Welcome to the second issue of WebGUI Network News. The goal of this newsletter is to collect information from around the world-wide WebGUI community to help keep us all in touch.  Although the newsletter has come out once a week so far, I make no promises about continuining the trend so regularly.

Future editions of this newsletter will have a better layout, graphics and yes, more news If you're aware of news that you think the community would be interested in, please submit it to colink@perldreamer.com.Your editor and reporter,

Colin Kuskie

Translation News

Most translations, except for German, slipped a little this week due to more new i18n entries added to WebGUI 7.7.  There is more of this expected, as more new features continue to be added.  Translators, we know it's difficult and often tedious, but please keep up the good work!  Thank for all of your efforts.

New Blog Entries

Currently, we're tracking four blogs. If you know of other blogs with WebGUI related topics, please let us know.  In the future, this section may be moved into a Syndicated Content Asset to aggregate all the known WebGUI blogs in one place.

The Black Blog, http://www.plainblack.com/tbb

JT Smith's blog about Plain Black and WebGUI and other topics.

The Staff Blog, http://www.plainblack.com/pr/staff/blog

Blog entries from the Plain Black staff, covering topics from graphics design, WebGUI coding and telecommuting from home.

patspam.com, http://www.patspam.com

This is blog of Patrick Donelan, from SDH Consulting. Recently Patrick was named one of The People Behind WebGUI.

Colin's blog, http://perldreamer.com/blog

My blog, about WebGUI programming, my business, perlDreamer Consulting, and other things.

Two blog entries this week:

1. Steve Swanson talks about how hand drawing graphics has changed his approach to web design.

2. Patrick Donelan introduces the Carousel wobject and talks about new features in the Survey.

News Blurbs

April Fools Hoax Revealed: WebGUI 8 will NOT be written in PHP.

Last week reported that WebGUI 8 would be written in PHP.  This, of course, was an April Fools joke from JT.  However, many people apparently took this to be true, and have been asking for a due date.  JT's follow up blog post leaves little doubt about it.

WebGUI Network News Format Change

Due to overwhelming demand**, WNN is not published in a WebGUI Collaboration System.  If you create an account of perldreamer.com, you'll be able to receive new issues via email, or to subscribe via RSS.

**Overwhelming demand means that all 7 readers asked for it to be changed. 

What's New in WebGUI?

RSS, Atom and RDF Feed Asset Aspect, Gotcha

The new Asset Aspect for syndication that we reported last week has one major difference from the old system, no unique URLs for RSS feeds any longer.  In WebGUI 7.7, if you were using the unique URLs, the you'll have to update your feed URLs to point to the Collaboration System URL, and append ?func=viewRss to it.

New Versions Released

Over the last week, WebGUI 7.7.3 and 7.6.19 were released.

Helping WebGUI

If you use WebGUI, you're well aware of how much time and money it has saved you. Below you'll find a number of small, easy ways you can give back to WebGUI and the community, to help make both better.

Community Tasks

1. Translate WebGUI.

2. Report Bugs. If you find a bug in WebGUI, please report it so we can fix it.

3. Promote WebGUI. Write a blog entry about WebGUI. Talk about it in your area in a local users's group, or the Chamber of Commerce, or whereever you are involved. Contact Tavis Parker at Plain Black to give him your WebGUI success story.

4. Wiki Maintenance. The wiki on webgui.org is community maintained. Consider fixing up an article that is out of date, or adding a new article about something you've learned.

Development Tasks

1. Fix a bug. The bug list is long, and growing. Take a crack at fixing a bug.

2. Write POD. Large sections of the WebGUI codebase do not have POD. Find a subroutine that needs it, and write some POD for it.

3. Write tests. WebGUI has a large test suite,but it only covers a fraction of the code. We need lots and lots more tests. See the wiki for how to get started.