Jun 8

Written by:
6/8/2011 11:05 AM 

Tuesday night Will Strohl was the presenter at ODUG (Orlando DotNetNuke User Group) and showed us the latest build of DotNetNuke 6.0.  If you were not able to be there, you should plan on testing the BETA as soon as it is released.  The Current CTP  (CTP3) has a lot of the changes in it, but they really start to shine in the soon-to-be-released BETA. 

The first thing you will notice is the new UI.  For the last few years, Designers and Developers have been working together to develop interesting and innovative DNN websites.  In fact, the highest praise you could give some people was to tell them that “it does not look like a DotNetNuke Site!”   Well, those days are over.  I am going to predict that the day is coming where looking like a DotNetNuke site is a goal and not a curse.  Let me support my prediction:

Since its inception DotNetNuke has been a developer driven product.  Functionality was placed above “look-and-feel”.  In version 5 we started seeing a shift in emphasis to the UI with the inclusion of jQuery and Widgets.  Now with version 6.0 we are getting a polished UI/UX.  I wish I had screen shots for you, but alas, until the BETA is released you will just have to imagine it.  The DotNetNuke Corp has seemed to realize that we are no longer developing/selling websites to technical people.  If you show a ten year old design that has tons of functionality and tell a them that you can make it look good, you will loose out every time to someone who shows a current (“pretty”) design to them and says we can make it do what you want.  With the current and future UI/UX enhancements I think we are entering a stage where we will be able to show a demo and clients will remember the “cool” capabilities and not be distracted by the UI.  When they look at a competing CMS they will no longer be saying “oh! this looks so much better” but rather “Where is all that stuff I saw in DotNetNuke?”.

The bottom line is that in version 6.0 the emphasis has been on improving the UI/UX and integrating social media.  With the inclusion of jQueryUI, DDRMenu and dnnWerks, changes have been made that will make working with earlier versions seem like you are going back to the stone age.

In the next installment, we will get into specifics (and hopefully have screen shots!).  In the mean time I’m:

Watching for the Phoenix!

Darrell Hardy