We’ve released a major overhaul of the poll module. Improvements:

• Sitecore 6 support, including using Page Editor to modify existing polls
• New polls can be added using Sitecore 6 Page Editor
• Staging support
• AJAX voting
• Fully automated installation
• Simplified architecture: the module no longer uses an additional database, which also allowed us to completely remove the settings application
• Better looks
• Easier customization: we’re using more xhtml and css, and less tables. Instead of c# webcontrol code, we’re using an ascx sublayout that is much easier to tweak without having to compile the code
• Refactored code and reviewed design

The Poll module is part of Sitecore shared source program, and it stays that way. However we’ve dedicated our QA and development to reshape the module and release a clean and well tested Sitecore 6 version. We used the same open svn/trac server for entire development process, and you can see change history.

From now on, the module continues its life as a shared source component, meaning that you can (and very welcome to) contribute. I was doing product management type of work on the project, while Michael Baranov gets all the praise for beautifying the code.

My favorite feature is the ability to add new polls directly through the Sitecore 6 Page Editor.

1. Click “Insert Poll”

2. Setup poll using a pop-up wizard

3. Select a placeholder

4. Done.

You can also edit existing polls from the Page Editor:

Content layout is changed, so that you’re no longer required to store all polls in a single location. This setup beautifully supports multisite solutions.

And bugs, lots of bugs were fixed:

Hope you like the update. Downloads, documentation and source code are all available at http://trac.sitecore.net/Poll.

Have you seen or used the Sitecore Poll module? Got any complaints, suggestions or feature requests? Mail ar at sitecore dot net or leave them here in comments. The feedback will be put to good use. Go.

After the Carousel, Slider and Visual list field types, I've decided to take a pause to work on the  quality and make an actual release. This includes all of the housekeeping well-behaved Sitecore fields should do, bugfixes (thanks for the feedback, really) and documentation.

What's changed:

• Carousel and Visual list can be used outside of the media library. They will default to using the content item icon, but it's also possible (and expected) to supply an image field name to take the image from. Same works for item titles. See the documentation for configuration examples
• All fields now properly indicate their changed state to Sitecore, which results in timely "Do you want to save the item" prompts
• All fields also support readonly state - if the item is protected, or the user does not have write permissions, the field will be rendered in readonly state ("grayed out")
• Carousel and Visual list fields support link checking
• Production and Items Only (development) packages and package projects are included.

It's time to call it a Beta - see the Field Types trac site for downloads.

The goal is to apply more polish and make a quality release when the time Crestone ships, so that the fields can be used right away.

Some tickets are already piling up for the next release. If you have ideas for new field types - send them in, or contribute.

RSS module trunk is shaped up to support Crestone. The module no longer requires web.config to be modified after the installation, packages are updated, and the project structure is changed to match rest of the modules more closely.

After some surface testing the module appears to work fine on Crestone, the updated Crestone beta should do.

Trunk development has moved to Crestone;  Visual Studio 2008 is required to work with the project. Use Sitecore5 branch for the stable Sitecore 5.3.x version.

From the feedback, accumulated during the module lifetime, these are the goals I see for the next version:

• Update the module to work with Crestone (almost there, needs more testing)
• Simplify feed creation, configuration and troubleshooting - ease of use.
• Add more extensibility points, to allow partners to better fit the module to their needs without modifying the module itself.

What do you think?

As always, packages, source code and updates are available at the trac site.

Another field type is up and running: introducing Visual List, allowing to maintain a list of images (or any items, in future) in a very simple and visual way. The field allows editors to select any number of images from a specified source, and supports drag-and-drop reordering.

Good usage scenarios for this fields include maintaining a list of banners to rotate on the page, a list of product images, etc. An advantage over using a set of subitems to achieve the same functionality is editor experience: no not having to switch items saves a lot of editing time, and its easy to see all selected items at once.

The Outercore fieldtypes project, which now includes Carousel, Slider and Visuallist fields, has moved to Sitecore shared source repository, so no more download links in the blog.

Use the project trac site to view or update the documentation, download the source, file tickets or watch the updates. I'll continue to post update summaries in the blog.

Bug reports, new field type ideas are welcome.

Contributors are most welcome, of course, mail me to become one.

Continuing with additional field types for Sitecore: introducing Slider.

Slider is a fairly simple control, that currently only supports numeric values. To set up the field, you need to define minimum and maximum values, and an optional list of allowed values.

Here is what you get with Source= Min=0&Max=200&Values=1, 5, 10, 15, 25, 35, 100, 200

I've pushed RSS module updates to the shared source repository. These are some small tweaks that were made after the latest release (i.e. what is available on the SDN). From commit logs:

• Scheduled command to update RSS feeds in database
• Ability to use $(dataFolder) macro when defining disk location for xml feed
• Fixed bug with dates not being converted to UTC, which is required for ToString("r") to work properly
• Added 'Date Field' field - possibility to specify which field should be used to get the publication date of the item

Future plans include conversion to Crestone and Visual Studio 2008, and some Crestone-specific tweaks.

