It's been while since I updated the Control Centre what with getting the rest of the SPARK Web Management system complete.   But, now I'm spending some serious time updating the implementing the site control centre in the main SPARK product.   The 'Control Centre' is completely written in Silverlight version 2.0.  

Key features are full drag and drop, ordering, context menus and live site previews.  The idea is that the the administrator of the site and fully control the site from within this application.   So, for instance, they can create a page, set SEO options, organise in the menus and add content.  Future plans is it integrate the full permissions system that already exists in the SPARK CMS.   I'll also be integrating the modules are they come online including the form/survey builder that was recently added to the SPARK system.

When it's all done, the plan is that a web designer can visit a client and create a site on the fly in front of them.  Then later commit this to the SPARK system following graphic design and content creation. 

A static demo on the organisational chart and the proposed user interface can be seen here.

http://www.sparkyourbusiness.co.uk/controlcentre/index.html 

Still plenty to do :) And you can break it quite easily.   Try making a parent a descend of one of it's children....never a good idea.

Well, I've not posted on here for ages.  I've been meaning to but it's been really hectic here with Silver Pride.   It's all been a bit of a whirlwind.  There has been some major developments which I will post on in more detail in the next few posts.  

 In brief; 

1. I have now brought onboard two gentlemen as directors in the company.   Ben who brings a wealth of commercial project experience of working with SMEs (small/medium enterprises), public sector and blue chip clients.  He manages the commercial client relationships, professional analysis services and much more.  The second is Craig who is by trade a designer and has worked and managed large marketing campaigns and graphics/web projects with some high profile clients.  The there is myself, Graham, who is the lead developer and techy geek type who creates and keeps all the software and sites a smooth oiled.

 2. The SPARK Web Management System has been finished and launched.  More on this in the next post.   There will be a full product site launched later this month with online payment, support/ticketing and developer resources. 

3. We've got a new SPARK site and new Silver Pride site coming online in a month to reflect our new services and showcase some of the projects we've done recently. 

4. Last but definately not least we have moved offices to (fittingly) Pride Park in Derby (UK).  This a large industrial park in Derby that houses many new tech companies.  The office is a lot better than the last one which left a little to be desired.  I'll not say more than that. 

I'll try not to be too long before the next post where I will outline some of the features of the SPARK system.

Cheers

Graham

Well, I'm nearly there with phase 1 of the CMS I've been developing.   An overview of the CMS capabilities are listed here.

Full control of your site content

All site content text and graphics are editable in place using an easy to use WYSIWYG interface.  

Multi-lingual

You can multiple versions of your content in a wide variety of languages including Arabic and Chinese.   SPARK CMS automatically translates your original text when creating foreign language content.

Use for the Internet, Intranet or Extranet

Included is a comprhensive permissions system which means you can have secure pages or content.

Next gen site management tools

Creating and managing your site and clients is easy with the site management system.

Site and departmental themes control

You can have a global site template to your site or control the site template by sub site or pages.   So, for instance, you can have a global site look and feel but then have a completely different look to another department or section.  

Fully accessible to W3C standards

The site generated are full W3C complient which are accessible by screen reading software.

Search Engine Friendly

Sites created with the SPARK CMS are designed to be extremely search engine friendly.   Techniques such as Google Sitemap creation, friendly url re-writing, and meta content control (meta-tags etc) are included as standard. 

Integrated Google Analytics

Track the search engine usage and visitor statistics through the integrated Google Analytics console.

Full CMS Branding to your company logo and specification

This is a major feature of the CMS! More details on this later.

Design

The system is written on ASP.Net and uses many advanced techniques such as Ajax and JQuery to give a very intutive user experience.  Anybody who has worked with me will tell you I'm a bit of a geek when it comes to user interfaces and I've put extra emphasis on making the CMS very easy for novice users to get to grips with quickly.  The result is a system that I think acts more like a client side application than a web application.   This means you get instant "stateful" feedback (I try to avoid refreshes/postbacks where possible).

I'll more details up of the CMS and with it's own homepage in the very near future.

I've uploaded a new version of the Silverlight Organisational Chart that will be part of the Silver Pride CMS.  The site hierarchy will be an integral part of the CMS and will allow designers and administrators to visual and control the site from one central place.   

This new demo now sports drag and drop between nodes and I've also spruced up the connections between nodes.  The demo can be viewed here as before http://silverlight.silver-pride.com/OrgChartTest.aspx.

Well, I've not posted on here for a couple of weeks so I thought I'd put another sample of the CMS development up on the blog.    It's another one of those "work in progress" pieces but it gives a good idea of the type of work I do.   As Microsoft's Silverlight 2.0 RC1 was formally released this week I thought I'd put something up that's related.  It's a part of the Silver Pride Content Management System (though it will be *much* more than a CMS in the future) and gives a nice idea of what the CMS is all about.   The system brings some of the best technologies out there for web development and makes good use of JQuery, Ajax and Silverlight to provide a rich user experience with a heavy emphasis on ease of use. 

This example in an early implementation of the site, client and page management system.   The CMS can allow a company to manage multiple clients with multiple sites from one common user interface.   This example shows a possible site hierarchy UI.  It doesn't do much here but it does demonstrate dynamic tree generation and insertion of nodes into the hierarchy with animated effects.

A demo can be seen here. http://silverlight.silver-pride.com/OrgChartTest.aspx.  Click on the "Add item" buttons to add a couple of dynamic nodes to the list.  I'll possibly make the demo more interesting in the future!

Note, you will need to install Silverlight to see this.  It's only around 4.5mb and it's now the official 2.0 release so it is worth it.

As my introductory text was looking a little sad and lonely I've added a demo of my upcoming QuickMenu (working title) JQuery plugin currently in development.  It's part of the new Silver Pride Content Management System and is designed to allow you navigate smoothly through many levels of heirarchical data.  This isn't an original idea of course.   I originally saw a similar implementation on this website.  There were one or two things I didn't like about this version though, one of which was the dependancy on Ajax calls to another page.  I therefore decided to write my own compact version.  I took some inspiration from http://www.deviantart.com/ categories list. 

It's fully accessible and should degrade nicely (i.e. still work) if Javascript is disabled as it builds a menu from a simple html list.  Also, I've implemented JQuery animations where taste allows to give a nice IPOD style sliding menu effect.

When I get a chance I'll refactor the code and explain how everything works so that others can use it.  But in the meantime, here is a simple demo.

http://aob.silver-pride.com/quickmenu/quickmenu.htm

Well I've been meaning to do this for a while now but I've always seemed to find and excuse to not do it.  Anyway, introductions...my name is Graham Till, a developer by trade specialising mainly in web based .Net development these days.  Though I've been around long enough to have worked and sometimes suffered on C, MFC, COM/ATL etc. (I won't go on as it's not intended to be an online CV.)   I'm the founder and owner of a company called Silver Pride Software based in Derby (UK). 

The purpose of this blog is to bring updates to the latest developments happening at Silver Pride plus other interesting titbits I come across as I go along.  I'm planning to release a JQuery plugin at some point.  It's my first attempt at such a plugin so the results may be interesting!

Lastly, the blog is called AOB or Any Other Business.  No doubt it will also stand for Any Old B****** at some point as well. 

Thanks

Graham