Stuff for Geeks

The internets have been filled with copious amounts of mouth froth over the last few days regarding Apples new iBooks Author software.  The issue is the EULA, which basically says that if you want to sell a book that you’ve created with the software that you have to sell it through Apples iBookstore and that you can’t sell it in the same binary format anywhere else.  Most importantly, you are still free to use the same content in a different format and distribute it in anyway you like (pdf, Kindle, print etc).  The restriction doesn’t apply if you give the book away for free.  People also seem to be griping that Apple has the right to refuse to allow you to sell your book in their marketplace if they deem it unfit for any reason (sounds familiar, doesn’t it).

Anyhow, here’s the offending part of the agreement:

B. Distribution of your Work. As a condition of this License and provided you are in compliance with its terms, your Work may be distributed as follows:

(i) if your Work is provided for free (at no charge), you may distribute the Work by any available means;
(ii) if your Work is provided for a fee (including as part of any subscription-based product or service), you may only distribute the Work through Apple and such distribution is subject to the following limitations and conditions: (a) you will be required to enter into a separate written agreement with Apple (or an Apple affiliate or subsidiary) before any commercial distribution of your Work may take place; and (b) Apple may determine for any reason and in its sole discretion not to select your Work for distribution.

Apple will not be responsible for any costs, expenses, damages, losses (including
without limitation lost business opportunities or lost profits) or other liabilities you may incur as a result of your use of this Apple Software, including without limitation the fact that your Work may not be selected for distribution by Apple.

On the surface this all sounds very ominous, but when you read through the whole thing you notice that nowhere does Apple claim ownership of your work.  All they state is that if you want to sell your work through their bookstore (using their custom format, which is produced by their software) that you don’t sell the same digital file outside of their bookstore.  In other words, Apple doesn’t want anyone else creating an alternative book marketplace to sell the same format.  Does this sound familiar?  Of course it does – it’s exactly the same thing that Apple (and Microsoft, with the Windows Phone 7 Market) did with iOS apps.  If you produce an app in the format for execution on iOS you can only distribute it through the AppStore and Apple has the right to reject your application.  It’s the same thing!  Actually, the iBookstore restrictions are actually more friendly, since you still have to distribute free iOS apps through the AppStore as well.

I do, however, have some reservations about how Apple is going to police the content of the bookstore.  It’s easy enough to have automated processes to test if an app behaves properly and it’s relatively easy to verify that the content meets the marketplace requirements (ignoring the subjective nature of that).  How does one go about this for a book though?  I assume it means reading the entire book?  I’m pretty sure that the whoever gets this job will immediately reject the book on the first violation (spelling mistake, maybe) and that there will be two classes of rejection (non publishable due to the nature of the content, and needs editing due to lousy spelling, grammar and layout).  However this pans out, I’m pretty sure that Apple is going to take a lot of heat in this area and that they’re going to have to tread very carefully so as to not be accused of restricting free speech and undue censorship.

My other issue with everything is that this is an iOS only thing, but hopefully Apple will release a reader application for other platforms, much like Amazon did with the Kindle software.

written by Paul \\ tags: Apple, iBooks, iOS

If you’re anything like me then you like to have a dedicated test device (or a few) for development that you can periodically repave when things start going a little pear-shaped.  It’s kind of like having a virtual machine for testing, but unfortunately you really need a physical device for mobile development because there’s just some things that the emulators can’t do very well (like make calls, GPS, accelerometer, gyroscope, compass etc).  A spare phone is okay, but they can be a bit costly if you want fairly decent performance and there’s often an issue with needing a sim card in the phone (here in South Africa all sim cards have to be registered and it’s generally just a pain in the butt).  Wifi only devices are ideal for mobile game development because they don’t have all the phone crud (unless you need it for some obscure reason) and they’re a heck of a lot cheaper (and you can go for the lowest storage capacity ones because you’re not going to download every app on the planet; it’s for development testing, remember).

