Community: Future

Bennolan Behaviour

Zaltana JS in Core et al already uses the concept of adding events onto objects by class or xpath etc, but the library above makes it easier to do. It could be part of the core. This is also really built into Ext, but not as nice a way - maybe we could reproduce the functionallity by using the format in Bennolan Behaviour, but just loop through for each the Ext Query function.

Google Map EZ

http://n01se.net/chouser/gmapez/

Provides an out of the box solution for integrating Google Maps features in Zaltana style - just make it a widget !

Blueprint for CSS Layout

http://code.google.com/p/blueprintcss/

Great set of CSS styles for good column and box layout, as well as good control on typography, across browsers.

Objects, or embedded other HTML etc

Use XHTML "object" type flag, to embed new objects on the Server side.
Provide a Javascript version - e.g. Client side but still old HTML compatible, iframes or not ?

Sequence or Random Objects

Need to consider the input HTML, but the basic requirement is a set of links that can be gone through as a sequence or random. This is very useful for things like Front Page Random Image, or Random Calendar View, or Random article from WIKI etc.

Navigation List class="random" or class="daily" or similar.
Output could be:
- Link - one link only, chosen from list
- Flash/Image - if images, just display the necessary image, or Flash etc
- Embedded HTML - via object above - server side or javascript Gadget style

User controlled style

http://www.pixeldevelopment.com/about.asp

Has some good comments on user controlled layout. It covers columns, fixed vs variable width, font size, colour inverse and more.

What would be nice now is that a user is able to specify their web hosting preference. If they need inverse colours that is fine, but how do they navigate to About above, or some other preference storage like Zaltana, to choose them in the first place?

The problem with defaults like this is that what do you use? You can't use Cookies as they do not work across domains. You can set a CSS in a browser that works across sites, and if we have some consistency that may help - but it would be better if we could just choose the type with the "rel" links.

Automatic Language Links

Try and automate language / translations - at a minimum the wrappers can add Bablefish links - but there are better solutions, e.g. if there is already a local version of that file, that would be better than a Bablefish version.

Link Styles

Add in or change the ANCHOR class based on type of URL/Link. E.g. If it is an external site then show a link to external. Also should provide a customisation (can be in the XML config or somewhere else) to make all external links into new windows (aka target="_new").

Other anchor types could be internal to a page (e.g. #blah).

Once the class is on, the CSS can then add an image, colour or other changes to make them obvious.

More difficult links to class are things like 'Rss' feeds - but if the CSS is done, then some things can do it specifically - e.g. <a href="RecentChanges.rss" class="rss">Recent Changes</a>

Comments, Polls, Rating and More

E.g. http://js-kit.com/

Add easy access to those services, but also consider alternatives. It could be we just add in a link to the service, it gets changed into the js-kit.com version, or something else.

Form Validation

http://www.massimocorner.com/validator/

Free CSS Templates

http://www.freecsstemplates.org/ - make a style that can use any of these.

Need to group each of the styles into types, so that we don't have to create XSL for every one.

Two Stage CDN

A CDN - Content Delivery Network - is a very good way to improve the performance of your site. I have two plans for Zaltana styles to support CDN. As I don't have a real CDN I am currently just placing that content on a 3rd party static web site that runs a lot faster than my standard servers.

Zaltana Files - all the Zaltana files will be up on and available to any users from the static site. The only down side of that you may have an upgraded style without your knowledge. Initial version is just a variable in Zaltana to use a new location for static files like CSS - this is a simple change.
URL Rewrites - some basic rules to say that Anchors, Script, CSS, Image and Flash that start with a specific string can be rewritten - e.g. /static/a/b/c would be remapped to http://yourcdn.com/anything;/a/b/c

Build / Compress

Add use of ShrinkSafe

Lots of Javascript Widgets

http://sixrevisions.com/rapid-development/10_ajax_effects_website_fanciness