All posts by Corey Ganser

Extension of the Week: EditGrid

November 19th, 2008 | | MindTouch Extension

The extension I’m focusing on this week is a new extension for EditGrid.  EditGrid is an Online Spreadsheet service delivering Data on Demand. With the EditGrid extension you can embed an EditGrid Spreadsheet into a MindTouch Deki page and then allow users to add to the spreadsheet.

To get started install the EditGrid extension. Once you have the extension installed then go to the page that you want to embed the spreadsheet on, edit the page, and click the Extension dialog button which looks like this:

This will bring up the Extension dialog where you can scroll down to the EditGrid extension. Then select editgrid.widget and add the username for your profile at EditGrid along with the sheet name. For this example we’ll use my EditGrid account which the username is coreyg and the sheet name is MindTouch_Deki Note: You need to include the underscores in place of spaces for the sheet name.

Now click insert extension and the extension will be inserted with the following syntax:

{{ editgrid.widget{user: "coreyg", sheet: "MindTouch_Deki"} }}

Now save the page and you will see that the spreadsheet renders with the ability to be edited by anyone who accesses the page.

Note: EditGrid has permissions for the sheets that can be altered so that people can only read the sheet and not add to it. Also if someone makes a change to the spreadsheet it will not associate the edit with the user editing, it will be associated with the one general user.

EditGrid is a nice addition to Deki as it will allow your users to collaborate around spreadsheets all within Deki.

If you have and questions or suggestions please feel free to leave a comment or contact us.

Optimizing the iPhone browsing experience with DekiMobile

November 14th, 2008 | | Uncategorized

First off, I want to share an excellent blog about intranets and CM I enjoy reading: Column Two. A recent post about “Intranets are the same the world over” drives home the salient point:

Of course, intranets are far from uniform. As I’ve observed in the past, intranets reflect the organisations they serve, and organisations themselves vary widely. Intranets therefore vary organisation-to-organisation, rather than country-to-country.

From an engineering standpoint, this is where MindTouch Deki excels. With its well-documented REST-based API, Deki is adaptable so you can build applications and tools in the language of your choice. Use cases which aren’t covered by the current user interface you can easily achieve by writing your own tools. For example, we know that Deki could provide a much better mobile browsing experience.

Our summer internship project (which ran from July – October) was to create a new front-end for Deki which would be used in an iPhone-optimized design. (You can view the interface for our developer wiki through http://m.mindtouch.com) Rather than tackle all the functionality of MindTouch Deki (editing, administering), we decided the goal of the iPhone interface would be simple: consume and share content from Deki. We decided to use some of the core functionality from the PHP application (for example, re-using PHP’s plug and data model objects) to expedite the development. (And because of this, this iPhone interface is simply a new skin for Deki, rather than an actual iPhone application; you load it through Safari).

Obviously with this new application, we were interested in creating a new user interface, since the needs of a mobile interface are different than the full browser application. So we went back to the drawing board and figured out the best way to consume content from MindTouch Deki through the iPhone. Instead of seeing the common navigation pane, you navigate through the mobile interface through search and tag associations.

We’ve decided to push this project out to the open source community, so you’re free to download it and install it on your own server to use! All information can be found on the DekiMobile page on our developer wiki.

Much credit goes to Fallon, Guerric, and Jessica for pulling this together!

Extension of the Week: Instacalc

November 13th, 2008 | | MindTouch Extension

The extension I’m focusing on this week is the Instacalc extension. Instacalc is a fast, easy and shareable online calculator. The Instacalc extension will allow you to include a calculator on any Deki page for quick calculations or Advanced Calculations using variables.

To get started install the Math Extension. The configuration/installation of ImageMagick, MiKTeX, and Ghostscript aren’t required to use the Instacalc part of the extension.

Once you have installed the extension you can invoke it by editing the page and clicking on the extension dialog button which looks like this:

This will load the Extension dialog, as seen below, where you can scroll down until you see the Math option, click on that and then select the math.sheet and paste the following url into sheet field:

http://instacalc.com/?d=&c=UHJpY2U9JDMuNzUgLy9Db3N0IHBlciBHYWxsb258RGlzdGFuY2U9MzAwIG1pbGVzIC8v
TWlsZXN8R2FzPSA5IC8vZ2FsbG9uc3xNaWxlcyBwZXIgR2FsbG9uPXIyL3IzfENvc3QgcGVy
IE1pbGU9JHIxL3I0fHw&s=sssshss&v=0.9

Then click the Insert Extension button and the following code will be added to your page:

 {{ math.Sheet{sheet: "http://instacalc.com/?d=&c=UHJpY2U9JDMuNzUgLy9Db3N0IHBlciBHYWxsb
258RGlzdGFuY2U9MzAwIG1pbGVzIC8vTWlsZXN8R2FzPSA5IC8vZ2FsbG9uc3xNaWxlcyBwZXIgR2FsbG9uPXIyL3
IzfENvc3QgcGVyIE1pbGU9JHIxL3I0fHw&s=sssshss&v=0.9"} }}

On save this will show the following Instacalc sheet which calculates the cost per mile for your car:

You can find more Instacalc sheets or create your own at Instacalc.