If you’re interested in iOS or Android game development, you have the following wifi options (not exhaustive – I’m a Samsung fan so I’m only listing the Samsung devices, but there are plenty of other ones):

Android

The Galaxy S 4.0 and 5.0 are essentially identical apart from the screen size (4” and 5”) respectively and the 5.0 has a larger battery.  Both have 800×480 resolution.

• Galaxy S 4.0
• Galaxy S 5.0
• Galaxy Tab 10.1 Wifi

iOS

• iPod Touch
• iPad Wifi

I’m going to look at the Galaxy S 5.0, since I prefer a slightly bigger testing device and the longer battery life is appealing.

The Galaxy S 5.0

Okay, down to business.  I’m not going to cover how you go about using the device for testing – all Samsung Android devices work pretty much the same (not always such a good thing).

Pros

• Fairly cheap for what you get.  $269 (R2000).
• A nice size 5” screen.
• A SD card slot.
• Full access to the Android marketplace.
• A fairly snappy 1 GHz ARM Hummingbird Cortex-A single core processor (mid-range now, but that’s good for testing).
• The usual GPS, accelerometer, gyroscope, camera etc (games often use these).
• Android 2.3 Gingerbread.
• It can double as an okay media player.

Cons

• It’s very bulky (as in heavy and very thick – 0.5”).
• The screen resolution is 480×800, which isn’t terribly clear when stretched over a 5” screen, but it’s perfectly usable.  If it’s an issue then maybe the 4” model is a better choice, if you’re willing to sacrifice the 2500mAh (8h) battery for a 1200mAh (5hr) battery (and it’s a bit cheaper).
• Not the latest dual (or quad) core processor technology.  It’s still perfectly good for most games, and Angry Birds works just fine, so what more do you want?
• The TFT multitouch screen isn’t quite as good as the Galaxy S phones, but it’s still very good.
• The battery can’t be removed.

Verdict

The Samsung Galaxy S 5.0 Wifi (also called the Galaxy Player 5), and the 4” variation are pretty good game development test devices.  As a media player I don’t think they’ll achieve huge market penetration, simply because the similarly priced iPod Touch is just so much better as a standalone media player.  This isn’t an issue if you want an Android test device though (and iPod Touch is of absolutely no use there).  The physical constraints aren’t a big deal and the mid-range performance and display is a plus because you need such a device for testing.  If your game runs happily on it then you can be fairly confident that you’ll get adequate performance on a wide range of newish devices (you can’t support everything, and you’ll still need additional testing on other devices).

Overall, I’m very happy with the Samsung Galaxy S 5.0 Wifi; it’s a very competent and affordable testing device.

written by Paul \\ tags: Android, Galaxy S, Game Development, Games, iOS, iPod, Mobile, Samsung

I generally don’t make New Year resolutions, mainly because I usually find something different and interesting to occupy my time.  This year, however, I’m determined to make a stab at developing 2D casual mobile games for Android (at least).  In my previous blog post I mention that I’d be doing just that, using the Corona SDK.  So, my resolutions are:

• Learn Lua.
• Learn Corona SDK.
• Become a whizz with Adobe Illustrator (and Fireworks).
• Create a simple knockoff game (something like Bubble).
• Create a more ambitious knockoff game (like Angry Birds or a platformer of some sort).
• Create an original game that can be sold on the Android marketplace.
• Maybe port the game to iOS or WP7?

