Sitefinity releases - October 24, 2018
CMS Transition Team | Office of Information Technology and University Communications Oct 26, 2018New features
Department widget
We have made list, tile and detail templates for the departments widget. Site builders can now use nicely styled department data on their Sitefinity sites (such as a list of associated centers, offices, clinics, etc).
Testimonial widget, new template
The testimonial widget now has new template that does not require an image. In addition, we have removed the requirement to add a last name, allowing testimonials to be anonymous.
People widget, new template
There is now an accordion view of full profiles for the people widget. This allows you to show a group of people in a collapsed state. Each person’s full website profile is shown if the accordion is expanded. The site visitor can now explore faculty or staff profiles without leaving the page.
Improvements
Hero video widget
The hero video no longer automatically loops.
Hero image scrolling background
The behavior of the stationary background option for the hero image has changed on mobile phones. On phones, the image will scroll with the page instead of allowing the page to scroll over the top of the image. This behavior was changed to optimize performance on mobile browsers. A bug in iOS on the iPhone was causing poor page performance when the fixed background was enabled.
Pencil menu with icons
The edit menu which displays on the right hand of the page once a content editor has logged into the CMS, has been revised to include larger text and clearer iconography.
People content type
The short bio field is no longer required, this allows easier maintenance of data. If present, web friendly job titles now display instead the job titles from directory.
Search
Styling on the search results page has been revised to better match the theme of the website.
CTA button
The font size of CTA buttons has been increased to improve readability.
Testimonial image
On the widget template that does display the testimonial image, the quality of the image has been improved. The title field has been added to allow for alphabetical sorting.
Accessibility updates
Aria code has been revised in several widgets to improve accessible functionality:
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Aria-hidden removed from quick links ‘X (close)’ icon because it was preventing screen readers from reading the ‘close’ aria-label
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Aria-labelled by added to ‘Full Story’ link in list view of newsroom widget so that screen readers will read the title of the article instead of the non-descriptive text ‘full story’
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Updated button helper text in edit mode for the hero video and image widgets from "Example: Learn More” to “Use short and descriptive text that describes destination of the link”
Tabs/Accordion JS revisited
The Tabs and Accordion JavaScript has been simplified to improve keyboard accessibility as well as animation effects. We initially made the tabs and accordion more keyboard accessible by allowing keyboard users to navigate items with the keyboard arrow keys, but found that this took away default keyboard functionality and would not be intuitive to keyboard users. We have reverted keyboard functionality back to its default state, and while doing so brought back animation effects.
Fixed
Various content types
When selecting a single item in CTA, Enhanced Card, Person or Testimonial widgets, the wrong template appears.
This is an ongoing bug with a partial remediation, and a work around. When selecting a single piece of content in certain widgets, the “detail” template displays instead of the “list” template. Here is a workaround: https://www.ucdenver.edu/atweb/support/current-bugs we have also added more templates to make sure that an appropriate detail template is available. We are continuing to work with Progress (parent company of Sitefinity) on a resolution.
People widget
The people widget can now be sorted alphabetically by last name.
Hero video
The Hero video was previously not able to display videos from other libraries. This has been revised to allow videos from other libraries to display successfully.
Bylines
The newsroom templates have been revised to avoid repeating bylines.
Card widget
The out of box card widget now displays a button even if a link is added with no label.
Groundwork for future improvements
Performance audit and analysis
Our partner, Blue Modus has provided us with a custom widget to provide statistical information on Sitefinity’s use of SQL. This widget may be visible to site builders. Some net gains have already been seen from last month’s upgrade to Version 11.
Research and creative projects prototypes
At this month’s WAC meeting, the research & creative Project design prototypes were presented and approved. This widget will be up for development starting in November.
Academic program data collection
Academic Program data is now being collected so that we may populate both the New Ed degree finder tool, and the Sitefinity website with degree information.
Infographic and graphs
Infographic and graph options have been tested for accessibility and were presented at this month’s WAC meeting. Some options are freely available and can be embedded by site builders immediately. Other options may require development. Web Services has requested feedback on any additional features that can be built for enterprise wide use.
Free and available for use:
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h5p.org - You must register in order to use their content types. After you build out your chart you will receive an embed code that you can plop onto Sitefinity through an embed widget. If you want to use a different content type and not the chart, please be aware of the accessibility status of that specific content type. You can refer to the content type accessibility chart to find out what the status of each content type is currently at.
Free but additional set up needed:
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Highcharts – Highcharts is a free to use tool. It is a JavaScript based charting tool, therefore; you cannot simply embed this chart like you would h5p charts. Since it is JavaScript based, Web Services would have to include their libraries to get this to work.
Pay to use:
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Tableau - Currently being used by CU Online to display their degrees and programs. You can also create visual charts with tableau and there is a possibility of integrating Tableau with the data visualization JavaScript library, d3.js, to create more complex and intricate charts. Unfortunately, Tableau is a pay to use tool.