Kavi® KOrg 2.3 Release Notes

What is Kavi KOrg?

Kavi KOrg is Kavi's Zope-based application framework. Kavi KOrg includes many utilities that streamline the development of custom web site solutions and provide a robust foundation for Kavi's standard products.

New Features in Kavi KOrg 2.3

This release of Kavi KOrg introduced the Help Center and CSS Manager utilities. Many improvements to the developers' toolkit were also made to improve the accessibility, usability, and standards-compliance of Kavi products.

We're proud to include over 330 new features, usability enhancements, and bug fixes for this release of Kavi KOrg. Some of the most exciting changes are outlined below.

Kavi® Help Center

New with this release of Kavi KOrg, the Help Center aggregates all the help and support information for Kavi products into one central location on the web site.

Features of the Help Center include:

• Search
  All help files are automatically indexed for searching. Search across a single product's documentation or many at once to find out more on a topic.
• Support contact form built-in
  The support form sends email to web site administrators and is provided for anyone who can't find an answer to their question in the documentation. The inclusion of the support form helps ensure that there are no dead-ends for people seeking help.
• Help created in DocBook XML
  Kavi is proud to employ open-source, standard technologies in the support of web sites for standards organizations. Using the DocBook standard has greatly increased the professionalism and flexibility with which we are able to publish documentation, resulting in richer and more complete product help than ever before.

Kavi® WebApps

Kavi WebApps and Software Developers Kit provide Kavi support personnel the ability to quickly and safely create custom database-backed forms and tools. Kavi staff have used the tools provided by Kavi WebApps to develop surveys, polls, newsrooms, job boards and other database applications to meet the specific needs of our clients.

New in this release of Kavi WebApps:

• Integrated tools for subscribing respondents to mailing lists
  This release improves the tools available for creating custom interest or newsletter forms with the addition of built-in support for subscribing people who fill out an online form to a mailing list created in Kavi® Mailing List Manager.
• Improved searches
  Search forms available to administrators are now smarter, providing specialized fields for searching on complex information such as dates, checkboxes, and multi-select fields.
• Option to email form results to an administrator
  Send form responses automatically by email to one or more email addresses. Email notifications are optional , and can be formatted to best meet the needs of the organization.
• Administrators panel shows all WebApps deployed on a site
  Links to all the Kavi WebApps installations on a site are available to administrators on the Admin Home page, providing access to reports and tools for managing information collected by these custom solutions.

Web site framework updates

Kavi KOrg provides the building blocks out of which other Kavi products are constructed. Improvements to the core pieces supplied by KOrg can have a large impact on the overall performance of the web site. The 2.3 release of Kavi KOrg is a standards-compliant and accessible base, enhancing the overall quality of Kavi products.

• Accessibility improvements
  The forms incorporated into Kavi products now use more-accessible code to help people visiting the web site using assistive technologies, such as screen readers and text-based browsers. These accessibility improvements include changes to more clearly associate a field label with its entry box, better organization for large tables of data, and clearer labelling for links, images, and pop-up windows. These improvements were informed by the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 and Section 508 guidelines.
• Usability improvements
  
• Better lists
  Large lists of information can now be sorted by selected column headings. You can also change the number of items shown on the same page in which the list is shown.
  
• Increased Ôclickable' target area for many form fields
  You can now click anywhere on the text for a radio button or checkbox option to select that option in most browsers. This bigger target is easier to hit with a mouse or keypad.
• More responsive forms
  The current row in large tables of data is now highlighted when you roll over it. When filling out forms, the active field is highlighted as well. These improvements, which are based on web standards, are only supported by some browsers.
• Clearer links
  Links in product menus and interfaces are now more visible. Most links also have tooltips; additional information that is displayed about the link when you hold your pointer over it.
• Clearer error messages
  If someone does something unexpected, a bright yellow message will show up explaining what the form requires, helping them quickly edit their answers and continue. The increased visibility of these error messages alleviates confusion and helps people recover from mistakes faster.

Kavi® CSS Manager

Web sites designers are increasingly recognizing the need to separate the content of a web page from the code used to format it for display online. The design and maintenance of Cascading Style Sheets is becoming a critical part of delivering fast, effective, and beautiful web sites. The Kavi CSS Manager helps integrate and update all the style sheets used to make our client's web sites and our products meet high aesthetic and practical expectations.

Features of the CSS Manager include:

• Templates create a simple, centralized place to update a web site's color scheme
  The template mechanism allows a designer to specify a handful of common attributes, such as background colors, fonts, borders, and sizes, which are then used by all the product style sheets on the site. This greatly increases the speed with which a web site can be customized to match a specific look and reduces the threat of an inconsistent look between pages generated by different applications on the same site.
• New product-specific style sheets are automatically added
  When a new product is installed on a web site, any special style sheet information it requires is automatically installed. Safeguards ensure that required style information cannot be accidentally deleted and that new style sheet details are added as needed.
• Style sheets are optimized and combined dynamically into a single, cached style sheet
  The CSS Manager automatically optimizes and combines style sheets into the smallest, fewest files needed on any given page. This optimization increases the overall speed of the web site. Styles sheets used for the entire site are delivered in a single file on the first page a user visits. Product-specific style sheets are delivered only on that product's pages, making sure users only download style sheet information when they need it.
• Direct ties to the W3C CSS validation service
  Each style sheet can be sent directly to the W3C validation tools from the CSS Manager, helping ensure that the designer is creating standards-compliant style sheets. Valid style sheets tend to work better across a wider variety of browsers.