Pretty ambitious!  Let’s see how far I get.

written by Paul \\ tags: Corona SDK

After fiddling around with various mobile game development tools I’ve finally decided to write a 2D mobile game this year (in my spare time, of course).  Unfortunately, there’s actually quite a large choice of tools now, so making a decision isn’t exactly easy and it’s not very practical to go into depth with all the tools.  I went with a few high level decision points to rule out the “undesirables” and see what is left.  Naturally, the decision points are my personal opinion, so don’t take them as the absolute truth.  The first consideration, however, is the mobile platform.  Obviously I’d love to support them all, but that isn’t practical, so here’s the list of platforms that I’d like to support, in order of decreasing importance:

• Android
• iOS
• WP7
• Amazon Kindle Fire
• B&N Nook
• RIM

The first three are the big ones for me and the rest just nice to haves really.  I can happily develop for Android and WP7 on Windows, but I need a Mac for iOS (although there are a few Windows based tools now).  The fact that I will probably need a Mac is a bit of a downer for iOS development, but I’ll just have to get one if I absolutely need it.

These are the mobile game development tools that I considered (some aren’t a tool as such, but rather a platform in their own right):

• Native code
• HTML5/JavaScript
• Monkey (Mojo)
• App Game Kit
• Corona SDK
• Adobe Flash (AIR)

There are plenty of other game development tools for mobile, but these seem to be the most popular.  Let’s have a look at each of these in a bit more detail.

Native Code

If pure performance and control is important then going native is always the most sensible option.  The problem with this is that there isn’t much of an abstraction and porting to other platforms is quite a bit of work due to platform differences.  The one exception here is WP7, since XNA and Visual Studio is a very powerful and easy platform to develop with and is the most practical option for WP7.

HTML/JavaScript

Ummm, no chance.  I know people have written some nifty PC browser games but it just doesn’t cut it for me, and I HATE JavaScript.  So, NO!

Monkey (Mojo)

This is actually a very interesting product from the creator of BlitzBasic.  It’s essentially a translator that generates a native application (source code) from an application written in the Monkey language and targets iOS, Android, WP7, HTML5, Flash and Windows.  It’s quite impressive, but unfortunately still a work in progress and updates are quite slow.  I like it a lot, but I don’t think it’s quite ready for prime time.  You can find more information here.

App Game Kit

What can I say?  This is the new offering from The Game Creators (of Dark Basic fame).  On paper it looks fantastic (supports iOS, Android, MeeGo, Bada, Windows and RIM, with the option of a game player or a native application).  The unfortunate truth, however, is that their products are usually as buggy as hell and you have to purchase all sorts of addons to get any useful functionality.  I’ll give this a miss too.  You can find more information here.

Corona SDK

I’ve been following Corona SDK closely and I must say this is a very nice tool.  It supports iOS and Android (including the Amazon Kindle Fire and B&N Nook).  WP7 isn’t supported, but this is due in part to the fact that WP7 doesn’t support native third party code and Corona SDK uses Lua (a nice little scripting language) which can’t be easily ported to WP7.  The feature list is extensive and new and useful things are added almost daily (registered users have access to the daily builds).

There are also a fair number of top selling iOS and Android apps that have been developed with Corona SDK, which is always a huge selling point to me.

The only issues I have with it are:

• Builds happen on their build servers (but this saves you having to keep up to date with the platform SDKs).
• Licensing is per year, and not cheap ($199 for Indie, which is iOS or Android, and $349 for the Pro version, which supports iOS, Android, Kindle Fire and Nook).
• There’s no IDE, but the free Jetbrains IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition with the Lua addon works just fine.

I think it’s clear that the Corona SDK is my choice.

Adobe Flash (AIR)

A few months ago I might have given Flash more of a chance but the recent events of scaling down Flash and Flash Builder (off shoring the development etc) makes me question Adobe’s commitment to Flash.  Also, Stage3D (which is required for hardware accelerated graphics)  isn’t yet available for AIR Mobile and it’s an unknown quantity both in terms of performance and availability.  It’s a pity, because there was a lot of potential here, especially using the Starling Framework.

The Verdict!

