Dolphin U Alpha 8 - New Features!

Comments now have live updates. Whenever there's a new comment posted, a "push" notification would come up to viewer's page notifying about new comments. Click that, and the page would reload to show them. We are intentionally opting for notifications instead of actually pushing comments themselves, because adding comments in real-time would inevitably make the thread of comments move, and may thus interfere with reading. You just don't want your page to jump around unexpectedly.

 

Live updates engine is also a system feature now, so other modules, inducing 3rd-party ones can use it. 

 

Content Management (Administration/Moderation)

Earlier we discussed separation of Content Management and Site Management in Dolphin U. Studio is for site admins and content is managed through site front-end. Depending on permissions members can control content - either just their own or of other members. Now Studio has been there for a while, but content management was limited to action buttons in individual posts. Today, we're introducing "Manage" pages for Posts, People and Organisations. 

 

Moderators for example would have their "Manage Posts" page show not only their own posts, but also other people's posts. Hide them, edit them, or whatever it is  allowed to do with them by Webmaster who sets permissions in Studio. Here's a brief video of how it looks and works:

 

 

 

Navigation, Popups, etc.

We are continuing the quest for most effective and usable site navigation and UI design. In this iteration you can see a new main menu that slides out as a site-wide bar instead of a small pop-up. Block menus also take full width of a block now. Popups in general have been improved to go "full-screen" when viewed on mobile devices and some (like Search and Member Menu) would open full-screen even on desktop. Here's a brief video...

 

 

 

We're still experimenting with these, and there will be more improvements in further Alphas. Stay tuned!

 

Links and Plugs

Plug 1: This is Alpha. Not feature-final. Not tested. Not to be used on production sites.

Plug 2: Automatic update will be pushed shortly.