CodePlex Weblog : Releases

Project Owners can now show Job Openings for their individual projects

saraford — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 23:30:44 GMT

Last Friday, we deployed the latest version of the CodePlex software.

Project Job Openings

Project owners can now post “job openings” for what sort of help they are looking for.

This feature allows people who are interested in joining a project a way to contact the team directly.

The Project Owner can now better manage the team and any project openings from the People tab.

As always, if you have any feedback here, please let us know.

Introducing the Documentation tab for CodePlex projects

saraford — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 18:47:00 GMT

Yesterday, we deployed the latest version of the CodePlex software.

We’re excited to introduce our latest feature, the Documentation tab. CodePlex users now have a consistent place across projects to find documentation, while project owners are encouraged to write documentation, either by themselves or with the help of an Editor.

Why a Documentation Tab?

We introduced the documentation tab for the following reasons:

Consistency across Projects – The #1 feature request from the most dissatisfied users is the need for a consistent place to find documentation across projects.
Encourage writing of documentation - I believe that providing a documentation tab will encourage project owners to write documentation, especially with the help of the Editor role.

What if I already have documentation on my wiki?

If you already had a wiki page titled “Documentation”, we’ve migrated this for you under the Documentation tab.

You can migrate other wiki pages to the Documentation tab by editing the page and clicking on the “move to documentation” link, once you have made your Documentation tab publicly visible (see more on that below). We will move any child pages and any attachments.

How to show System Requirements?

The documentation page now has a section to display System Requirements on the right-hand side.

Why do only some of the projects show a Documentation tab?

We felt it was important to clearly indicate whether a project is providing documentation under this tab. In the event that the project owner isn’t using this tab, we decided to hide the tab from the public. We want to avoid users visiting the documentation tab only to find no content.

What does the Documentation tab look like by default to project owners?

To encourage documentation writing, we indicate to the project owner that the Documentation tab is current hidden and provide suggestions on what should be included in this section.

What happened to the Stats tab?

Our most popular monitor size is 1024x768. At this resolution, we’ve run out of space for tabs. After spending lots of time on future designs and doing lots of analysis on clickthroughs on many of our projects, we decided to associated the stats page with the stats we report on the homepage.

Where can I see an example?

You can visit my pet project Stick Figure Karate Fighter, where I created the documentation tab on stage during last night’s Southwest Fox keynote.

Work Item Notifications and Recommended Download

saraford — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 19:52:34 GMT

Yesterday, we deployed the latest version of the CodePlex software.

Work Item Notifications

As of today, our #2 most requested feature asked for the ability to receive email notifications for work items. Back in April, we introduced the ability to receive email notifications per individual work items. Now, users can subscribe to receive email at the project level.

On the Issue Tracker, you’ll notice the Issue Notification feature in the right nav bar.

You can opt in to receive email as issues come in or in a daily digest form.

You can also configure your email notifications across all projects when you edit your profile.

Recommended Default Download

All projects now feature a Download Now button on their homepage. This is to help users download software as easily and quickly as possible.

Every release now features a Recommended Download. Pressing the Download Now button will download the Recommended Download for the Default Release.

To introduce the feature, we selected the most downloaded file per release and marked that as the recommended download. If we got it wrong and you as a project owner want people to download a different file as the recommended download, just edit the Release and choose the right download.

Special thanks to Ross Turk over at SourceForge for all the advice in how to implement the recommended download concept!

Donate Ad Revenue To Charity and New Editor Role

saraford — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 19:30:43 GMT

Yesterday, we deployed the latest version of the CodePlex software.

Donate your advertisement revenue to charity

By clicking just 2 check boxes, any project owner can donate their ad revenues to Habitat for Humanity Int’l. My thinking is even if an individual project only receives a dollar in ad revenue each month, if thousands of projects opt in to donate their ad revenue, that’s a pretty decent size donation.

We’ll report donations on a monthly basis in our documentation.

Editor Role

We introduced a new CodePlex Editor role where this team member can only modify the wiki, for example, no write access to source code repository, no access to edit work item details, etc.

My hope is this will give the CodePlex community more ways to contribute to open source projects, especially in writing documentation for projects.

Editing your own work items

We’ve added the ability for you to edit your own work item content, in case you’ve made a typo or need to update steps to reproduce an issue.

Our Wiki Engine is now available as a project on CodePlex

saraford — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 20:58:00 GMT

On Thursday last week, we deployed the latest version of the CodePlex software.

Introducing the release of WikiPlex

WikiPlex, our wiki engine, is now available as an open source project on CodePlex under the Microsoft Public License at http://wikiplex.codeplex.com/. You can read more about WikiPlex on our developer Matt Hawley’s blog at WikiPlex – An Embedded Wiki Engine

Reply with Quotes

In the discussion boards, we’ve added the ability to reply with quoted text.

This will put the post you are replying to in quotes for you.

New Wiki Macros

Alongside the release of WikiPlex, we added a couple of new macros that allows you to right align and left align text and images.

