Version 1.0
Creating this template engine was an idea I had some time in my mind. I had already created another template engine in 2005 for my personal website at www.makis.info (now updated).
I always intended to improve that engine as it lacked the basic user-friendly features (No SE-friendly URLs, no dynamic content and no AJAX administration) but never really found myself doing it, mostly because other work took up all my energy/time.
Fast forward to 2008 and after years of web designing the logic of a proper template engine matured in my head. To my surprise I didn’t find this logic implemented on any of the template engines I worked on till then. It finally hit me one day that this will never end. I would spend valuable hours of my life trying to work with inflexible engines unless I sit down and create what was in my head.
I wanted it primarily for my websites but thought I should release it to the open source since the goal to create a visual template engine is beyond my personal needs. At this point I have to redirect you to the About page for more info on the underlying ideas of this project.
Serious development begun on March 2008 and although the main parts where setup soon enough (within two weeks) I still managed to spend another month fine-tuning the administration interface and creating all the elements that would be appealing for the users: the official website, the setup procedure, the demo content…etc.
I’m releasing version 1.0 at this point so I can get some feedback from the users and according to that shape the direction I want to take for future releases of the engine. Above all this is a web designers tool and I feel that web designers should have the first word for improving it the way they like it.
There are a series of features and bugs already noted but left to be included on later versions (or not). In any case, one of my biggest concerns will be to optimize the back-end as well as the front-end, so you will always have a stable and user-friendly canvas to work on.
Even though it is the first release, it is a functional engine with many of the features advertised at perfect state. Your feedback and support will help it become a valuable tool for any web designer.
You can download this version of Template Blocks from the following sources:
Cheers,
Makis
April 25th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
This is my task list for future releases. Strikethrough text has already been dealt with and will be available for the next release:
New Features:
- Nested blocks in template layouts
- When creating a new section you can select the parent section
- An image repository interface (so the user can control the contents of “assets/images” through the cp)
- Ability to have more than one template assigned to each external script.
- Ability to make a section private (until you have finalized the content)
Improvements
- Better function for putting indent in blocks (especially after nested blocks are a reality)
- Section nesting doesn’t work properly. Currently you cannot have two sections with the same slug and based on that the output of a section is the same whatever path you enter.
- Better text editor for the content area.
- In the blocks edit page: when changing the type, the content should be changed accordingly (for example insert < ?php...?> brackets for a php block…)
- More than two levels on section nesting.
- Mark which blocks are not used by any template in the blocks list.
- The file extension can be selected in the website settings (probably 3rd part) and not have all three (.html, .htm, .php) applied to every section.
- Titles of the sections that use external scripts for content need to change according to the content presented.
Bugs
- Javascript blocks are linked falsely (with a .javascript extension instead of a .js)
- A section with static content could not be converted to a section of an external script.
- Setup process doesn’t stop when you enter the wrong database information.
- In IE, blocks loose their coloring after some moving in the template editing.
- Version number is erased after you edit the website settings manually.
- The htmlspecialchars applied to the text of a block before loading it for editing removes all the “\” characters (especially used in PHP blocks).
…
Let me know if I’m missing anything…