Expect some incredible LeapSeed updates in the New Year!

A variety of features have been added to LeapSeed 6.0 as part of the Series 2 release! They include new integrations with third party services, such as:

• ReCAPTCHA Integration for web forms and comment entry
• facebook "Like" button integration for content pages and database records
• facebook commenting integration for conent pages and database records

Based largely on customer (and developer) feedback, we've also added some new Data Manager capabilities, including the ability to directly copy records, conduct bulk updates on records, and utilize templates to pre-fill Data Manager forms. These new updates make working with Data Manager hosted databases significantly more productive. The Rules framework has also been updated to allow use of Excel Workbooks to calculate new values for structure elements, allowing for much greater statistical analysis options (Aspose.Cells required)

For Content Manager, a new content migration tool also now ships with LeapSeed 6.0, making moving content from static files and other content management systems into LeapSeed much easier. Import configurations can be saved and re-run, allowing for controlled movement of content.

There's also new dashboard capabilities, such as:

• HTML5 chart rendering for all chart-based reporting features when Flash is unavailable
• A whole new set of applets including:
  • Image Slide Show
  • Last Records Added/Edited By Me
  • My Favorites
  • My Saved Searches

We hope to have news about more exciting capabilities soon!

Data Manager is a great platform for scalable CRUD operations, reporting, business logic, and workflow. Perhaps one of its weaknesses has always been that the toolset resides solely in the LeapSeed web environment. Not that LeapSeed isn't awesome, but certainly we have an eye on projecting Data Manager's abilities into other platforms such as Microsoft SharePoint and DotNetNuke. And we have some promising prototypes we plan to share in a bit.

Look for more news regarding the evolution of the Data Manager toolset coming soon!

We're currently planning out the roadmap for the next versions of LeapSeed. We've already come off a fun and productive R&D summer season; we now have prototypes of HTML5 charting capability, new applets, a content migration tool, social network integration, new Data Manager capabilities, and new Visual Design manager.

We'll have more postings as the roadmap hardens!

Take a look at some of the valuable AJAX usability enhancements added to Data Manager in LeapSeed 6.0.

In addition to massive usability enhancements and time-zone support, we also added a new method for making code customizations in LeapSeed much easier.

While the primary focus of LeapSeed 6.0 was on usability, take a look at a couple awesome new features version 6.0 ships with:

This quick video shows a couple of the new helper features we've cooked into version 6.0!

Take a look at the speed improvements we've made with LeapSeed 6.0!

Checkout how we have improved LeapSeed 6.0's layout features!

Watch this video to see how the responsiveness of LeapSeed's meta tools have been enhanced using AJAX!

Take a look at this video to see how we've enhanced Content Manager's interface in LeapSeed 6.0!

Take a look at this video to see how LeapSeed's File Manager tool has been greatly improved to be more responsive.

LeapSeed 6.0 as of today has been released for use! As the preview posted earlier stated earlier, the primary focuses of this release are Usability Improvements and Code Customization Improvements

On the Usability Improvements side, LeapSeed's toolsets now sport far more Ajax behaviors, resulting in tools that are easier and more productive to use. In addition, the overall layout of many pages were updated for better use of space.

On the Code Customization side, LeapSeed now comes with a standard factory class called CoreFactoryObject, which can be used to create standard and inherited versions of standard LeapSeed base classes. This factory class, available inside and outside the API, greatly extends the ease of creating custom objects for use throughout all of LeapSeed.

We're excited to get this new release out. Stay tuned for demos on specific improvements soon!

We are in the home stretch of LeapSeed 6.0's development. The platform will be available starting 6/6/2011. Stay tuned for more coverage of new features post-release.

Hi Everyone,

This blog has been noticeably quiet recently as we've been working on the significant overall that is LeapSeed 6.0, so I thought I'd give an update its development. LeapSeed 5.0 brought many great things (templated interfaces, Process Manager and File Manager integration into Data Manager, a fully commented API, enumerations, a standard testing suite.... The list could go on.

LeapSeed 6.0's focus can be best described as one that significantly improves the user experience as well as one that improves the experience of developers that work with LeapSeed. From interface standpoint, many of LeapSeed's interfaces have been updated to use Ajax, particularly in the core Data Manager, Content Manager, and File Manager toolsets. These give the tools a much more refined feel; having subrecord grids expand without a screen refresh is just so much better than when a screen refresh is necessary. In addition, both the user and administrative interfaces have been crawled through with usability enhancements in mind. Some involve simply making fields bigger, others involve significant interface updates.

From the developer's standpoint, we are introducing a new factory object called CoreFactoryObject which can generate inherited versions of LeapSeed's base classes. The factory class, used both inside and outside the API, allow for much easier customization of default code behaviors than in any prior version of LeapSeed.

