We’ve been making big changes to Affino this year. In some cases we’ve had to take a step back so we can go forwards. The move to HTML 5 from Flash is one of the more significant ones.

We’ve re-written many aspects of Affino which used to be Flash / Flex based so that they are now HTML based. This includes: all the Control Centre navigation, much of the Media Library, new HTML-based highlights elements, and the chat interfaces.

Dashboards

Some of you will have noticed that the Affino service has been going through a turbulent period this week. We have made some big steps already in resolving these issues, however we are having to make some tough decisions and one of those is how to modernise the Dashboards which are one of the few Flash based elements left in Affino.

Until now it has been possible in Affino to see that a user looked at a particular story 11 months ago at 10:21 AM. In reality nobody cares that Fred looked at a story 11 months, 3 days, 2 hours and 22 seconds ago. In an infinite data and unlimited performance world this is great, in practice all the data can be a real drag on Affino’s performance.

The Dashboards can be even more of a drag since we put no restrictions on how they could be used, meaning that a single dashboard screen could bring up an aggregate of every page view, every user session, every purchase ever and then step up through multiple variations until a result was presented.

What we have found out is that this just doesn’t scale. So we’re hitting the reset button.

We’re taking a couple of big steps back in the short term and will then take some big steps forward with the Dashboards in 2012. The biggest problem with the dashboards is that they were all written in Flash / Flex which everyone now knows has no future. We’re not investing any more in them and instead we’ll be creating an entirely new Dashboard platform in HTML 5 next year.

In the meantime we can’t have the existing Dashboards hampering Affino’s performance so we’re going to be pre-loading an updated version which has two major limitations compared to previous releases:

1) They will only step up to 30 days of data.

2) They no longer automatically step up until they find data to report on.

This

This is a significant stability release for users who are running Affino 6.0.4. It is recommended that you update to this version at the earliest opportunity. There are fixes across the board and a couple of great new features that didn’t quite make it into the last release.

Owing to the timing of this release (i.e. just before the Christmas Break), we have excluded a number of the latest project related developments from it to ensure the smoothest Affino experience over the festive season and into 2011. These will be released in a further Affino release early in the New Year.

  Upgrade Guidance

This is a minor release following on from the major Affino 6.0.4 release a couple of weeks ago. It is recommended that if you’re on 6.0.4 that you update at the earliest opportunity since there are key fixes across the board in this release.

If you are having issues with your catalogue items, in particular with catalogue item attributes and inventory variations then most likely your custom catalogue item templates will need updating which is outside the scope of this update. 

It is essential that you run through the complete update process starting with the Affino Updater, followed by the System Update, Re-Initialise Site, Design Element Update and Skin Update; all of which are available on the Settings > Update screen.

  Key Enhancements

Predictive Site Search v2

Affino Site Search sees major improvements in its predictive search capabilities so that it now shows a great preview panel with the search results categorised, with thumbnails and teasers where relevant. Catalogue Items will also show prices, allowing users to instantly have the key information at their fingertips.

Online Forms v2

Online Forms were one of the first elements to be developed in Affino and they have hardly been touched in ten years. This release sees a major upgrade with the release of the new Online Form Design Element which means that Online Forms can now be included in any page either in the form of a Button Activated form or a full Inline form.

Online Forms are now all instant so that they are now subm... More