Inalign Blog

Sitefinity 4.4 Released, and Sitefinity 5.0 Set for February!

Gregg Crystal — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 08:37:55 GMT

Telerik has done a good job of releasing updates to Sitefinity this year, going all the way from 4.0 to 4.4 in 12 months.

Sitefinity 5.0 is slated for February 2012 (http://www.sitefinity.com/web-content-management/roadmap.aspx), which will include a Forums module and additional developer tools.

Amazon Silk - Revolutionary Concept or Major Invasion of Privacy?

Gregg Crystal — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 00:00:00 GMT

I am looking forward to the Kindle Fire, and intend to buy one as soon as it comes out. I think the screen size is too small (anything smaller than the iPad is too small) but the price point can't be beat. I think it will be a game changer, and at $199 will knock out a lot of the non-iPad competition.

I don't think it will harm Apple too much, as I think it's for the crowd that can't see spending $500 for a tablet at this point. Especially one that doesn't allow Adobe's Flash!

So I think a whole new crowd of people who don't own a tablet will come rushing in.

Now on to Amazon Silk. This revolutionary new web browser sounds like a game changer as well. It promises to speed up the web for mobile devices by channeling all web requests through their EC2 cloud. Who doesn't want a faster web experience?

But-this comes at a price. For one, Amazon may change the look of web pages (the example they use is sending a lower-res image to a mobile device), and who knows what else they might optimize.

The headache comes in when you setup a web site to look one way and Amazon Silk makes some decisions for you that you can't control. Getting a website to look good in IE7 is bad enough!

The other thing you'll notice is that Amazon's EC2 cloud is essentially caching the entire Internet. The cloud will hang onto files and web pages for you. I wonder how the cloud knows when you've changed your website and when it needs to go to your site and get a new copy.

Their cloud is also keeping tracking of a complete history of your web experience, in an attempt to try to anticipate your next web page visit. Sounds promising (again, a faster web experience) but all of that history in EC2 has to mean something. It has to give them some sort of power.

Google, beware! Amazon is a stone's throw away from creating their own search engine and ranking system based on site popularity. Amazon will know exactly where you surf and for how long you spend on each web page, because all of those requests are funneled through EC2.

Google doesn't always have that information. Not all web requests go through Google off of their search result pages. If you search for 'inalign' in Google, we'll come up, and if you click our link, Google knows about it. They also know when you surf around our site, because we have Google Analytics installed as well.

Amazon's Cloud will know everything regardless of whether or not you have tracking software (like Google Analytics).

What about information that is proprietary to your company? What if you're logged in to your company's CRM web application. Is Amazon caching all of that data too? If so, who is guaranteeing it's security?

The web certainly stays interesting.

LandGrabbers - My New Favorite iPad Game

Gregg Crystal — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 13:00:00 GMT

I have played Fieldrunners to the point that it's just not that fun anymore.

If you're looking for a replacement, look no further than Land Grabbers. I love the game. As usual it has a free versions but it also has a pay option.

At $2.99, it's hard to beat the price. I did also buy Gears of War 3 for $59.99 on the XBox. Granted, these are two totally different games, but it does amaze me for what you can get on the iPad for a few dollars.

Resetting Sitefinity Passwords in 3.x

Gregg Crystal — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 09:14:00 GMT

Lately I have received many calls from people who have lost their Sitefinity password (in 3.x).

There's a good page on Sitefinity which supplies most of the info you need to know:

http://www.sitefinity.com/help/developer-manual/resetting-administrator-password.html

In general, if you have access to the database, the users are stored in the [telerik_users] table. The passwords are encrypted, so you will have to:

Connect to the database with SQL Studio Manager
Find the User you want to update in the [telerik_users] table.
Using SQL , set the PasswordFormat column to zero, set the Password to something in clear text. You can now login as that user.
Go to 'My Profile' in the Sitefinity backend and change your password. This will encrypt your password in the database and set PasswordFormat back to 1.

Sitefinity Issues with IE and Firefox? Consider Chrome!