The reporting framework in LeapSeed 6.0 is also being significantly upgraded. The speed of Excel-based list reports has improved 20x, and we've added tools to make it easier to create reporting queries and mail merge templates. In addition, a new scheduled notification framework is now included.

And as a quick note, LeapSeed 6.0 will support multiple user timezones. This addition will expand the platform into new areas of real-time collaboration.

We look forward to the release of LeapSeed 6.0. Stay tuned for more information.

Regards,

Paul

It's been about two months since the last series release, and despite the holiday season, we've kept busy. Series 6 builds upon some of the code restructuring changes that were made in Series 5. New improvements aimed at developers in Series 6 includes:

• A fully IntelliSense-Enabled Commented API - LeapSeed's API commenting has been updated to include all public and private members. In addition, a new "Missing XML Comments Check" testing tool has been added to help developers insure their code's constructs are fully commented.
   
• Centralization and Simplification of the Add/Edit/View Data Manager page rendering code - It is now much easier for developers to customize how fields are displayed on Add, Edit, and View record pages. The code for each page has been centralized into one universal function. In addition, the code for handing file uploads and JavaScript validation has been entirely moved in to the LeapSeed API.
   
• Enumerations have been added - Certain functions used to have numeric parameters passed in which stood for different meanings. Those have been replaced by formally defined and commented Enumerations
   
• Class Level Variable Declaration Updates - To assist with code readability, all class-level variable declarations that were defined using Dim have been updated to Private.
   
• Productivity Updates to ReaderProvider - The ReaderProvider class has been updated with shortcut functions such as CloseReader() and Read(), as well as a Fields collection that providers a shortcut to the database fields of an open Reader. Database loops can now be writen with less code.
   
• ".shtml" Include Files Eliminated From Data Manager - Data Manager's home page previously used include files for displaying modular functionality. The include files have been turned into server-side functions, and the old include files have been removed from LeapSeed.
   

In addition, Series 6 comes with plenty of enhancements for the non-coders. These include:

• Section On/Off Setting - It is now possible to enable or disable a section without touching the Group Rights security. Each section now has a simple "Section On" setting that can be checked or unchecked. This provides a speedy way of disabling unnecessary functionality.
   
• Data Manager Search Enhancements - The checkbox search interface has been updated to allow users to explicitly check for records that have not been checked. In addition, a new search applet for section home pages has been rolled out in this release.
   
• New Add Redirect and Edit Redirect Options for Data Manager - It is now possible through configuration to define specific URLs a user should be directed to after entering or editing a record. This option was added to facilitate easy display of confirmation/thank you pages.
   
• Reporting Updates - Crosstabulation reports can now display individual values within their cells; previously Counts and Sums were the only options. In addition, report templates can now be directly uploaded through the Reporting Administrative tool.
   
• Improved Setup Routine - LeapSeed's setup screen can now be used to install LeapSeed's database on remote servers.

LeapSeed continues to evolve in ways that benefit both platform configuration and development. We're looking forward to sharing more enhancements as we roll toward the next release.

We're proud to announce the immediate availability of LeapSeed 5.0 - Series 5 Slim. Designed to take advantage of the Routing capabilities present in ASP.NET 4.0, this version of LeapSeed contains less than 1/4^th the files of the previous version. This makes for:

• Smaller and more manageable Visual Studio projects
• Quicker load times in Visual Studio, even when opening LeapSeed as a website
• Less memory usage on the servers, and better first-load experiences across the Data Manager sections
• A savings of 30MB of disk space per installation

As part of this new release, Content Manager has also been significantly upgraded; content pages can now have long extensionless names that do not need to correlate to actual files on the server; a LeapSeed website with 10,000 content pages can now have 0 content files!

Along with other administrative tool tweaks, LeapSeed 5.0 - Series 5 Slim is a very capable improvement over last release.

LeapSeed 5.0 Series 4 has been released. In addition to a variety of interface and performance tweaks, we're happy to announce the new Test Center suite of testing tools. It includes an updated Section Configuration Diagnostic Script, a new Data Manager Data Validity Checker, and a Security Header Checking script. With these new tools, it is easier than ever to insure configurations are correct, imported data is valid, and custom web pages include necessary security checks.

Next week, new features will be dropped into LeapSeed's core codebase. My personal favorite is Test Center, a collection of Configuration, Code, and Data testing tools designed insure a LeapSeed installation has been setup, developed on, and deployed correctly.

We've also tweaked click behaviors for LeapSeed's results grids, added an Exchange Web Services client to 2nd Mail, and improved the efficiency of the JavaScript generated by the Rules framework.

We'll have a full list next week once the features have been published.