If you haven’t heard the news, the Node.js team will be Porting Node to Windows With Microsoft’s Help. This is great news for Node.js and the developers, who will now be able to code in a more universal easy to use language.

SocketStream

An awesome looking new Node.js library for single-page applications has appeared, making web application development so much simpler.

As almost all web applications have users which need to sign in and out, we have built the concept of a ‘current user’ into the core of SocketStream. This not only makes life easier for developers, but is vital to the correct functioning of the pub/sub system, authenticating API requests…

The coolest aspect is that it includes many libraries Node.js developers know and trust for building real-time Node.js applications.

Rather than focusing on pretty graphics, the socketstream team has focused on ridiculous performance and bandwidth efficiency, using Socket.IO, pub/sub, Redis, jQuery, Jade, Stylus, and more of our favourite libraries.

Personally, I’m really excited about the promise in SocketStream and will be checking it out soon.

Check out sample code and a demo in Building Real-time CoffeeScript Web Applications With SocketStream.

Simple Staging Environments

One of the biggest needs of a business, and usually most disregarded, is the ability to easily test changes prior to the changes being published on the live web site. While some systems allow for a kind of preview/live two system paradigm, what businesses really need is the ability to test only a specific change without having to create multiple instances of the entire system. My suggestion is to borrow the fork and merge idea of git repositories and treat the entire system as a repo. This would allow certain changes to be staged against the live site without interfering with work of other developers also making changes, all while being able to see exactly how the changes would affect the live version of the site. Merging changes should be one-click and shouldn’t require copying all settings that were added or changed.

Analytics

While Google Analytics can suffice for many companies’ analytic needs, it has no ability to track mouse interaction other than link clicking. Studies have shown that users often move their mouse to where on the page they are looking, so being able to see mouse movement data can be important in making a web site with higher click-through and retention rates. Being able to see where users are clicking on the page, beyond only links, can also point out design flaws regarding parts of pages where users believe is click-able as well as being able to track user interaction in newer HTML5 technology enabled sites. Having a built-in analytics system means that data can be integrated within the system to more easily see what content is being used or interacted with most.

Taking the analytics a step further, another feature that needs to be added is A/B testing. Being able to show different versions of the site to a user will increase the ability of the site’s developers to design better and make content more relevant.

Simple Permissions

Permissions in most CMSs are too complex for most to understand and for any to manage. There should be just five major permission classes that would suit businesses. Administrators need to have control over all features in the system, managers manage content and/or specific sections of the site, stakeholders have access to features to aid in requests, employees have access to internal-only sections of the site, and finally users only see the publicly facing live site. Each one of these classes should have groups that it will be easy to set members and tweak permissions.

Simple Styling Control

A CMS needs to have a simple way of laying out content in a page without resorting to HTML within the content, having to make a code override, or needing an entirely new system. All too often CMS creators get lazy or simply don’t understand needs of businesses when all that is necessary is a drag-and-drop WYSIWYG ordering of the parts of a page through a simple interface. This process shouldn’t require more than a couple clicks to create new pages and load in the default content such as headers, navigation, and footers while still leaving the possibility of easily creating a page that is nothing like any others.

Ticketing System

An enterprise CMS really should have a system though which administrators and content managers can manage projects, requests from stakeholders, and content requests. Email simply doesn’t work for managing anything and third party ticketing systems have to be maintained to keep the users that can access it and content that can be related to a ticket up-to-date. Having an integrated system means that tickets can be easily shared amongst all parties participating as well as more easily reference related content or pages in the system and even link directly within the staging environment related to the ticket.

Translations and Regional Content

As businesses go global and offer services in countries with varying languages, the CMS they use will need multi-language functionality. The problem is that CMS creators don’t understand the needs of a corporations that would use such tools. Most companies can’t afford to have someone translating web content for them full time and they would much rather have free, automatic translations. The problem with automated translations is that many times they aren’t very accurate and there are various terms which the company has specific translations for such as brands, products, or services the company offers which automatic translations cannot translate correctly. The way around this is to have multi-lingual employees check the translations and make edits, but the content changes frequently and it is difficult for the translation checkers to know when translations need to be checked. As changes are made, these translation checkers should be able to see the deltas easily so they have to spend as little time as possible maintaining content.

Regional content is another feature that an enterprise CMS needs to have. Sometimes content is only relevant to certain geographic locations and/or languages and should only be displayed to users that meet that criteria. There shouldn’t be a need to recreate any content or settings that is shared between these regions.

Content Editing

I’m pretty sure I can say that there is no perfect content editor in a CMS. The editors are either too simple and don’t offer the customization that businesses need, or the editor is so complex that doing even the simplest of tasks takes lots of time to accomplish. It is also important to avoid using a plugin for a WYSIWYG content editor as these are causes of frustration and browser crashes more than any advantages their features can accomplish. Be sure that referencing other content is simple and intuitive.

Survey/Contact Forms

What’s surprising is that CMSs don’t have a built in functionality for forms. Not having this feature means that the company must rely on a third party service to handle surveys and contact forms. The issue with this is that these forms cannot be integrated well in the site and often either lose the look and feel of the site or have to be maintained for every style change on the site. Having a built-in form system would also allow submissions to be sent to the ticketing system or a location within the company’s intranet, for use in other applications that a third party form system couldn’t access.

API changes

• Socket.IO no longer has to listen to an existing web server
• It is possible to configure Socket.IO depending on the NODE_ENV variable, just like Express

Message Dispatcher

• Now allows for scaling and multiple processes
• Possible to send JSON data natively
• Flags and acknowledgements

Channels

• Can have different handlers dependent on a route instead of just one set per server
• Messages emitted within one channel are restricted to that channel

Improvements

• Improved Flash fallback
• Support for latest WebSockets specification

Finally, the slides tease “Express.IO” that “Turns express into the ‘Rails of realtime’”

In other news, Anime Bite has been indefinitely delayed. I really have no clue when I’ll get around to finishing it, but I’m working full time during the summer and then I have my senior year of college to deal with starting this fall. While I can guarantee that I will finish Anime Bite at some point in the future, I cannot guarantee when.

This is a perfect opportunity to explain the terminology of “web development” versus “web design”. The web designer has been around since the dawn of the web. They make pages look nice and fresh, but fundamentally they function the same: you look around the page and click a link to go to the next one. On the other hand, the web developer focuses more on functionality and make the website feel more like an application. These people add advanced functionality both behind the scenes and up front. They haven’t been around for more than a few years and are only now starting to come to the front of the web scene.

Still confused? There are good specific examples out there. For example, Facebook is a web application whereas Engadget is a website (though it is displaying content created in a web application – in this case, a CMS). Also, it isn’t as simple as that. Google Maps is a web applet (a small application) in a website.

Long story short, the web developer does added functionality but the web designer only makes it look “pretty” (not saying there is anything wrong with that though). I am proud to say that I’ve been a web developer since day one of my web design work, and Anime Bite will clearly reflect that.

The web designer is dead, long live the web developer!

Now that the server is settled, I can get back to work on the Anime Bite project and a few other goodies. I have taken down AnimeRev’s website for the time being as I wasn’t checking it any more and it was getting spammed.

Being a perfectionist, I won’t release anything short of “professional” quality, but sadly that requires money. While I can work for free, my artist doesn’t. Her rates recently shot up and I can no longer afford to pay for the artwork by myself.