If you have any suggestions or questions, feel free to leave a comment or contact us.

New MindTouch Documentation Space

November 6th, 2008 | | Tutorial

Today we launched a new Documentation space at http://www.mindtouch.com/Documentation. This Documentation space is the official Documentation for MindTouch Deki. Included in the new documentation space are the following sections:

  • Installation – Installation guides for MindTouch Deki for supported Operating Systems
  • User Manual – User Manual for MindTouch Deki
  • Server Management – Includes tutorials for configuring MindTouch Deki’s server environment for Linux and Windows
  • Tips and Tricks – Tips and Tricks for MindTouch Deki configuration and use
  • FAQs – Frequently asked questions for deployment, configuration, and activation
  • Video Library – Videos of MindTouch Deki in action including tutorials of functionality

If you have any questions about our documentation please contact us.

Extension of the Week: Remember the Milk

November 4th, 2008 | | MindTouch Extension

The extension I’m focusing on this week is the Remember the Milk extension. The Remember the Milk extension is a new extension that uses the Remember the Milk Gadget created for Gmail. This gadget will allow you to keep track of Tasks along with adding new tasks to your Remember the Milk account. You can embed this on any page and all of the users can use it as it is cookie based. To get started install the extension.

Once the extension is installed, edit the page that you want the extension on. Then click the Extension icon in the WYSIWYG editor which looks like this:

This will bring up the Extension Dialog as seen here:

Scroll down to the Remember the Milk Gadget and click on it and then click on rtm.gadget. Once you have selected it, click Insert Extension. The inserted extension script will look like the following:

{{ rtm.gadget{} }}

Save the page and you will be presented with a login to the Gadget that looks like this:

Enter your Remember the Milk credentials. If you don’t have a Remember the Milk account you can click the “Signup now for a free account” and that will direct you to a registration page.

Once you log in you will see the following interface where you can add and manage tasks:

The Remember the Milk Gadget is a great way to manage your To Do list within Deki. If you have any questions or suggestions please feel free to leave a comment or contact us.

Extension of the Week: Google Search

October 30th, 2008 | | MindTouch Extension

The Extension I’m focusing on this week is Google Search. Google Search allows you to display results of a keyword search within a MindTouch Deki page broken down into the following categories: Web, Local, Image, Video, News, Blog, and Book.

To get started install the Google extension.

Once that is installed we can invoke the extension through the MindTouch Deki Extension dialog. To do this click Edit on the page that you want the extension to be on and then click the Extension Icon in the editor that looks like this:

This will open up the Extension Dialog where you can scroll down and select Google as an option and then select google.search.

Now you can specify the search term(s) that you want to search for on Google along with specifying if you want to only return a certain set of results like Blogs, Books, News. You can select if you want the result to be tabbed and if you want to publish or subscribe to any channels.

For this example we are going to search for MindTouch and keep the defaults for options. Once you type in mindtouch you can click Insert Extension and the following syntax will be shown on the page:

{{ google.Search{search: "mindtouch"} }}

This will return the following:

Adding google.search to your Deki pages will add contextual relevance search results for the content and add more interactivity for the visitors. The method of inserting the google.search extension using the extension dialog is available for all extensions in MindTouch and is an easy way for your users to create dynamic pages.

If you have any questions about this extension please leave a comment or contact us.

First Experiences With MindTouch Deki

October 29th, 2008 | | Uncategorized

Tuesday marked my first day as a member of the MindTouch team, and after a few hours of the standard new employee paperwork and introductions, I had a chance to get my hands dirty using MindTouch Deki for the first time.

I was given a quick overview of the application, pointed to a few wiki pages that contained the documentation for MindTouch Deki, then asked to build a new skin based on a recently completed design. Having worked with open source projects such as WordPress and OS Commerce, I was familiar with skinning web applications so I didn’t expect to run into much trouble, but I really wasn’t prepared for how quick and painless it would be to have a new dynamic skin up and running on MindTouch Deki. Within just a few hours I had taken a layered PSD and built it into a clean, functional, cross browser skin. I’m looking forward to tapping into more of the MindTouch Deki functionality and finding new and unique ways to utilize such a powerful tool.

