Under Construction: New features, new help area on the way

For those of you who have been following the blog for while, you've probably noticed that we haven't been posting quite as much of late. There are two big reasons for this.

First, we recently said goodbye to Kyle, who has been a major contributor to the blog from its inception both as an author and designer. Alas, despite our best efforts, we could not convince him that the slave wages and table scraps we were offering as payment were better than finishing his degree, so he's now back at Rice as a full-time student. Maybe in a few years when he's off working as a NASA engineer he will look back and realize just exactly how much he misses us, but until that day comes, we'll have to find a way to soldier on without him. Good luck, Kyle!

The second major blog speed bump is related to some of the work we've been doing to enhance the site, which has kept us all pretty busy. In the coming weeks Connexions will be upgrading its collection structures - the "blueprints" that define textbooks, courses, etc. - to use a new XML format called CollXML. While we won't be offering the ability to edit CollXML documents directly just yet, this work is setting the stage for a slew of new collection-related features that we hope to introduce over the coming months that will give collection authors even greater control over their work. For now, the new CollXML export function will provide opportunities for outside developers to take full advantage of the content in the Connexions repository.

You may soon find yourself updating your content to the newest version of CNXML, version 0.7. For those of you who remember the CNXML 0.6 upgrade earlier this year, don't worry - this is NOT a major change from the previous language, but is primarily an administrative update to support the CollXML rollout. The one difference for authors is that we are making it easier to include alternate images for online and pdf formats, allowing you greater control of what is (and is not!) displayed to the reader based on how they are viewing the content. Additional details and documentation will be available when the update rolls out later this month.

We've also been working hard to restructure the Connexions "Help" pages (http://cnx.org/help/). Several of these resources are being merged, moved, and/or expanded in order to help visitors and authors better find the most relevant guides and tutorials. As a part of this effort we've also identified and "retired" several outdated or duplicate tutorials, so if you have bookmarked some of those pages you may need to update your links. These changes will make life a lot easier for those looking for help, but as always you can email techsupport@cnx.org if you have any questions or comments.

And the fun doesn't stop there ... next month we're planning to release a major update for organizations interested in promoting their brand along with the content they provide. Stay tuned, these updates are scheduled to be released sometime around Halloween ...