Gregg Crystal — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 14:00:00 GMT

Recently I've been using Google's Chrome browser more and more often. It seems to work better and faster on most sites and have fewer upgrades and security updates.

For any content editing in Sitefinity, I always use Chrome. Sitefinity 3.7 Page editing has some quirks in IE 9 and Firefox 6.x. So far Chrome has no issues.

Tips on Merging MVC 2 and MVC 3 Code

Gregg Crystal — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 11:04:01 GMT

When you're bringing over controllers and views from one MVC project to the other, you may run in to weird runtime model errors. Most of these issues are the result of bringing a web.config file over from another project that is not the same version of MVC. In my case today I copied over some controllers and views and a web.config file from an Area in MVC3 to a project in MVC2. Everything compiled, but at runtime the Model object was null.

I rarely make any changes to the web.config that lives in the /Areas folder. I just deleted it and copied over another web.config from another Area in the same project.

Back to the Laptop

Gregg Crystal — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 11:00:00 GMT

I do think PCs and Laptops are dying. But not dead yet. I have several old laptops that I've used for years and I just finally realized that they were becoming too slow to be usable. The boot times were killing me.

I still need a Windows-based Laptop so I went to BestBuy and picked up a nice Asus. I had never heard of this manufacturer before.

I love the iPad, but I had to get another laptop for producing content (like blogging). I have tried many keyboards with the iPad but none really worked out well. Part of the issue is that some of the production needs to be done in Microsoft Word. Some has to be done in other technologies that Apple hates (almost any plugin technology).

Yes, the world will move to HTML 5 but it's not there yet.

Google Docs does exist but it's still a Word world. So at the end of the day, the laptop is still here to stay. I have a full keyboard, nice scree size, 1TB of disk space, and 8Gig of Ram on an Intel iCore 7 processor. I can develop iPad applications on this PC. I cannot develop iPad applications on the iPad.

I looked at some Mac laptops. But I work with enough people who have Macs to know that there are still to many Mac to PC compatibility issues that haven't been worked out.

I will still take my iPad with me wherever I go. I have a trip coming up this week, and both the laptop, iPad and iPhone are coming with me. I thought I could shake the laptop for good, but it's still got me. I need to write software specifications in Word.

Browser Wars Continue

Gregg Crystal — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 17:40:00 GMT

It seems that we will forever live in a world where multiple browsers, and multiple versions, will exist.

I really thought Safari would start to take over with the onslaught of iPod, iPhone, and iPad devices. At some point, I thought Safari would make it's way onto the PC and start to take over. But I rarely speak with anyone who is running Safari on their PC as a choice.

Without that, I also really through that Firefox would start to dominate as well. Firefox seems plagued with it's own issues-most notably it's constant updates and plugin issues.

Internet Explorer is the first browser installed on any PC, but never the last. With so many issues between different versions of IE (notably going from 6 to 7 to 8 to 9) it's no surprise that IE has all but lost it's luster. Unlike many other Microsoft products that start off bad but get progressively better, IE seems to forever switch between issues from version to version. IE 9 fixed so many issues but can only be run on Windows 7. Many of the controls that are used within Sitefinity simply don't work.

So what are we left with? Oddly enough, Google Chrome. Check out the browser stats. Chrome is the only browser that is increasing market share.

I have noticed this out in the wild as well. More and more people are using Chrome that I consult with on a regular basis. It's not a religious war that you might think, such as Microsoft vs. Google or Open Source vs. Proprietary. It's just a question of working well vs. not working well.

Right now Chrome is delivering a better day to day experience. Consistent functionality across platforms with limited interruptions.

The only problem is, whenever a browser dominates, the browser starts to decline. I hope Google can do a better job once they're on top.

Sitefinity 4.2 Released!

Gregg Crystal — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 08:27:58 GMT

Many wonderful bug fixes and a new eCommerce module:

http://www.sitefinity.com/devnet/forums/sitefinity-4-x/general-discussions/sitefinity-4-2-is-released.aspx

Flash Development is Still Alive and Well

Gregg Crystal — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 11:08:00 GMT

Adobe has just released a new version of Adobe Flash Builder that was specially created for PHP developers. I think it's a good sign that Flash Development is still alive and well.

