I've been working quite a bit with Contour the past few months and while I find it a great product, I can't help feeling that it is lacking some very specific features. I've compiled a list and was wondering what the community thought, and also if HQ had any kind of roadmap on when the next version of Contour will come out and what will be available in that release. Feel free to add more features that I've missed.
My list is sorted by priority by what I feel is important:
Ability to set the aliases for the fields. Fields with the same caption will be fixed by this. Field types need uniquely identifiable class names or ids for frontend javascript/css.
UI for form entries needs love: Fields in entries section should be sorted in the order that they exist on the form, NOT alphabetically. Select all, select none, forms that have more than... 5 entries? run off the page... Not very friendly for clients to manage their data.
Ability to sort form steps. Ability to move fields or fieldsets to different steps. (This can be accomplished by altering the database, yes, but it would be best for end users if this functionality was integrated into the UI.)
Conditional showing/hiding/skipping of fields/steps based on the value of another field. (Workflow/Javacript) -- Not much can really be done for this one I guess, but it would be nice to keep this in mind and find a better way to approach it.
Default settings for all forms. Would be nice to set it once and have all forms take the default.
More control, overall, of the markup would be nice, that way errors, captions, tooltips, etc, can be better targeted with javascript and CSS.
I know you've got to make money somehow, HQ, but it would sure be nice
if this project was a bit more open so we could do more to contribute to
it. Rewriting all the fieldtypes isn't practical and doesn't remove the
old ones. Perhaps one approach could be that the core of Contour could be commercially licensed, where as the Providers could take a more open source approach. Then there wouldn't be a need for something like the Contour Contrib project.
Anyhow, there's my thoughts. I hope we can get some disussion started here.
Tim - who's leading Contour - is away atm but returns next week so he'll get in touch with you. I know that control of markup is on top of his list and agree that a public roadmap would be great!
Nice post!!!.... I would like to add something to this list if I may. I've been using contour a lot as well, and one thing that some of my clients has been complaining about was about all the steps to go through whenever there is a file upload in contour.
At the moment the way of doing so is to copy>paste the link or by using Edit Values > Show Current File.
So in addition to your list.
The ability to retrieve an uploaded file directly instead of having to copy/paste the link to get any pdf/doc/img files uploaded by user.
@Fuji: Great idea - and would be great if you could download all files in the query in one big zip file too, I guess (with a file naming that made it easy to understand what record it belongs to).
The reason that Tim haven't gotten back to you, is that he needed a longer break after CodeGarden so he's on leave but returns in August. A lot of the input from this thread will make it into vNext. I really appreciate that you help us make Contour better this way, so keep the ideas coming!
One last thing that can be improved in contour would be the DatePicker. At the moment its a datePicker that sits in the page but would be even better if we could click on the icon as it is in the Designer Mode and have the Calendar Open in a nice jquery Overlay.
But i know those are some of the features that takes time., would love to help on some implementation if i could though.
Another issue I've noticed recently is that if you have around 50 or so fields, the Entries section won't show any entries. The webservice responsible for displaying the entries dies with a:
Server Error in '/' Application.
The length of the query string for this request exceeds the configured maxQueryStringLength value.
Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.
Exception Details: System.Web.HttpException: The length of the query string for this request exceeds the configured maxQueryStringLength value.
Setting the maxQueryStringLength higher produces another error. So there's no way to manage entries when there too many fields.
The bugs will make the next maintenance release and we'll evaluate the awesome ideas that I hope we can include (some) in the next major release
Roadmap will follow shortly, currenlty collecting the items and placing them on the new issue tracker so feel free to add more if you have further ideas!
Features I'd Like to See Added to Contour
I've been working quite a bit with Contour the past few months and while I find it a great product, I can't help feeling that it is lacking some very specific features. I've compiled a list and was wondering what the community thought, and also if HQ had any kind of roadmap on when the next version of Contour will come out and what will be available in that release. Feel free to add more features that I've missed.