>{This content will be right aligned}>
<{This content will be left aligned}<

<[image:codeplex_logo_green_small.jpg] The image will be right aligned
>[image:codeplex_logo_green_small.jpg] The image will be right aligned

For example,

My Favorite Projects, New Profile Pages, and a Source Code Diff tool

saraford — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 04:03:23 GMT

Today we deployed the latest version of the CodePlex software. We’re excited to bring you several new features in this deployment.

My Favorite Projects

Our #2 most requested feature is Favorite Projects, where users can mark a project as a favorite

and have it appear on their profile page.

The comments in the Favorites Project feature request suggest adding a RSS feed for the favorite projects list. Let me know what sort of activity you are interested in receiving via RSS regarding your favorite projects.

New Profile Pages

You may have noticed from the above picture that the profile pages look a little different. In order to add the My Favorite Projects feature and to finish up the Work Item Email Notifications feature, we needed to redesign the profile pages. The most notable design change to the profile pages is separating the “public view” from the “edit your info” page.

Let us know what you think of the new profile pages.

Source Code Diff Tools (Beta)

Finally, in this deployment, we’re introducing new feature that’s in “Beta” right now.

It’s your standard file diff’ing tool that’s available at the file level of each changeset.

I know it is much more interesting to see at the changeset level which files have been changed, and then drill down into how those files have been changed. However, living the agile life, I wanted to first get the basic ability to diff files out there to collect feedback on it.

CodePlex now supports projects hosting ads from The Lounge (and lots of other great new features too!)

saraford — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 07:15:00 GMT

Today we deployed the latest version of the CodePlex software.

Use Advertisements from The Lounge

With a single click, CodePlex project owners can now host advertisements on their project pages from The Lounge.

Project owner can see advertisements appear on the Home tab, the Downloads tab, the Discussions tab, and the Issue Tracker.

You can visit the CodePlex documentation for more information on hosting advertisements from The Lounge.

Insert Code Snippet in Discussions

We’ve heard your feedback. You can now insert a code snippet into a discussion post via the Insert Code Snippet button.

This will display a window for you to post in your code and to preview with syntax highlighting.

Browse / Download Latest in Source Control

In this deployment, we’ve updated the Source Code tab to bring you the browse or download the latest version.

RSS Feed Updates

Again, we’ve heard your feedback. We’ve tweaked the CodePlex site RSS feed based on your feedback. New Projects and New Releases are listed first with their descriptions, whereas most popular and most downloaded are listed at the bottom.

Since we just deployed today, you’ll have to wait for the next RSS update (anytime after noon PST tomorrow).

http://www.codeplex.com/rss.ashx

New Wiki Markup Macros

and last but not least, we’ve added a few macros to the collection.

Superscript: ^^I am superscript^^

Subscript: ,,I am subscript,,

Strikethrough ~~I am strikethrough~~

Horizontal rule (4 dashes on single line)

----

Filter by work items that you’re tracking

saraford — Sat, 23 May 2009 01:07:00 GMT

Yesterday, we deployed the latest version of the CodePlex software. In this release, we continued to work on the email notifications for work items feature by adding the ability to filter just by the work items you’re tracking.

We also made optimizations in our web architecture to improve server utilization for better handling the increased traffic levels.

Hyperlink images in your wiki pages, new TinyMCE Editor, and new Flot stats chart

saraford — Fri, 08 May 2009 03:34:00 GMT

Just a few minutes ago, we deployed the latest version of the CodePlex software.

Work item #14459: Wiki hyperlinking from an image

Thanks to a voting campaign that started on Twitter on April 9, this work item became our #1 most requested feature almost overnight. Because we use Agile to deploy a new release every 3 weeks, we were able to provide a quick turnaround to this request.

This is basic format for image hyperlinking:

[image:<Friendly Name>|<image name or link to the image>|<URL pointed to by image>]

For example:

[image:My Image|http://www.domain.com/myimage.jpg|http://www.domain.com]

[image:My Image|my_image.jpg|http://www.domain.com]

New Homepage Tweaks

We made some tweaks to our homepage. http://www.codeplex.com

The major change I’ll call out is that we moved the project search to the left, since it is the primary action people visiting the homepage will take.

TinyMCE Editor

We’re now using the TinyMCE Editor for our discussion boards.

Flot chart

We’re now using the Flot chart for our project stats page.

Email Notifications for Work Item Changes

saraford — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 03:23:00 GMT

Today (April 9), we deployed the latest version of the CodePlex software.

Work Item Notifications via Email

Our #3 most requested feature is Mail notifications to track work item updates. Starting with today’s deployment, you can now subscribe to a work item to receive email. See the bottom of the work item for the “Email me” checkbox For those of you not subscribed via RSS, no more having to revisit the CodePlex site to check the status of your bug or feature request.

