Weekly Web Development Round-up July 04-July 08, 2011

To give our colleagues a better idea of what’s changed in our web applications each week, we’ll be preparing this quick list for publication each Friday. Not all of the details of each change are included below, but we’ll be happy to answer any questions you might have in the comments.

Drupal

  • Kathryn Benson, who’s been working on the Dean of the College website suggested that we create a guide to the different page color schemes. This is now available on the LIS wiki. Thanks, Kathryn!
  • We noticed that the URL field for File Uploads was being filled in by a lot of people as a title for the file. The URL field is used to wrap images in a link to an external URL, like the Give Now button on our Giving home page, so entering a title in that field will create a broken link that will show up in your SiteCheck report. The URL field used to show up in a place that was easy to mistake for a title field after the file was uploaded, so we’ve moved it to reduce this confusion.
  • Modules updated: monster_menus, media, rss_page

MiddMedia

  • A show/hide link now appears in the heading for each folder that lets you show/hide the current folder, or all folders. This is helpful if you have access to multiple folders with a lot of content and need to easily access them.

WordPress

We’re testing out the new version of WordPress, 3.2 and are almost ready to deploy it to the live site. We just need to make sure that a few more plugins are compatible with the update. This is a minor version update, so there are not many changes, but here is a video describing some of the new features. The fullscreen editor is especially neat.

[middmedia 3572E0E0D4518E3AD5796C80F9E53083 imcbride 3-2-release_hd.mp4 width:400 height:244]

One note: the video mentions that people using older browsers will see a notice that they need to update. We’ve disabled this notice so that it won’t nag you when you’re using one of the lab or walkup machines or if you use an older browser on your personal machine because its required to use another web application.

WordPress 3.2 Release Announcement
WordPress 3.2 Technical Changes
WordPress 3.2  Closed Tickets