JFusion Blog

I am back!!! Been on a sabbatical off sorts for a few months now. Been stuck with college, family, everything else! But simply put, it feels great to be back. And the timing couldn't get be any better. JFusion 2.x is coming people! When? That still is the million dollar question floating around and something to discuss in one of my future blog posts. I promise!

So what news do I have for you guys today?! Well we floated around a requirement for a Graphics/UI expert to join the team(via Twitter). A few proposals did come up but they were mostly from companies looking for a tie up with us. Not what we were looking for!

And then I realized I had the perfect guy sitting right beside me, well not quite literally but I hope you get the meaning. He happens to be my juinor in college and has quite a lot of experience that he brings to JFusion. He is an active volunteer of the IEEE just like me and a great friend of mine. Here is a quick introduction that he has supplied me with.

After a lot of internal discussion within the team (primarily the developers), we have come up with a new versioning mechanism. The emphasis is now on reaching a stable release as soon as possible.

From now on we shall have a regular version cycle consisting of per defined feature releases and subsequent bug fix releases. The versions will continue to contain three digits as they have till date but will signify both features releases and bug fix ones easily. Let's take the example of version 1.2.x. The version will be part of the 1.2 branch and the last digit x will be upped with every bug fix release, more or less the way it done for Joomla! as well. 1.2.0 will be the first version to take advantage of this new method.

As part of the discussion, it was also found that the way JFusion is packaged at the moment, it will be very difficult for us to call a release as stable. There are far too many extensions that are packaged into one mega package at the moment. All plugins, module, bots and other bits are packaged together and almost all are undergoing rapid development even as I write this blog entry.

In addition to that, not everybody integrates all software(s) that we support on the same site. Most integrate one, or at the maximum two software. So it kind of becomes cumbersome for them to have everything installed on their website. Same is the case with the Modules and Bots.

I doubt it is a secret anymore as we have had the link on the top menu for a few days now. The one that says 'Translate'. So what does it do? Simply put it helps you convert the English Language Strings of the JFusion Component into your own language thereby creating a new language pack! :)

People had been pounding us with requests to create language packs. We did some research and realized how daunting a task it was if we were going to manage this via forums as we had been till date(My country alone has like a couple of 100 languages :P). To find an alternative, Hunter-in-charge, Marius went on a hunt(Wonder how his searches are so productive. Need to use the same Search Engine!) and found Narro. As it turns out even the Mozilla Foundation uses it for its Translation needs. Marius showed me his preliminary tests a couple of months ago. But then the 1.1.2 Release took center stage and the idea sort of went missing.

A couple of weeks back Alan took up the idea and hammered it into reality(The script is still a bit buggy). And it looks beautiful. A couple of eager users have sneaked in, signed up and started translating. All you got to do is to search for your language of choice and translate the strings to it. In case you cannot find the language you want, you can also create it. Converting it into neat Language packs is our work(Alan has devised a script for the same).

For all those who have started work on this, Thank You! For all those who were not sure what we are upto, now that you do know what are you waiting for?

Its been a couple of days since the RC was released. It has been our best release with traffic records being squashed by huge margins! Thank you all for the support.

I take this opportunity to start releasing a few policy announcements. One of the first of the lot is the way we will treat JFusion Plugin requests from now on. We have had a number of requests off late to support new software(s) especially since people have started to feel more and more confident about the potential this product possesses.

The easiest way to put our situation is, we do not have time to create any more plugin(s) i.e. the current set of individuals working for the project. JFusion is a Project which takes its quality seriously and we want to avoid a situation where we have a plugin that cannot be supported by us or upgraded to work with the latest JFusion version. Hence if you want a plugin to be created here are your options;

1. Contact the developers who created the software to be integrated. We have done one heck of a job by perfecting this amazing system that makes it so simple for anybody else to integrate anything with Joomla! Let them tread the rest half of the distance. As always we shall be more than willing to help with any specific questions they may have.

With the 1.1.2 RC looming large over our heads, it was necessary that the Documentation also took a huge leap forward along with the project. And we have risen to this challenge. I present to you a new Documentation Structure that I have been working on for the last couple of days.

 Have a look here.

The aim has been to create docs that are neater, simpler and easier to access. let us know what you think about these changes.