I’ve already given that one away.  My first go at it will be using Corona SDK and targeting Android (since I already own a Samsung Galaxy S phone and a Samsung Galaxy Note phone/tablet thing).  After that I may port the game to Windows Phone 7, since I have one of those as well (and C# is by far my favourite programming language)  Stay tuned for some Corona SDK articles and tutorials.

written by Paul \\ tags: Android, Corona SDK, Games, iOS, WP7

I was thinking the other day about writing a screenplay for a movie; something funny, a comedy or a farce; fictional, of course.  It’s taken a while to come up with something really ridiculous and completely unbelievable but I think I’ve nailed it.  Just bear in mind that it’s still a bit rough around the edges, but I think it still gives a good indication of my creative genius.

I’d like you to picture this exchange between the Apple evangelist (Steve Jobs –RIP), Joe Public (a couple of them) and the Samsung evangelist (let’s call him Samsung Bob, to protect his identity and my lack of knowledge of who the Samsung evangelist is).

Steve Jobs – RIP: Come buy my fantastic new iPhone!  It’s black, and rectangular, and it doesn’t do half what other mobile phones do but it’s so much better!  We’re totally going to put that lame fat Samsung out of business, in, like, two weeks! #LOL #FAIL #LAME #HASH

Joe Public : Umm, Steve…  The iPhone is nice and everything but don’t you think you’re exaggerating just a bit?  Samsung phones do a heck of a lot more than an iPhone, and besides, Samsung makes a whole lot of other products, like appliances, tv’s etc.  How exactly is an iPhone going to replace all of that?  I appreciate your enthusiasm but that kind of negative marketing just makes you sound silly.  Rather just stick to the facts and focus on your target audience.

Other Joe Publics:  Yup, we agree, you sound silly.

Out of the blue, the Samsung evangelist appears (wearing Old Spice aftershave).

Samsung Bob: I think it is stupid if Samsung fans are giving you a hard time. But please don’t somehow associate those statements with Samsung as that is not our view at all. There is room for different products and technologies when it comes to consumer electronics. I personally mention the iPhone quite a bit in my presentations as a valid option for determining  the time.

That all sounds pretty ridiculous, don’t you think?  I find the last bit the worst, but guess what?  That part isn’t fiction, it really happened.  Here’s how it all went down:

A while back I discovered a nifty little product called Corona SDK which is geared towards writing iOS and Android 2D games.  It’s really good and makes game development a breeze, but that’s pretty much all its really good for.  I wouldn’t try to use it to write a line of business application (mobile or not) simply because it’s not cut out for that (painful, and impossible if you’re not targeting iOS or Android).  For a business application I could use a myriad of other tools, Flash (Builder) included.

Anyhow, I downloaded it, played with it, and followed the company (Ansca) and the head honcho Carlos Icaza on Twitter.  It soon became very obvious that Carlos, an ex Adobe employee, had an axe to grind and never missed an opportunity at negative marketing, at the expense of Adobe.  Anything that could be remotely regarded as negative resulted in a tweet that usually ended in #FAIL.  In my opinion, this was childish and inappropriate (but he’s certainly not the only person to do that; Steve Jobs was a master at it).  Adobe MAX, where the new gaming features of Flash (Stage3D and Starling) were announced gave me the perfect opportunity to send a tongue in cheek tweet announcing the impending failure of Corona SDK at the hands of Flash.  I was somewhat surprised when Carlos got his panties in a knot and penned an entire blog post dedicated to defending himself and Corona SDK against my lone tweet (and still missing my point).  I think he was a little surprised when some of his fanboys agreed with me and also told him he was being silly and should just stick to the facts.  You can read the blog post and comments to get the idea.

Anyhow, that was nothing unusual, it was a typical blog post with a bit of fanboy ranting and flaming, nothing unusual, exciting, or extreme and only mildly interesting.  What really got me interested was when Lee Brimelow, the Adobe Gaming Evangelist, chimed in with his two cents.