My list is sorted by priority by what I feel is important:
Fields with the same caption will be fixed by this.
Field types need uniquely identifiable class names or ids for frontend javascript/css.
Fields in entries section should be sorted in the order that they exist on the form, NOT alphabetically.
Select all, select none, forms that have more than... 5 entries? run off the page... Not very friendly for clients to manage their data.
Ability to move fields or fieldsets to different steps.
(This can be accomplished by altering the database, yes, but it would be best for end users if this functionality was integrated into the UI.)
I know you've got to make money somehow, HQ, but it would sure be nice if this project was a bit more open so we could do more to contribute to it. Rewriting all the fieldtypes isn't practical and doesn't remove the old ones. Perhaps one approach could be that the core of Contour could be commercially licensed, where as the Providers could take a more open source approach. Then there wouldn't be a need for something like the Contour Contrib project.
Anyhow, there's my thoughts. I hope we can get some disussion started here.
Awesome list!
Tim - who's leading Contour - is away atm but returns next week so he'll get in touch with you. I know that control of markup is on top of his list and agree that a public roadmap would be great!
Hi Douglas,
Nice post!!!.... I would like to add something to this list if I may. I've been using contour a lot as well, and one thing that some of my clients has been complaining about was about all the steps to go through whenever there is a file upload in contour.
At the moment the way of doing so is to copy>paste the link or by using Edit Values > Show Current File.
So in addition to your list.
The ability to retrieve an uploaded file directly instead of having to copy/paste the link to get any pdf/doc/img files uploaded by user.
Hey Fuji,
Good one! I've seen that too, but forgot about it.
@Fuji: Great idea - and would be great if you could download all files in the query in one big zip file too, I guess (with a file naming that made it easy to understand what record it belongs to).
The reason that Tim haven't gotten back to you, is that he needed a longer break after CodeGarden so he's on leave but returns in August. A lot of the input from this thread will make it into vNext. I really appreciate that you help us make Contour better this way, so keep the ideas coming!
/n
Hi guys,
One last thing that can be improved in contour would be the DatePicker. At the moment its a datePicker that sits in the page but would be even better if we could click on the icon as it is in the Designer Mode and have the Calendar Open in a nice jquery Overlay.
But i know those are some of the features that takes time., would love to help on some implementation if i could though.
Thanks
//fuji
@Fuji, you just need to add a runat="server" to your head tag in order to get that to work.
Another issue I've noticed recently is that if you have around 50 or so fields, the Entries section won't show any entries. The webservice responsible for displaying the entries dies with a:
Server Error in '/' Application.
The length of the query string for this request exceeds the configured maxQueryStringLength value.
Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.
Exception Details: System.Web.HttpException: The length of the query string for this request exceeds the configured maxQueryStringLength value.
Setting the maxQueryStringLength higher produces another error. So there's no way to manage entries when there too many fields.
Comment author was deleted
Thanks for the great list, I've added your items to our bug tracker at http://issues.umbraco.org/issues/CON
The bugs will make the next maintenance release and we'll evaluate the awesome ideas that I hope we can include (some) in the next major release
Roadmap will follow shortly, currenlty collecting the items and placing them on the new issue tracker so feel free to add more if you have further ideas!
Thanks,
TIm
Comment author was deleted
@douglas btw any chance you can share some more details on the error, can't reproduce it , any details you can share are great
Link to the issue: http://issues.umbraco.org/issue/CON-68
Thanks again :) !
Comment author was deleted
Nevermind was already fixed :) and will of course be part of the 1.1.13 release you can already test it with a nightly build http://nightly.umbraco.org/Umbraco%20Contour/1.1.13%20WIP/
Please add reCAPTCHA into Contour core code. It's so important.
Thanks a lot Tim! I'm sure I speak for the community when I say that we sure appreciate your efforts.
Comment author was deleted
First features in place http://www.screenr.com/5KE8 :)
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