pugdog
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Jan 11, 2005, 11:41 AM
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UltraWidgets Toolbox
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This is about ready for the first "free" or "lite" release.
There will probably be three versions of this, but at least two. The "free" version, and the "supported" version. A "pro" version may be released, but unless you actually develop scripts for your site, the pro version is not going to be useful to most people.
The "Lite" verson will replace and expand on the existing unsupported Toolbox plugin. It may, or may not be a plugin-replacement. You might need to make some changes to your templates to use this new version. But, the new version will have significantly enhanced code fragments, replace loads of globals (you can call them as you need them) and gather in one place all the fragements that have been posted to the forums over the years.
The "supported" version is a stand-alone product. An annual license/membership fee will entitle you to downloads of the current updates. Because this toolbox will be the back-end of many of our plugins, especially as they get rewritten, it will be continuously updated, and actively worked on, with perhaps as often as monthly updates (not bug fixes).
The toolbox will contain functions you can call from inside your templates, or even your scripts, to enhance the functionality of your site.
Because they are located in separate modules, they should immune to most of the problems of Links upgrades, and nested or chained plugin calls. They will also reduce general overhead, by only calling/requesting the parts that are needed WHEN they are needed, not in every template.
The first release will include functions for Top-xxx , nicer date functions, quick "get" functions, and possibly integration of the enhanced search logger, the advanced rating system, days_old, and a few other of my free plugins (like the detail_page.cgi and bad_link and recommend it) all rolled into one install. These programs, except for the search logger, do not require any "hooks" into links, so are clean installs.
The first "supported" version will include the routines for displaying links in columns or tables. You pass in \@links_loop (or actually *any* array of hashes) and it will format them. You can change your category display, display of any plugin that returns an AoH for display data (like the Ace_News), and more.
Most likely the toolbox will sit in:
Plugins::Ultranerds::Widgets
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