Version 3.0 Alpha2

I just published ScrewTurn Wiki 3.0 Alpha2. Ages behind schedule, but it’s finally available.

As promised, this release includes:

• new index-based search engine
• full namespace support
• preliminary user group support (for use with the forthcoming ACL engine)
• part of the new administration interface (see AdminHome.aspx)
• new image editor tool

There are still a lot of rough edges, especially in the GUI. For example, even if it’s possible to set a different theme for each namespace, you still can’t do that in the administration interface.

Namespaces’ URLs use a dotted notation, which works for both .ashx and .aspx pages. Nice and clean, in my opinion.

A funny new feature is the Image Editor, which should be called Image Resizer because it’s only able to resize an image (either a file or a page attachment). It might even be able to crop pictures in the future. You can access the tool directly in the File Management page or in the Attachments Management section of the Edit page: when a PNG or JPEG image is listed, an Edit button is displayed near the Rename and Delete buttons.

The new ACL engine is on its way, although I’m not going to give an estimate right now. I’m currently reading some documentation and papers because this topic is not trivial.

On a side note, I temporarily removed the Plugin Pack from the Visual Studio solution, because the providers interfaces are chaning quite frequently: updating the SQL-based providers is complex and I want to reduce the number of changes as much as possible. Moreover, I’d like to restructure the MySQL and SQL Server providers in order to reduce the duplicated code. The Plugin Pack should be re-enabled in 3.0 RC (perhaps even in 3.0 Beta).

As usual, any comment is welcome.