Konductor Software

It’s been a while since our last update… which is a good thing, because we have been busy! So what has changed since our last update?

Well the AIR application has gotten quiet a bit of attention. For one thing, we now have user selectable CSS styles. This means that as a designer you are able to define additional CSS classes for specific elements that you would like to expose to your clients. We have a preliminary version of this in our current version - and we will have a full featured version coming up within the next few builds.

We also rolled out a few extra smaller updates as well - Undo/Redo functionality, AIR 1.5 support, and a number of bug fixes.

The most exciting stuff is what will be coming shortly though. The biggest thing will be comprehensive support for user selectable styles. This will especially helpful when it comes to allowing users to highlight text in different ways, create paragraphs that may need to be differentiated in some way, etc. So keep your open for new updates

We will also be making some changes to the UI, to make it even more user friendly. This wil be a bit of change for users who have “adjusted” to some of the niggles in the current system - however you will now find that it will behave more consistently with what the large majority of applications out there. We will also be linking up appropriate keyboard shortcuts for various portions of functionality, with the aim of making editing as efficient and easy as possible.

And probably the biggest change that is coming is a more forgiving rendering engine in the AIR application. This will be especially helpful if you find yourself migrating existing sites over to the system. Additionally, a debug will provided to designers, allowing them to see where issues are occurring in the case of an error.

Make sure your signed up if you want to check some of this new functionality BTW, if you are in San Jose, so is Derek and I. Give us a shout if your close by, we’d be happy to show you what we are up to!

O’Reilly’s InsideRIA posted a really detailed writeup on Konductor - check it out. It does a very good job at covering most of Konductor’s features, so if you have been a little curious about some of the finer details of Konductor, this makes for a good read.

Well, a lot has been happening behind the scenes with our Dreamweaver extension. We have recorded a quick little demonstration to show everyone just how easy it is get a Dreamweaver template onto the Konductor system. Check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rq-CjsLmeGc&feature=hd

We will be releasing a new version of the extension soon as well, which will have refined menu styles for layout, form styles for layout, and added stability for the existing features.

Anyway, check out the video - it’s short, and shows just how easy it is to get your sites ready for Konductor. Plus, if you want to sign up to try it out, send me a line here (make sure you leave the subject as-is :P).

The dust has settled. Mouse fingers are bandaged and beginning to heal and the temporary Konductor tattoos are starting to fade. All of this must mean that the Adobe MAX show in San Francisco is over!

First of all, thank you Adobe for the first class show. Second, thanks to all of you who stopped by our booth to check us out. For the over 400 beta testers who signed up at the show, if you have not already been sent the application, you should get it shortly.

Due to the overwhelming response at our booth we did not get a chance to go to many sessions, but a definite highlight for myself as well as our tech team was the research project code named “Alchemy” - created to allow developers to compile C/C++ code to run on AIR. And since our CMS interface is built on AIR, we were instantly excited about tapping into the millions of lines of C/C++ code that could run in conjunction with Konductor. The possibilities are endless!

Stay tuned - we cannot wait to show you what we have in store for 2009.

The latest episode of Duane Nickull’s TV series has gone live, and it contains a very comprehensive feature on Konductor. Check it out…

http://tv.adobe.com/#vi+f1537v1001

Thanks for coming by to check us out Duane!

In order to show you higher quality videos, we decided to start hosting our videos on motionbox, in addition to YouTube. And then HD arrived on YouTube. We also uploaded some new videos that demonstrate some of the features we are working on. Behold…

Image optimization

Image optimization is one of the most requested features we get from both users and designers. In order to upload a large image to a CMS these days, users are expected to resize the images themselves. This takes time, and if they are not tech savvy, it takes training too. In most cases, though, the image tends to get uploaded as is. The image just gets scaled, not resized - this takes the user a long time to upload, and visitors end up downloading huge image too. So here is what we have done:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67rAadGk8Vw&feature=hd

Form Builder

Another highly requested feature is an easy way to build and manage forms. This is often more complicated than it seems on the surface, as database storage, result aggregation, email responses and the like all have be managed too. This one is still a bit of a work in progress, but here is what we have so far:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYhMlaGR26s&feature=hd

More videos are on the way! Plus if you missed our initial platform demonstation a couple of months back, you can check it out here (a lot has changed since then though): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ej2obn24mdE&fmt=18

Last year, Konductor (then known as “Project Argebam”) went to the Adobe MAX show in Chicago. This year we are sponsors! We are extremely excited to be part of the amazing event that Adobe puts on and believe that this is the perfect place to reveal to the design and development community what we have been working on for the past 2 years. We are also sponsoring an invite only after hours rock show with Adobe Evangelist Duane Nickull’s band, 22nd Century, to perform. If you are going to MAX (who isn’t?), drop us a line for some free  tickets. See you in San Fran!

Due to the overwhelming response to the pre-release program, over 500 in 7 days, we have decided to keep the doors open to 500 more. We will be breaking up the users into groups of 50 to 100 over the next few days, with first group of users being sent the AIR application as early as next week. Thanks to all for the amazing response!

The wait is over - kind of. Well at least we have an orderly line forming now.

As of yesterday, Oct 5th, Konductor announced that it is now giving away 500 pre-release seats for FREE to the Web professional community. Within 8 hours we had 109 sign-ups from Designers and Developers all over the world! The Adobe Dreamweaver Extension to allow Designers to easily work with Konductor from right inside DW is coming soon.

If you are interested in test driving the future of content management sign up at the top right of this page now!

This is the name of Duane’s most recent post. I figured this might be about investigating buildings, but it’s actually way more interesting - the process of software architecture in the real world. He nicely compares the idealistic method of architecting software versus what actually happens in the world, and uses some great examples to illustrate this.

Duane is also co-authoring a book on Web 2.0 Patterns. The fact that a group of very smart authors are putting together some guidelines on designing Web 2.0 applications based on years of real world experience should be of interest to pretty much anyone managing a Web 2.0 project, and anyone involved in developing one.

January 2009 people!