Developer Community Website

[Jeff Haynie]

We're trying to put the final touches on our new community website
that we hope to launch very soon. I thought I'd give some details
about the new changes.

Our new community website is built from the ground up using
Appcelerator (of course) and will feature a host of new capabilities
we're excited about. The new community site also will incorporate our
new software distribution capabilities.

The new Appcelerator Developer Network ("ADN") will provide the
following new capabilities:

1. Streamlined Product Download / Distribution -- you will now have
one small OS-specific download (between 50-300K depending on OS) and
it will be easy to download the product and get started. You will no
longer need to download separately different languages. You will now
download one small binary and run an installer (for Unix, there's a
small self-extracting archive installer). Once you run the
installer, you'll have a new command line environment for doing
everything. All required dependencies, additional software, updates,
etc will now come from the ADN (or mirrors). For example, in the new
distribution, you can create a new project from the command line such
as:

> appcelerator create:project ~/tmp myproject java

And, we'll automatically pull down the latest java backend, latest
bundles, etc and download everything you need into ~/tmp/myproject.

Additionally, a small set of core widgets will be installed. However,
on the new network, you'll be able to pull down new widgets
automatically (explained next).

Also, if you want to update a project now to a later version, you can
just do:

> appcelerator update:project ~/tmp

We'll determine all the updates available and you'll be able to easily
migrate to new releases.


2. New widget community. As part of the new release and the new ADN,
we're going to be opening up our widget API and allowing any developer
to build, distribute and use widgets - not only widgets we develop -
but widgets you develop and share with the world. Once you release
your widget into the community, anyone will be able to easily add your
widget to their project and start using it immediately in their app.

> appcelerator install:widget app:my_widget

This will pull down the latest app:my_widget from the network and
install it and make it available. You can then apply it to a project:

> appcelerator add:widget app:my_widget ~/tmp/myproject

Now, you can start using it in your product right away.


You can also now release your own widget. First, create a new widget
project with:

> appcelerator create:widget ~/tmp app:my_widget

Then, add your code to your widget project (a template widget and full
project is created for you) and you can then build it:

> rake

Then, you can release it into the network with:

> appcelerator release app_my_widget.zip

Cool! You're widget will now be in the network and available for all
to you. You'll be able to specify the license, metadata, etc. for
your widget and become famous! :)


3. New forums, but better! With the new ADN, we're not just
introducing threaded discussion forums, we're supported user-generated
forums. Anyone can create forums and manage members. So, we'll have
a number of core forums as part of the launch - but you, the
community, will now be able to create your own forums around areas of
appcelerator (or even other groups) as you see fit. You'll be able
to search forums, manage members, invite your friends into forums,
etc.

4. Light Social network features. We'll be introducing some cool new
social networking features into the community -- all because we think
it makes sense in an open source community - to make it easier for
people to connect, collaborate and find others doing similar things as
you are. So, you'll be able to do some basic things like friend
others in the community (for following them) and then follow their
feeds. For example, let's say you really dig someone's widgets.
You'll be able to follow-them and get activity around when they
develop or release a new widget into the network.

5. Product Documentation revamp. We're totally revamping our
documentation from the ground up and rewriting almost all of it.
You'll find a lot more documentation across the board - with a major
emphasis on more documentation on the server-side part of the product
based on feedback from the community. As well, we'll expand
documentation around how to build widgets, plugins and extend the core
product as well.

6. More full-featured examples. Our current example on the website is
lame. We admit. We just didn't have time to get our demos ready in
time the last time around. This time around, we'll have a number of
demos and a lot more we have in the work - including a cool iphone
application called "AppTacToe" where you can play an appcelerator
based, network game of tic-tac-toe.



These are just some of the many improvements that are coming really,
really soon.



Jeff

[TrumpetX]

I'm excited to see the new site!