Results

The past couple of weeks, we’ve been heads down in development for a project that has become more than just a deliverable for us. Day by day, as we work on Konductor, our passion for this project grows. It is evident in our word choice as we communicate about the application. A definite progression from “should” to “need” has occurred. When you hear a developer, who has been working on a component of the project for weeks, tackling feature requests and bugs, state that we “need” to do something, rather than we “should” – well it definitely is a sign of personal investment and passion in the task at hand. Believing in what you are working on, well, it changes everything.

This past week we’ve been able to see beyond just the AIR application – into the round trip content management experience for the targeted user. Not only have we been slaving away at the desktop application component, but we have gone beyond that to start working with the other features that comprise the Konductor platform.

One of our designers, Ian, has been busy working through the graphic designer scenario the platform presents – where designers can retain their familiar Dreamweaver workflow by using a DW plugin that allows them to create templates for Konductor. A big benchmark for success was to ensure the ability to complete that round trip circle – where we could create, deploy and manage a site. Ian’s  been busy creating a site from scratch – implementing CSS with some advanced functionality using this plugin and we’re constantly amazed at the results of using Webkit in AIR.

From there, we’ve been using the Konductor AIR application to manage the site once the templates have been created. Using the HTML Editor, we can create new pages from the templates and fully edit and modify regions declared as editable in the Dreamweaver templates. Images can be inserted, aligned and resized, text flow determined, and links of various sorts created. Common assets such as images, pdfs, and documents are easily uploaded by dragging and dropping from the desktop onto the application. We take the guesswork out of image optimization for the average user – if a file is detected to be somewhat large for the web, the application will ask the user if they want to optimize it and if they select yes, it’ll do it in the background before uploading the asset. Managing assets is easy with the asset manager – in a quick glance you can see everything that has been uploaded.

Form creation has been simplified with the Form builder component of the application. Layout of forms is dictated by the designer with CSS – yet the average user can construct a complex form including the common inputs expected in a form, quickly and efficiently and not have to worry about things like validation.

The process for creating site structure and organization has been streamlined by exposing many of these features through drag and drop functionality.  Want to create a group of pages to keep things organized? Just select the pages from the page manager view and drag them into a group. Need to create complex menu or navigation that has links to pages, external links, anchor links or links to assets? Start by dragging and dropping the asset, or page onto the menu and configure its properties.

Want to see what has us all excited? If you’re going to be at MAX in just a few weeks, the good folks over at Konductor Software will be there as exhibitors – go and check their booth out!