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    • Pre-14 Knocks it out of the park!

    Posted by John Morris posts: 758 United States

    I just wanted to drop in and say how cool the Pre-14 is. I have been on the demo site using it and playing and scrapping and just having fun.
    The look and feel is completely cool.
    The interface dialogues are nice and clear, the over all appearance and interface just feel lighter, friendlier, and it may be my imagination but it feels quicker too. Perhaps the Bootstrap theme is lighter with less bulky coding? Whatever it is, getting around Pre-14 is enjoyable.

    I am an intermediate user, I admin a community forum at www.thepatriotwoodworker.com/forums
    and our home page is at
    www.thepatriotwoodworker.com

    The only reason I left our url's above is to give an example that my knowledge is mostly with plug n play software, as our home site is built on Joomla! and our community is built on IB Board, both of which are user friendly plug and play.
    If it weren't for the many plugin play built in options provided by Tiki I would not be able to have all these options at my finger tips. I do not code, I do not play with CSS, and I have no intention on getting dirty with it either, I am looking for a wiki platform that is easy to use, and intuitive. And Tiki is very user friendly, with a little patience and experimenting, and research (Tiki for Smarties) you can get this up and running. I have had a Tiki 12 test site for a few months now and it's nice, the only complaint I have about is the outdated appearance and skins. I know someone with more knowledge than I can make 12 look more up to date, but that person is not me. But, versions 13 and 14 have taken care of the appearance end of things.

    I have been using a test site for Mediawiki as well, a great piece of software, and I am completely comfy with it and all the extensions and the process to configure the extensions, but, it scares the heck out of me to have all those extensions that I worked so hard to load up, and then a major upgrade by Mediawiki takes place, and the possibility of those extensions becoming quickly obsolete.
    Also the lack of a WYSIWYG editor is a major major major downside to Mediawiki. I know they have a Visual Editor (WYSIWYG) but it's virtually impossible to make it function if you are on shared hosting like we are. Shared hosting services don't like a Parsoid Service running on their accounts, it's constantly running and gobbling up resources, so about the only way to take advantage of the WYSIWYG Visual Editor for Mediawiki is by having your own dedicated server or VPS which is costly to many of us and just too much work to maintain. Mediawiki is an awesome piece of open source software, I am not slamming it, just it does not fit our needs.
    Tiki has a WYSIWYG. No need to say more on that issue.

    The biggest con for me at this point is the 13 and 14 versions require php5.5, if you can even call that a con, it really isn't, it's just inconvenient for me personally because our shared hosting does not provide php5.5 yet, and they have no plans to implement it soon. So now I am forced to go out and look for hosting that will accommodate the new versions of Tiki. There are many but choosing is hard.

    I am also getting to become familiar with the Tiki community lately via video interviews with the shakers and movers of the Tiki community, and I am feeling more on a personal level like Tiki is just a neat piece of software with a great community behind it.
    Ok, back to the demo site for more fun!
    Thanks Tiki guys for all your volunteer efforts to make this community what it is, and for making software that the everyday user can use.

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    Posted by Maeve posts: 21 Australia

    Well said jmorris and a big fat +1 from me. Been working with 14beta for the past three weeks and finding more and more to love about it and the good people who make it.

    Check out InMotion for shared hosting with the option to switch up to PHP 5.5 - we're just novices but we've found them pretty good so far.

    Link
    Posted by John Morris posts: 758 United States

    Yes Maeve! Great stuff indeed. I love the look of 14 .

    I already pulled the trigger on an account at A2 hosting. I tried Inmotion awhile back though and they did not have multi cpanel unless you are a reseller, and their reseller price was high. But they are a great outfit  for sure, while there testing their service I had nothing but great feedback for them, and their customer service is tops, I just could not afford the cost to have multil Cpanels

    So A2 was my choice, they have a reseller account that is pretty fair, I can have as many dedicated root directories with cpanel that I want, and they have PHP 5.5! I found in the past that if you have more then one site you need to publish, it's better to keep them nice and cozy in their own little public_html homes. Sure you can create subdirectories, but later down the road, it's proven to be a pain. That's just me though.

    Glad I found a pro 14 friend out there Maeve!

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    Posted by Gary Cunningham-Lee posts: 4656 Japan

    Thanks for the nice words, John and Maeve. We wanted to renovate Tiki's CSS, implement responsive web design to look good on all sizes of devices, and lower the bar for designers and others who might be interested in working with Tiki. Integrating the Bootstrap CSS framework was the key step. This process is pretty well along and will be fairly complete by Tiki 15 but, as you described, even at the present stage things are looking pretty good (thanks to the basic layout Bootstrap provides, and the relative ease of adapting themes for it).

    With switchable icon sets and layout templates and Tiki's other interface options added to that, I think there's a lot of potential to  have fun and get good results for sites.

    Having a look at The Patriot Woodworker, John, gave me a nostalgic feeling. In another life (so it seems now) before spending my days with a pc, I did woodworking for a living, making furniture, cabinets, wood toys and so on mainly using native Hawaiian hardwoods in Honolulu. But I've lived in Japan now for many years, and have needed to have a quieter avocation. ;-)

    -- Gary

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    Posted by John Morris posts: 758 United States

     

     

    Gary, thanks for the feedback on my topic, you guys are doing great work, and we appreciate it very much. Open source means so much to many, it's a movement that I hope keeps on keeping on. I believe in it whole heartedly and I live by it. Sharing and giving.

    You know Gary, you can still woodwork in peace and quiet, hand tools my friend. Ditch the power and go organic. There is nothing like the sound and feel of a long No. 8 Jointer plane racing across a piece of cherry, with the lace like curls flowing off the chip breaker. And a hammer and chisel, saw, and a various measuring tools, and you can work beautiful wood peacefully.

    I don't know if you are aware or not, but Japan has some of the most talented crafs men and women in the world when it comes to woodworking. They have a zen like approach to it, and the work they produce is clean, efficient, useful, and very beautiful, nothing is wasted, and they love working by hand, you are in the geographical area of some of the finest woodworking in the world.

    The image below is a traditional set of Japanese woodworking tools.

    97japanesetoolbox  

    A wonderful image of Japanese pull saws. As is most things in the way the Japanese work, they are very efficient, the pull saw is pulled towards you, unlike the western saw that is sawed back in forth using more energy then required to cut wood.

    Jcd19  

    A woodworker

    Japbox23  

    A beautiful table made with hand tools

    Japan 5412  

    This is a Japanese hand plane, it too is pulled and not pushed like the west uses planes, again the Japanese use energy very efficiently. Pulling is so much easier then pushing.

    7390c89c154b3dfeab6db32eacc68076  

    The woodwork of the Japanese, has a timeless style, always sought after, you could be doing some wonderful quiet woodworking there Gary, and no better place then Japan, where the masters reside.

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