've rightly had some complaints from some subscribers about the
way in which subscription renewals are taken care off. In this post I
will explain what went wrong and what we've done to hopefully fix the
problem.
What went wrong?
Our subscription system is run
between AEC subscription manager and Paypal. From previous
subscriptions that I have used with Paypal I incorrectly remembered
receiving notifications from Paypal about the pending repayment. This,
however, is not the case, so people were being billed for their renewal
without any fore-warning. For this I sincerely apologies, it was a
mistake to trust my memory on such an important matter!
What have we done to fix this?
As
of today we've added a daily scheduled task to check all subscribers
accounts and notify them, by email, of their up-coming subscription
renewal. This notification takes place 30, 14, 7 and 1 day before the
subscription is renewed.
If you incorrectly get these emails, please let me know so I can tweak the script accordingly.
Please
not that canceling a Paypal subscription does NOT cancel your Fabrik
membership - it simply means that at the end of your years membership
your membership will not be automatically renewed.
If you have had your subscription renewed and did not wish to please contact us and we will issue a refund.
Once again sorry for the inconvienience this has caused
Gravatar support in the forum
No unfortunately Hugh and I have not found an all knowing fabrik robot to answer you questions even faster!
Instead - I've installed the smf gravatar plugin .
What is a gravatar you might ask? Well its a service from Automatic (the people behind Wordpress) which allows you to upload your avatar image to their site. Once uploaded any other site, such as the Fabrik forums, can connect to them and request their users avatar. This simple service has already saved me quiet a bit of time and means that you now get to see a new picture of me on the forums!
How do you activate it on the fabrik forum?
Easy - log into the forum, click on the profile link, under the "modify profile" section on the left, click on "forum profile information" and if your email is registered on the gravatar site you should see an option to use your gravatar.
SVN Split for Fabrik 2.0.x
AS of now Fabrik 2.0.x SVN’s connection url has been changed to http://fabrik.unfuddle.com/svn/fabrik_fabrik2/trunk/
This was done to allow us to clearly distingush changes in the 1.0.x and 2.0.x code bases
intresting form examples
Smashing magazine has just published a rather large list of creative form examples.
Theres some nice ideas in some of the forms, I especially like the idea of using css to show icons inside fields to give a visual prompt to the type of data required.
Welcome to the new site!
After having moved the forums over to VBulletin a couple of weeks ago, its now the turn of the main site to get a face lift.
The Homepage has been redesigned in a more effective structure. After the top menu you have a couple of calls to action, downloading the latest stable version of Fabrik and subscribing. The next five columns aim to give new visitors a better understanding of what Fabrik can do, along with links through to a entirely new features section. Finally at the bottom there are a series of ’shortcut’ links that frequent visitors will find useful, including links to the latest forum posts and blog posts. Speaking of the blog, we are now using joomlify’s Mojo Blog, which is based on Wordpress, please subscribe to keep up to date with the latest Fabrik news.
We have also released two new versions of Fabrik:
Fabrik 1.0.5.2 Released
This minor update fixes several small issues, especially those regarding errors that some people encountered with the new blowfish encryption issues.
Additionally:
- Your form’s “email from” field can now use the format “Name \n This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it >“
- Collected checkbox, radio button and drop down data are now no longer separated with a comma, allowing these elements to contain commas in their values
- The file upload element can now resize the main image as well as the thumbnail image
- The file upload element will now playback swf, mov, and mp4 files when viewed in the form/detailed view
- Fixed a bug in IE7 where only one Javascript event could be attached to an element
Fabrik 2.0 beta Released
Finally we feel confident about releasing a beta of Fabrik 2. This release has been over a year in the making, and is a complete rewrite of the code base making it fully native to Joomla 1.5.
There are so many new features in Fabrik 2 that its hard to know where to start! Possibly the most fundamental change is that we have implemented a plug-in architecture through out Fabrik. Plug-ins can be installed from within Fabrik’s administration and allows for a variety of plug-in types:
- Element plug-ins: add new element types to your forms! We are working on several neat plug-ins that will be released including a colour picker, captcha, Google map and rating elements.
- Form plug-ins: All the previous email, PHP processing and receipt options have been moved into plug-ins.
- Table plug-ins: No table plug-ins have yet to be implemented .. watch this space for further news about table plug-ins
- Visualization plug-ins: Take data from several tables and create Google Maps, charts and calendars
- Validation plug-ins: Create custom php validations of your form’s data
We also have started work on ‘packages’ which allow you to show several tables and form on one page, and for loading and submission of data via Ajax. This part is still very much in beta, but gives a hint of what will be possible with the final Fabrik 2.0 release
I would like to thank everyone who has so far helped reporting bug’s especially Terp who has reported them thick and fast over the last couple of months. To make Fabrik 2 as stable as possible we need your feedback, please read this posts before posting in the Fabrik 2.0 bug report forum
Form pagination in Fabrik 2.0 (SVN)
Form paginating can be a powerful way to split long forms into smaller sections, making what might have been a daunting and off-putting process more user friendly.
This feature has been lacking in Fabrik, well there were hacks to get it working, but they tended to be difficult to implement and prone to error.
As of today, in Fabrik 2.0’s SVN, there is a simple way to create form’s that span over multiple pages. Below I’m going to outline how this feature works:
Right - here goes….
First of all update from the SVN
Now lets party…..
For each extra page you want in your form create a new group (e.g. called page2, page3). You should now see a new parameter on the add group page called ‘Page break’ - select ‘yes’ for each of your new groups.
Move your elements, or create new elements into each of the pages.
When loading the form you should now see:
- Only the elements contained within the first group
- A next, previous and submit button (previous and submit greyed out)
Clicking on the next button will take you to the next group
Any validations in the form are preformed via AJAX each time you go from one page to another. (This is regardless of what settings you have for your form’s Ajax validation” option.)
Note that you can have more than one group on a page, the page break occurs only for those groups with the ‘Page break’ option turned on.
Fabrik 2.0 beta 2 out
As some of the more avid/observant/down right obsessed of you might have noticed I’ve added a Fabrik 2 beta 2 release to the downloads section.
This release addresses a lot of the bugs that have been reported since the first beta was released. I would really like to thank all the community that spent time testing and reporting these issues back to us, your feedback has been invaluable!
You should be able to install Fabrik 2 beta 2 without having to uninstall the previous version. Simply copying the files over will not be sufficient as a new database table has been added, which is created in the install/upgrade process