An Introduction

Since this is my first post, and subsequently my introduction, perhaps I should tell you a little more about myself… Hi, I’m Kevin Thompson.

I’ve spent the last few years working as a front-end web developer with an emphasis in PHP and MySQL web application development as well as client-side development specializing in semantic XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, and search engine optimization. I love snowboarding, sushi, social media, and I prefer my walks on the beach to be as short as possible (not a huge fan of the sand). I’m thrilled to be a part of the MindTouch team and I’m looking forward to contributing to MindTouch Deki and providing clients with clean, efficient, functional interfaces!

Developing on the platform: Advanced search extension

October 23rd, 2008 | | Tutorial

One of the best parts about MindTouch Deki is its extensibility. There are many avenues experienced and novice developers can take in order to integrate new functionality into MindTouch Deki. From native compiled C# extensions to remote XML-RPC extensions, the possibilities for adding new Deki functionality is only limited by the imagination of a developer. Going forward, I’m going attempt writing mini-tutorials showing you just how easy it is to “develop on the platform” and get your developer juices flowing.

While using Deki, and in my own travels of our forums, I’ve noticed that users want to search. More so, they want to power search. Often times, as a UI developer, we don’t have enough hours in the day to implement all the functionality that Deki’s REST-based API exposes. The search API, powered by Lucene, supports many different modifiers for winnowing and expanding search results, however, the UI purports that a user should type those in manually. Ergo, a good excuse to prototype an advanced search extension with DekiScript and JavaScript.

After a few hours of hackery, I came up with the MindTouch Deki Advanced Search extension. It uses JavaScript to generate a Lucene query string from form inputs and DekiScript to fetch search results. All in all, the longest part of writing the extension was this blog post and the associated tutorial. Without boring the non-developers much more, I conclude with a link to the complete tutorial and extension. There you can find the full writeup on how the extension was built and how you can use it on your own Deki.

Keep a lookout for more “developing on the platform.” The next installment promises to utilize DekiScript content transformations; powerful and, mostly, untapped functionality. /end cliffhanger

MindTouch Deki 8.08.1 available

October 22nd, 2008 | | Updates

Our Kilen Woods release, with all of its sweeping changes, has been well-received! However, there were a few bugs that crept in, which we’ve now resolved with the availability of the MindTouch Deki Kilen Woods 8.08.1 release. This is a security/stabilization release, and should be considered a must-upgrade for anybody running 8.08.

To get a full list of bug fixes in 8.08.1, check out our release notes page. As always, VM users can simply run /usr/bin/updateWiki.sh to upgrade your environments; non-VM users can follow our upgrade instructions. For new users, check out our downloads page to see all your package options!

Extension of the Week: Flickr

October 16th, 2008 | | MindTouch Extension

After a long hiatus, Extension of the Week is back by popular demand. The extension I’m focusing on this week is the Flickr Extension. Flickr, an online photo management and sharing application, allows you to create an account to upload and manage your pictures. With the MindTouch Deki extension you can add a Flickr slideshow of your favorite pics.

To start install the Flickr Extension. Once installed there are a couple of invocations that are available. The first code we can add is a Flickr Badge. This creates a dynamic badge that expands photos within the bounds of the badge and then minimizes them into a square.

To try out the Flickr Badge, paste the following code into a Deki page:

{{ flickr.badge("mindtouch") }}

This will produce the following:

You can change the “mindtouch” to any keyword that you want to search Flickr for.

If you want to take the extension one step further and embed an actual slideshow into a Deki Page then you can use the following code:

{{ flickr.slideshow("mindtouch") }}

This will produce the following:

Now lets say that you want to have better granularity control on the content that is showing up in your Flickr Slideshow. You can do this by setting up a Set within Flickr that contains the pictures that you want to show and then using the following syntax where the uri is replace with the uri of your photo set:

{{ flickr.slideshow{ uri: "http://flickr.com/photos/eamon/sets/72157594526998899/" } }}

This will only display the photos that are found in the set you are referencing.

The Flickr extension is a great way to add visual content to a Deki page in an easy and nicely formatted way. It also helps improve the contextual relevance of the page by creating keyword specific slideshows based around the content of the page.

If you have any questions please feel free to leave a comment or Contact Us.

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