10 new Tridion 2011 features to look forward to

Unfortunately I haven’t been able to actually get my hands dirty with the new Tridion 2011 release. So, I have been scouring all blogs from other Tridion consultants as well as reading the release documentation to find out about all the great new features. The list is long, so I ended up picking out the 10 features that personally got me most excited.

1. Gui Extensions

   The new 2011 Tridion GUI framework is a major overhaul to the way extensions have been previously developed. The framework now is far more robust and well designed. Building new and exciting extensions has never been easier. However, configuring your extension may not be the easiest thing in the world to do… ²

2. Cross Browser Compatibility

   Say bye to the Internet Explorer and hello to all other (major) browsers. The new Content Manager Explorer provides full cross-browser support for the latest Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Microsoft Internet Explorer and Apple Safari browsers for both Microsoft and Apple operating systems. ³

3. Improved Broker Querying

   We should be able now to query on custom metadata! A big thumbs up for this added functionality (and personally a long anticipated one). This and many other features will make the tridion Broker an even more powerfull tool for what it already was!

4. Full .NET API

   No more COM+, no more restarting of Windows services and no more interop dll's! Tridion 2011 has gone .NET all the way!

5. Content Services

   Content Services is the new RESTful webservice on Content Delivery based upon the oData and oAuth standards. You now have your published content available through a webservice to any application, mobile app, affiliate, white label site, 3rd party the list goes on… ¹

6. Event System

   The new fully .NET event system is modular. Does not sound like much but you can add one or more separate event systems to the same Content Management environment. Each event system can work alone hooking into different CM activities or can work together as part of coordinated event driven activities. ¹

7. New design

   A number of important improvements to the GUI have been made, most notably a move from the toolbar to a Ribbon interface, as well as a more sophisticated Message Center to replace many of the intrusive popups of the old GUI. ³

8. Different colours for each environment

   bread-crumb trail show the history of your actions, can be customized for DTAP (i.e. each environment can have its own breadcrumb background; e.g. red for Development, orange for Test, green for Acceptance). ⁴

9. Storage in multiple storage mediums

   Replacing Broker bindings and home classes, SDL Tridion 2011 introduces a clear, easily configurable Storage Layer that lets you store content in multiple databases, file systems, or any other storage medium you can think of. ³

10. More metadata

    In SDL Tridion 2011, more (system and custom) metadata from the Content Manager can be made available in the Content Delivery server. Also, when retrieving the custom metadata for a Component, the metadata can now be fully loaded and initialized. The same goes for Taxonomy Keywords. ³

Sources: 1 - http://www.julianwraith.com 2 - http://yoavniran.wordpress.com 3 - http://www.sdl.com 4 - http://tridionarchitect.blogspot.com And thanks to other Tridion consultants who's information I used for inspiration as well!

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