By sunwu2007 on

YouCMSAndBlog WYSIWYG IDE is a free editor I have recently created. It aims to support Windows (current release) and Linux based environment soon (still in testing phase).

The background in fact was to make me easier to design Joomla Template with interactive display, hence save a lot of effort go back & forth to refresh Internet browser but at the end, I have decided to make it extendable to all open source CMS & Blog Engine (included Drupal, Wordpress, Blogger, etc).

With this IDE, you can have interactive environment when designing your Drupal themes.
Easily inserting Drupal taglist (i.e. PHPTemplate pre-defined $var or other theme engine pre-defined var) or functions by double clicking its supported list from the listbox on the left side of the IDE. You can also modify existing IDE's template in order to add new tag, new function and so on. Right clicking listed tag / function on the listbox also will provide you with some shortcut menu and one of the unique one will be "Online Doc", it s feature you can link existing tag / function list to online documentation on Drupal.org (or to your own website) .

The concept to use XML file for defining new set of taglist, function (termed "Template" in this editor) also mean is very easy for you to set up a new taglist template definition for other CMS or Blog template which currently not shipped together with the download. Or for instance, to support Drupal future version theme taglist and function.

There is short tutorial (roughly written by me and not really edited yet) about how to create taglist and function for Drupal 5.2 (of course, if you are using lower version or higher, Drupal 6.0 you can do the same):
http://vivociti.com/content/view/43/38/

And a video demo for another CMS and Blog engine is here (for Drupal, still have no time to do yet, anyone want to help ? ):
http://vivociti.com/content/view/41/53/

Hope it is usefull for CMS open source community and please give me your constructive feedback if have, i.e. currently have to ported over Drupal 5.2 PHPTemplate and Drupal 5.2 function list one by one manually to YouCMSAndBlog taglist.xml file. It would be good if someone can create a simple tool to do the conversion directly and commit back to Drupal community.

Regards,

Sunento

⋅ Categories: Drupal 5.x

Comments

ryo’s picture

ryo commented

Hi Sunento,
I got to know this software through a Japanese site
http://weblife.sakura.ne.jp/joomla/joomla-templates-editor.html

By the way, I installed your software but unfortunately couldn't get how to use it at present.
I'm going to keep trying and feedback if I can.

Anyhow thanks for your great contribution.

OpenChimp’s picture

OpenChimp commented

I really know very little about what it would take to create an IDE like this, but I know it would have to be aware of lots of functions and variables available to the theme coder/designer. One of the problems you'll run into is that each drupal site has a different set of modules installed, so the functions and variable available changes with each site depending on which modules are activated.

The API module does a great job of listing all the functions so long as the source code is properly commented. Could it be adapted to output the XML needed to provide functionality to the IDE? If so, this would make the IDE much easier to extend as custom modules are added to a specific installation.

sunwu2007’s picture

sunwu2007 commented

hi ryo and MikeyLikesIt

thanks for the interest. well, for the background of this software, i think you can read from my post here, from Joomla -> Drupal or even other open source CMS.

You can read through this tutorial for you to be familiar with this software:
http://vivociti.com/content/view/42/1/
Though it is talking about using it for Joomla Template, basically it applies the same concept for Drupal theme with its True View (need to have local Drupal engine running on your machine).

And to create new taglist command to easier designer to use all Drupal's tempalte engine tag:
http://vivociti.com/content/view/43/1/

So far got more response from Joomla users but not really from Drupal. Current status, it is not only used for CMS templates editor anymore, but its feature its extendable with plugin concept, i.e. you can download Joomla Module Generator Wizard plug in, which can be used to easily create new joomla 1.0.x and joomla 1.5.x module with its xml, php on the fly and saving a lot of time to reduce all unnessaries thing.
I plan to do the same for Drupal however I still want to finish plugin for Joomla template, component and its mambots plugins.

If someone want to do it for Drupal plugin implementation, i.e. Drupal Module plugin...that would be great. I m open for discussion.

Thanks for MikeyLikesIt's support and feedback. That is in fact a great feedback. Especially by looking into Drupal's rapid development and newer version release, this is the only way to let coder/designer to keep in touch with that.

And to answer mikeylikesit's question about drupal with different set of modules installed, the challenge you mentioned is not only applying to Drupal, but also to Joomla and others CMS engine.
That's why with YouCMSAndBlog IDE True View mode, it means it really provides you with instant result of real default theme you are modifying on the editor, especially moving blocks etc around, it will help a lot.

Of course back to plugin concept in YouCMSAndBlog IDE, I just wish some CMS developers who has more domain skill knowledge (i.e. Drupal :) ) to be be more creative to extend new plugin (in YouCMSAndBlog IDE term, Renderer Plugin, pls read : http://vivociti.com/content/view/46/60/ ). It means instead of relying on existing TrueView mode (which require you to install Drupal engine + PHP on your localhost), the new renderer plugin can do the rendering.
This is the real challenge. :)
But I believe if this can be archieve, designer and user will be at the advantage side.