“I think it is stupid if Flash developers are giving you a hard time. But please don’t somehow associate those statements with Adobe as that is not our view at all. There is room for multiple platforms and technologies when it comes to mobile gaming. I personally mention Corona quite a bit in my presentations as a valid option for mobile development. “

So, let me get this straight.  Adobe is putting a huge amount of effort into making Flash a better platform for gaming (the even demonstrated Angry Birds and Unreal in the Flash Player) and their gaming evangelist DEFENDS a competitor who is using unfair marketing comparisons against Adobe?  I have a better idea!  How about quitting brownnosing your competition and do your job – promote Flash!  Do you think companies like Apple and Microsoft (and others) got to where they are by kissing their competitors butts?  At least Carlos Icaza got one thing right – he knows how to compete and promote his product.

In the marketing stakes it’s Corona SDK 1 : Adobe -1.

I have only two things to say to Adobe and Lee Brimelow:

• Learn what “evangelist” means.
• Grow some damn BALLS!

Okay, I’ve said enough.

written by Paul \\ tags: Corona, Flash, Games, iPhone

Now that The Rapture has come and gone, I thought it would be a good idea to have a look at how well it went (not too well, I suspect, since I don’t know of a single person that got raptured).  I was lucky enough to bump into God at the Mugg & Bean and he agreed (when you’re in, you’re in) to give me a candid post mortem interview.

Continue reading »

written by Paul \\ tags: rapture

It’s come to my attention that, apparently, The Rapture (note the capitalization, to distinguish it from the regular priestly “fiddling”) will occur on Saturday 21st May 2011 (GMT?  Anyone?).  While I have no doubt that I’ll not be hoovered out of the bath or off the toilet (I hope there’s some kind of warning trumpet playing or angel singing or something), mainly because I use words like sh*t, f*ck and cr*p, I feel it’s my civic duty to ensure that all of you that are going to be sucked off (in a good way, for you, not for me) leave the earthly abode in a fit state for the rest of us while we fight over your earthly possessions.

To this end, I’ve compiled a checklist for you to adhere to, and failing to do so will clearly indicate that you are not worthy and your sorry ass will remain exactly where it is.  So, read up and ensure that you are Rapture Compliant™.

• Find a good home for your pets.  They don’t have souls, so they’re not going anywhere.
• Put your bad kids (the ones that got nothing from Santa) up for adoption.  Specifying your wish that they go to a kind Christian home will be kind of pointless.
• Clean out your fridge and switch it off.  This is a biggy – please don’t stink up the neighbourhood with your goddamned potato salad (and it is, so it’s not going with you either).
• Organize for someone to mow your lawn until squatters move into your house.
• Stack all your valuable possession (tv, stereo, cash etc) neatly on the sidewalk.
• If you’re a virgin, get laid, fast!  You know what will happen if the Muslims got it right and you got it wrong.
• Finish reading the Bible!  You know there will be an entrance exam.
• Take wet wipes and paper towels.  People will have been sucked out of baths, off toilets, out of sewers, out of graves, you name it; and cleanliness is next to Godliness, so the cleaner you and your loved ones are, the closer to the front of the queue you’ll be.
• Wear clean underwear (although I’m not too sure how clean it will be after getting whipped off the ground and slung through a cloud).
• A crash helmet might be a good idea too.  Nobody knows exactly how this is all going down (or up, whatever).  Will the roof get in the way?  You might get sucked through a plane, or from the ground floor of a skyscraper.  Think about that…  Maybe you should sleep in a field.
• Take some photos of yourself at various ages.  A cute baby photo may improve your chances, and you may not be recognized since your last performance assessment.
• Remove any dodgy sh*t (goddamn it, there I go again, blowing my chances of getting Raptured to hell again) from your Facebook page.  The Jeez can see EVERYTHING, no matter what your privacy settings!  Just saying…
• Hop on a plane.  The extra 30 000 feet will give you such a head start that even Usain Bolt won’t be able to catch up (although anyone that can run that fast probably made a deal with the devil and will be heading in the opposite direction, so no worries).
• Food!  Take some food!  I have it on good authority (the Biblical guide to fine dining) that manna, bread, fish (tough luck vegans) and wine are the staple diet up there (and the odd quail, but they’re few and far between and probably reserved for the saints).  That’s going to get boring (an eternity is a long time) so make the most of your last Big Mac (however many you can carry).
• On the day after The Rapture, go to church to find out when the next Rapture has been scheduled for.