A little weekend project to add more field types to Sitecore's arsenal: introducing Carousel.

What you hopefully see below (once the flash loads) is a "Carousel" field type, with a source set to a media library folder. User can select one of the thumbnails, or, if there are more items than can be fit in the available space, scroll to see more . The field value is an ID of the selected item, as you would expect.

I'm not sure whether it's a great example of Sitecore extensibilty or of things you shouldn't do, but I though I'd share it anyway :)

This little snippet adds shortcut to all content sections (and a little unsupported yet indispensable dbbrowser) to the Sitecore task bar. What is good about is, is that its very easy to install: download and unpack to your /sitecore/shell/override, its just two xml layouts with embedded code. The dark side is that you have to put them in override folder to replace the standard Sitecore start bar. So if the start bar changes in future builds - yours won't.

Fortunatelly, uninstalling is just as easy: remove the Startbar.xml and StartbarSections.xml files and thats it. Standard disclaimers apply: if your PC turns into evil alien monster and starts dissecting humans - you have been warned. Although it might be a good idea to keep your production server clean, I (humbly) find this control to be very useful in development environment.

Once again - download link (3kb).

We have an interesting shared source release that I'd like to point your attention to. Xml data provider is a custom data provider that allows you to import any external data as long as you provide a transformation to Sitecore item xml format. So why is this so useful?

The provider comes with an example of importing RSS/Atom feed data. All you need to do is to create a new feed definition item, point it to valid feed and set settings like refresh rate. If the feed has any entries they will be shown as children of your item, being perfectly valid (although immutable) Sitecore items.

While we had some RSS reader components in past, this one is totally different: your presentation doesn't have to handle feed data in some different way - you can reuse your renderings and your skills, setting up rss feeds in no time.

However its important to see that RSS aggregation is merely an example of what can be done. To import any other kind of external data, all you have to do is to provide a xsl tranformation and a simple class to register it. Provider understands a fairly simple xml format that is similar to Sitecore item xml: you can find an example in provider documentation.

And with source code available to download, its easily extendable and a great example of writing your own data provider.

One of the 'neat' tricks in Sitecore RSS module is a fast way of getting all items based on the certain template.

RSS module supports different kind of feeds, and some of them (static feeds) are only refreshed on publish event to gain performance. For simplicity sake the logic is pretty straight-forward: when the publish:end event is fired, get all the feed items in the publish target database and rebuild rss feeds.

Iterating through the entire database is very expensive operation though, even if it is only performed on each publish. The most simple, but restraining solution is to only allow placing feeds under some specific folder, like 'RSS feed'. Performance is ok, but the user cannot place the feed items whererever he likes.

One way to speed up the search while still allowing user to place items anywhere in the database would be using Sitecore query: //*[@@templateid='{11111111-1111-1111-111111111111}']. It will still take a few seconds on a relatively empty database in 5.0.7.3 because its not actually that empty anyway.

However in this particular case, we can resort to the Link database. Link database is used by Sitecore to resolve all the linking issues - what referers and what references does the item have. And if an item is based on a template, it also counts as a reference from the item to the template. The solution then is very simple: get all the referers for the rss feed template item and then sort them to only include specific items. This is how it's done in RSS module:

private static Item[] GetFeedsInDatabase(Database database, Language language)
{
   TemplateItem feedTemplate = database.Templates[Constants.FeedTemplateID];
   if (feedTemplate == null)
   {
      return null;
   }

   // Get all items refering to the feed template
   ItemLink[] links = Globals.LinkDatabase.GetReferers(feedTemplate.InnerItem);
   if (links == null)
   {
      return null;
   }

   ArrayList result = new ArrayList(links.Length);
   // and filter the referers - we dont need to include masters
   foreach(ItemLink link in links)
   {
      if (link.SourceDatabaseName == database.Name)
      {
         Item item = database.Items[link.SourceItemID, language];
         if ((item != null) && (IsMaster(item) == false))
         {
            result.Add(item);
         }
      }
   }

   return (Item[])result.ToArray(typeof(Item));
}

I regret that It wasn't me who came up with the idea itself (kudos to Dmitry Kostenko). I can imagine that it can still take some time to complete on fairly large databases - I haven't done any real big scale tests, but it works a lot faster than query in my environment and it is possible to place 'articles' rss feed into the articles content tree where it belongs, intead of the global rss feeds folder.

And since the module is open source, it will take 5 minutes to rewrite it to only look inside the 'RSS feeds' folder instead of the whole database or 15 minutes to make that optional.