As I mentioned in my previous post, I've started implementing some .NET wrapper controls around the ExtJs javascript toolkit to make it easy to use in ASP.NET and especially in mojoPortal.

So far I've implemented ExtPanel, TabPanel, Tab, SplitPanel, and Viewport server controls. I just updated this site  with my latest code and created a ExtJs Complex Layout Demo page using my controls. I spent some hours thrashing before I got it working but its very fun implementing these widgets once you do get them working it seems like magic. The layout possibilities are just awesome. I love the way you can collapse any panel to hide it and can resize them by dragging the borders.

Of course I'm sure I will continue improving these controls and will undoubtedly find bugs when I start trying to use them for real applications but they will get polished up as I use them for real features. I'm just trying to get some useful baseline proof of concept implementations working now.

I found a .NET project for ExtJS this morning but it depends on the MS AJAX framework. Although we can use the MS AJAX framework in mojoPortal, I'm choosing to implement mine without that dependency. I'm also choosing not to embed the javascript in the dll but instead just have a setting to the base path for the ext javascript files. I do see the convenience of embedding but I also see that putting a lot of javascript inside a dll increases its size and dlls have to be loaded into memory on the server which is probably not a problem on beefy machines but in shared hosting with limited resources its more optimal in my opinion not to have it in the dll.

I'll be posting more demo pages as I complete the wrappers for more ExtJs widgets.

Those of you who subscribe to svn commit notification may have noticed the new Survey feature by Rob Henry landing in there recently. Rob has been working on this feature for a while and the feature is ready for some testing and feedback so that he can put the final polish on it. You can test using his demo site at http://www.justsome.net/surveydemo/

You can login using admin@admin.com and password admin

The feature allows creation of complex multi page surveys and supports a variety of question formats. Currently its only implemented in MS SQL but we plan to add the other data layers after its finished.

Those working with svn trunk can just do svn update, rebuild the mojoportal-survey.sln or mojoportal-complete.sln in VS and then visit the siteroot/Setup/Default.aspx page and the feature will install automatically.

Post any feedback in the Developer Forums

Thanks Rob for your work on this! It will be a valuable feature for the mojoPortal community.

I'm very excited to announce that mojoPortal has won "Best Other Open Source Content Management System" in the 2007 Open Source CMS Awards sponsored by PACKT Publishing. (Other means built on something other than PHP, mojoPortal is built on C# ASP.NET)

Huge thanks to our community and the judges and the good folks at Packt Publishing for honoring us with this award!

We appreciate the recognition and the additional attention the project has received by participating in this contest and are very pleased to have won our category.

Now we can introduce mojoPortal as "The Award Winning Content Management System, mojoPortal" ;-) I'm sure I'll be very obnoxious saying this at every opportunity!

I've been wanting to revamp the Site Settings UI in mojoPortal for a while now. On friday I started doing a little work in the WebStore UI trying to implement tabs for grouping settings. First I implemented a server control that wraps the dojo TabContainer but for some reason I could not get the FCKeditor to display in Firefox inside the dojo Tabs. So saturday morning I tried using the ExtJs project and wrapping a .NET server control around their Tabs and it worked much better.

So I decided to go ahead and use it in Site Settings.

Much better organization than the previous layout. I just updated demo.mojoportal.com with this for anyone who wants a closer look. It will also be in svn trunk by tonight.

I have to say the ExtJs project is very impressive and I think I will focus on using it instead of dojo. Nothing against the dojo project but ExtJs seems more mature, has better documentation and better demos.

Amazingly impressive is their WebDesktop demo. Very cool stuff.

We finally got our mojoPortal e-commerce demo site back online at http://storedemo.mojoportal.com/

Not much work has happened with this project since our initial sponsor went out of business without ever using it. But there has been some interest in getting it moving again and at least some possibility for new sponsorship is in the winds so I thought it would be good to get the demo site running again so people can check it out and help with testing and feedback.

Currently it only supports download products but you can proceed all the way through checkout and you can download the products. It uses Authorize.NET for the payment gateway and is hooked into a test account so you can test it using the card number 4111111111111111 and it will go through. The products in the store are mp3 files of my orginal music which was the only thing I had handy to make download test products with.

More information about the project (though not so up to date) can be found here: http://www.mojoportal.com/e-commercesolution.aspx

and we have special forums for anyone who wants to discuss this project here:
http://www.mojoportal.com/e-commerceforum.aspx

Also don't forget, October 26, 2007 is the last day you can vote for mojoPortal in the PackT Publishing Open Source CMS Awards so if you haven't voted already please show your support and vote for mojoPortal.