Amen!

written by Paul \\ tags: rapture

Just another quickie.  I ran into a recent blog post by Davy Brion where he outlined his reasons for choosing HTML over Silverlight.  It made for some interesting reading (especially the comments), but I thought his criteria and ratings for the various “features” might be quite useful and was interested in comparing my experiences with MVC3/HTML and Silverlight.  I’m not going to comment on his results, they’re obviously skewed by his impressions, experiences and the particular product he’s producing; and my results are skewed in the same manner.  So, after plugging my values into his spreadsheet, I (not surprisingly) came up with a completely different result that strongly supports Silverlight for my chosen uses.

Anyhow, the overall result wasn’t terribly surprising, but I was surprised at how badly MVC3/HTML fared.  The reason is quite obvious – HTML5 and CSS3 are still evolving standards and browser support for all features is very sketchy (have a look here for browser support).  That said, though, I’m feeling very positive about HTML5 and CSS3, when the standard is finalized and all major browsers (on all major platforms) support it consistently.

Here’s my version of the chart – it looks a little different…

written by Paul \\ tags: CSS3, HTML5, MVC3, Silverlight

I really like the Orchard CMS theming support; nice and simple.  The only problem (which isn’t really an issue with Orchard, but rather with ASP.Net MVC 3) is that since you’re using a view engine to create your views, you don’t get a nice design preview when you fiddle with the style sheet and layout page.  There’s not much you can do about the layout page, but the style sheet is a plain old vanilla css file, so we can work around that.

Firstly, go ahead and create an Orchard site using Web Matrix.  By default, the only theme that is installed is “The Theme Machine”, which is a flexible layout theme with minimal styling.  This theme is a perfectly good starting point for designing your own themes.  The easiest way to create a new theme is to use the code generation module, which you need to install and enable from the Orchard Gallery  (it isn’t installed by default).

The next thing to do is to create a new theme, based on the default theme.  To do this, open the Orchard command-line utility and enter the following command:

codegen theme MyTheme /BasedOn:TheThemeMachine

Now, if you refresh your project in Web Matrix, you’ll see a new theme called “MyTheme” listed under the themes.  The last thing you need to do is copy “Site.css” from TheThemeMachine to MyTheme (it lives in the Styles sub-folder).  That’s your custom theme all set up.  Now, change your site to use your new theme.

You can find a good overview of Orchard theming here.

As I mentioned before, the problem with theming Orchard is there are no html files that can be used to preview any css changes that you make; and continually refreshing your site while running it is a bit of a nuisance.  What we need to do is generate an html page that we can use for previews.  This is easy enough.  Simply navigate to the site (not the admin site) and log out so that the admin adornments are removed.  Now, copy the source from the page (right click and copy source) and then create an html page in the root folder of your Orchard project and past the source in there.

That’s everything set up from the Orchard side.  Now, open Expression Web 4 and open your Orchard site (go to Site|Open Site and navigate to your Orchard site folder and open it).  Open up the html file you created and you’ll see that you have nice designer and css support.  You can easily style other parts of your site by navigating to other pages of interest, grabbing the source and creating a temporary html file, and then editing in Expression Web 4.

written by Paul \\ tags: CMS, Expression Web, Orchard

I think the fact that I even like something other than Silverlight (at the moment) says a lot, but it’s still .Net so I’m not going soft.  Anyhow, for those of you that don’t know, Orchard is a new CMS (Content Management System) from Microsoft that has really impressed me for a number of reasons (some of which aren’t directly related to Orchard).