Flash has taken some hits recently, as Steve Jobs refuses to allow Flash to run on iPhones, iPads, and iPods. To promote this Jobs and Co. have pushed the notion that Flash has security issues and has many memory leaks. You could say that about any program.

Adobe has finally won over Apple to the point that the Adobe AIR software can create applications for the Apple family of products (See Some Adobe AIR Examples on iOS Here)

Adobe AIR is a wonderful product for creating desktop applications. http://balsamiq.com/ is a great example of an AIR product.

Inalign still does Flash Development, and while I have seen the demand come down in recent years, Flash is still a viable tools for many applications.

Sitefinity 4.1 SP3 Released - It's Not Bad

Gregg Crystal — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 09:55:50 GMT

We've done a bunch of Sitefinity 4.1 projects, and yes, there's a couple of bugs here and there. Depending on what you're doing, there's lots of bugs.

Thankfully, Telerik has been doing a great job of bug fixing and releasing upgrades.

We recently started a project with Sitefinity 4.1 SP3 and it's a good build. Plenty of issues have been resolved, and it's a very stable release.

Soon I'll be posting some of the features of Sitefinity 4 that we love the most (like Widget Templates) and how these features will improve your life.

Time to Get Blogging Again

Gregg Crystal — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 00:00:00 GMT

The past two months have been very hectic, and because of that, I stopped blogging.

It's the reason why blogging is so effective-it's the first thing people stop doing when they start to run out of time.

I am still a little busy, and there's always someone in my office, so for today I will just share a good song.

Jazz, Wine and Inalign

Gregg Crystal — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 14:00:00 GMT

The 2011 New York Jazz and Wine Festival will be held on July 29-31 in downtown Syracuse, New York. It’s a unique event that combines great live jazz performances with fun, food and drink. Last year’s festival featured three days of the fine jazz performances and more than 1,250 guided tastings. The total three-day attendance was over 15,000. Among this year’s scheduled artists are percussionist Evan Scott Gross and the CNY Jazz Orchestra.

Inalign is proud to support the New York Jazz and Wine Festival by developing their website. We worked with the Central New York Jazz Arts Foundation which organizes the event and a local advertising agency, Adworks. Adworks designed the website’s graphic interface and branding. We took the Photoshop files submitted by Adworks and converted those files into HTML pages that were used to create templates in the Sitefinity content management system.

The website features an online shop for purchasing festival passes and merchandise as well as a schedule of events and photo gallery. The client benefits by being able to access Sitefinity’s easy-to-use interface to update site content quickly without any special technical skills. The site also allows the festival organizers to interact with prospective attendees through social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.

If you plan to be in the Central New York area during late July, we hope you decide to attend the festival. It’s a great summer time opportunity to enjoy yourself, make new some friends and memories at the same time.

Welcome to Marketing Specialist Joanne Capella

Gregg Crystal — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 10:01:00 GMT

Inalign welcomes another member to its team marketing specialist Joanne Capella.

Joanne returns to Inalign after earning her Masters degree in Information Systems Management from the iSchool at Syracuse University this spring. Joanne first worked for Inalign during 2006 and 2007 when she designed websites and marketing materials for not only our company, but also for several of our clients. She returns to help strengthen our online marketing strategies.

Please welcome Joanne; she looks forward to working with you soon.

Welcome to Software Engineer Mark Thorne

Gregg Crystal — Sun, 15 May 2011 09:58:00 GMT

Inalign adds another member to our team this week: software engineer Mark Thorne.

Mark has over ten years experience with Lockheed Martin working on ground based radar projects. In addition he developed display software on the Microsoft Windows platform using Microsoft Visual C++, Oracle Server and MySQL. Mark also developed data processing software for the SUN platform using C++.

Please help us welcome Mark; he looks forward to working with you soon.