You will receive an email notification when the work item status changes (example below):

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: <notifications@codeplex.com>
Date: Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 5:29 PM
Subject: Status updated to Active for Issue: Error when trying to start application [ProjectName: bug#]
To: me@my_email_address.com

User projectOwner1234 has updated Issue: Error when trying to start application.

Status has changed from Proposed to Active.

View the full issue online.

You are receiving this email because you are tracking this work item on ProjectName. You can unsubscribe at the bottom of the work item.

or someone leaves a comment (example below):

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: <notifications@codeplex.com>
Date: <whatever time it is now>
Subject: New comment for Issue: Unable to save file [ProjectName: bug#]
To: me@my_email_address.com

User projectOwner1234 has commented on Issue: Unable to save file.

"We’re investigating the issue. Thanks for reporting it. One workaround you can do is..."

View the full issue online.

You are receiving this email because you are tracking this work item on ProjectName. You can unsubscribe at the bottom of the work item.

In future releases, we’ll add the ability to subscribe project-wide for work items. But as life in the agile world goes, one step at a time.

Direct link download

Another feature we’ve added in this release is the ability to directly link to a file in your releases page.

For example, on the xUnit.net project’s release page, you can directly download the xunit-1.1.zip file from the following new link.

http://xunit.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=16811#DownloadId=50312

Downloads Tab

We renamed the “Releases” tab to the “Downloads” tab.

The majority of the visitors to our site are looking for something to “download,” and may not necessarily associated “downloads” as “releases.” We hope by making this single change will help visitors find what they are looking for faster and easier.

We’re always looking for feedback.

Syntax Highlighting for PHP and CSS files

saraford — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 20:50:00 GMT

On Thursday (3/19), we deployed the latest version of the CodePlex software. This release focused primarily on various infrastructure improvements to improve performance, especially during peak traffic hours.

During the infrastructure improvements, we were still able to add a couple minor feature enhancements to our syntax highlighting, specifically adding support for PHP and CSS files, as shown below.

From http://phpexcel.codeplex.com/SourceControl/changeset/view/26162#172239

And from http://cssfriendly.codeplex.com/SourceControl/changeset/view/24242#9858

Project subdomain URLs and separate RSS feed for reviews

saraford — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 05:10:00 GMT

On Thursday, we deployed the latest version of the CodePlex software.

Project subdomain URLs

All project pages are now in the form of projectname.codeplex.com. A few months ago, we introduced this feature at the project homepage level. Now, we’ve implemented it site-wide.

Separate RSS feed for release reviews

We’ve heard feedback that there was too much noise in the RSS feed for release updates. We created a separate RSS feed for reviews, so moving forward, you can get updates when new releases come out without any of the user reviews.

New Custom Field in the Issue Tracker

saraford — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 23:51:09 GMT

We deployed the latest version of the CodePlex software on Friday, Feb 6. Work items in the issue tracker now have a custom field where you can add or edit whatever text you want, in case you need additional fields not already supported. You can search for your Custom field text in both the basic and advance views.

Behind the scenes, we focused on miscellaneous fit and finish work to some of the new features that came out late last year.

CodePlex now supports Silverlight

saraford — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 02:03:00 GMT

Yesterday, we deployed the latest version of the CodePlex software with support for

As a project owner, you can now put a Silverlight app on your project pages. The wiki markup is

{silverlight:url=http://yourdomain.com/yourapp.xap,height=400,width=600}

Special thanks to Justin Angel (Silverlight Toolkit) and John Stockton (Session Scheduler) for their assistance in creating Silverlight apps to host on their projects to help get the word out.

From http://silverlight.codeplex.com:

From http://sessionscheduler.codeplex.com

Wiki comment improvements

Also included in this release are improvements to the wiki comments. No more random comments on the homepage, but you can still leave comments on all other wiki pages.

In addition, you can now view all new comments across all wiki pages in a single place. Go to the Change History link for the wiki pages, and in the upper-right you’ll see the Latest Comments link.

CodePlex Goes Less Green for the Holidays with a New Look

saraford — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Despite an unusual amount of snow wreaking havoc across Seattle and no one able to make it to the office, we were still able to deploy the latest version of the CodePlex software on Thursday, Dec 18, 2008, our last deployment of the year.

New look

Just go to CodePlex.com or any non-project page to check out the new look.

Personal Project URLs for projects

We’re introducing a shorter, more personal URL for projects, where your project name comes first, in the form of <projectname>.codeplex.com. You can now do http://xunit.codeplex.com alongside http://www.codeplex.com/xunit.

Note that you’ll still see us use the longer format throughout the site right now. We have plans to switch over to the new version in upcoming releases.

Bookmark source code files once again

Using the new source control browser, you can once again bookmark specific files.

Issue Tracker performance updates

We’ve done some work to improve the performance of the issue tracker. We’re hoping you will notice the difference.

Increased File Sizes for Releases

You can now attached files of 250mb in a release.

And snow!

Okay, we’re not really responsible for this one. Across the water is Seattle, but even on a non-snow day, you couldn’t see the city anyways =D