My relationship with CMS’s is a bit of a love/hate thing.  I’m a pretty average web developer (not a ninja or any other type of bad martial arts comparison type person) and have no incentive to move out of my comfort zone when it comes to web development.  I’m happy with html , JavaScript, IIS and Sql Server, but there’s no way in hell I’m going to learn php, MySql or any other stuff like that just to create a blog or some other dodgy website (not porn – I didn’t say porn, so I don’t mean porn).  That shouldn’t have anything to do with using a CMS, since the whole point of a CMS is for you not to be worried about the nuts and bolts; you just add the content and off you go!  That just doesn’t work for me.  I’m a geek and I have to understand what goes on under the hood so that I can tweak things and change things.  That’s where most other CMS offering fall short with me.  I know Joomla, Drupal and WordPress are very good – I’ve used them, and I like them.  What I don’t like is not knowing how everything works, how to create my own themes and plugins etc.  The problem here is two-fold; I don’t know how the internals work and I don’t know or care about php and MySql.  Enter DotNetNuke!  Ummm, no thanks, I don’t like it either – it may be .Net, but the internals are still magic to me and I don’t want to learn that stuff.  I looked at it and it doesn’t seem terribly intuitive and I simple don’t want to put the effort in.  There are other CMS type solutions, but they don’t seem to have the same traction in the community as the ones I’ve mentioned, and I don’t find them terribly useful, for the same reasons.

So, where does Orchard fit into all of this?  On the surface Orchard doesn’t seem to offer a whole lot more than, say Joomla or WordPress (actually, as of version 1, it offers a fair bit less), but it has a number of key features that make it useful and interesting to me.

It’s new

The new kid on the block is always a step ahead, and I love playing around with new products and technologies.  Obviously, this has no bearing on the product, but new things get my attention and a bit of tyre kicking time.

It’s very well designed

This is a big deal to me.  Everything (from a project and code perspective) hangs together very nicely and logically.  This is the first CMS where I’ve actually understood how everything works just by looking at the project structure and code.

It uses ASP.Net MVC 3

I love ASP.Net MVC 3!  As far as I’m concerned, ASP.Net MVC 3 is a revolution in how .Net developers tackle web development.  It takes the best of ASP.NET (they core stuff that you can’t see) and replaces WinForms with a very intuitive MVC architecture that takes the headache out of web development.  The new Razor view engine was also love at first sight.

It doesn’t impose structure

The problem I have with most other CMS solutions is that they are quite rigid for the novice.  Joomla is a full CMS and WordPress is a blog engine, period.  Sure, there are all sorts of plugins and themes that can make either do pretty much anything, but for the novice this is all magic and not too easy to manage.  Orchard doesn’t take this approach, it’s simply a generic CMS and specific functionality (like a blog, wiki, whatever) can be added incrementally in an easy to understand manner.  I don’t get the feeling that I’m shoe horning it to do something specific.

Modules and Themes are easy

My main gripe with other CMS’s has always been that I can’t/won’t figure out how their theming and plugin systems work.  Orchard makes this very easy because modules and themes all work pretty much the same way, and that way is pretty much vanilla ASP.Net MVC 3.  If you’re familiar with ASP.Net MVC 3 you already know most of what you need to know.  All that’s left is to learn how Orchard hangs together (not very difficult, the documentation is good).

It’s all familiar

In spite of its differences, Orchard still feels a lot like Joomla and WordPress from an administrative perspective, which is a good thing.  I immediately felt at home with it and was productive in a very short space of time.

Conclusion

I love it!  That’s kind of obvious by now.  If you’re at all interested in a CMS or ASP.Net MVC 3 then have a look at Orchard, it’s time well spent.  Bear in mind that it’s still early days, the available modules and themes are limited (but more are being added daily) and there are a few rough edges here and there.  All in all though, Orchard is shaping up to be a very good CMS platform and is a very good case study for ASP.Net MVC 3.  I’m really looking forward to seeing where they take it.

written by Paul \\ tags: CMS, MVC3, Orchard