So just what is great about Chrome? And will ordinary users really feel the difference?  If you are still using Internet Explorer on Windows, the answer is a resounding “yes”.  But there is something for everyone here…

It began with a comic strip which was largely targetted at developers.  Why build another web browser? What would make Chrome different?  Back in 2008 Google Chrome promised plenty of technical advantages over other browsers, all of which have been delivered on.

And more.

Chrome has all of the things that a web browser needs in order to be a contender: it can render web pages, handle plugins such as Flash, supports bookmark management, and has a super fast JavaScript engine.

But now Chrome supports browser extensions,  à la Firefox, and it natively supports Grease Monkey scripts.  Grease Monkey scripts are effectively a range of ready-made browser extensions which work in Firefox and in Google Chrome.

Personally I like to keep extensions to a minimum, so I only use a small number of them; at the moment I use the following extensions and grease monkey scripts:

Greased Lightbox Install this script, and any website that links to images such as Google Image search, gets an improved browsing experience. Clicking on an image will open the image in a kind of popup, often referred to as a “Lightbox”, without leaving the page you are viewing.

AdBlock As the name implies, this blocks adverts.  Which makes pages load faster.

FlashBlock blocks Flash.  You can enable a Flash movie on a page by pressing the “play” button; you can enable flash on certain websites that you visit regularly.  This is an essential plugin if you want a smooth web experience: improper use of Flash sucks, it s-l-o-o-w-s down the web, makes the fan on your computer run like crazy.  Flash has its place, which is why you want to be able to enable it – but for adverts, for little animations on the page – its just a CPU hog.

RSS Extension by Google this is essential – it really ought to be built in to Chrome.  It simply adds an RSS icon to your address bar if there are news feeds you can subscribe to on a web page… just as happens by default in Firefox and in Safari.  It lets you subscribe in Google Reader or in various other web based readers; it should really be able to use a desktop reader too.

For web developers, there are numerous web developer extensions.  Plus Chrome comes with the Web Kit developer toolkit, which is similar to Firebug; but it just is not quite as good.  So I use Chrome for my general browsing, while Firefox+Firebug cannot be beaten for web development.

Firefox has been my preferred browser for years – but Chrome has finally trumped it. Chrome just feels lighter, it loads MUCH more quickly, and uses far less CPU and RAM (in other words – it runs faster).

Plus a security bonus – Chrome has yet to be hacked, unlike the other popular browsers.

Lastly if you want to see what Chrome can really do – try Chrome Experiments.  This site showcases web pages and applications that take advantage of modern web browsers, like Chrome.  These do also run in Safari and in Firefox, but Chrome really makes them come alive.  My personal favourite is Another World – a JavaScript remake of an old Atari/Amiga game.

I’m a fickle browser user.  I’ll probably go back to Firefox or Safari sometime in the future; I’ve dabbled with Opera but never gotten along with it; and IE – the less said, the better.  But right now, Chrome is in the ascendancy.

This means you can create a template in Umbraco, and then insert the following line(s) of code to get an instant forum:

<form runat="server">
    <yaf:Forum runat="server" ID="forum" />
</form>

This was also possible because we do not need to share Membership information between Umbraco and YAF.  It may well be possible to share membership, and it’s something I’d like to look into if I ever get the time!

YAF Install Steps

1. Install Umbraco as usual, for instance into C:\Inetpub\wwwroot

2. If required, create a new database for YAF.  Alternatively, YAF can share the same database as Umbraco.

3. Create a directory for YAF, e.g. wwwroot/yaf

4. Unzip YAF files into wwwroot/yaf

5. Temporarily rename umbraco web.config to _web.config

6. Rename wwwroot/yaf/default.config to wwwroot/yaf/web.config

7. Enter a DB connection string into yafnet.config, into the <connstr/> tag. If sharing the database with the Umbraco install, copy the DB connection string from the “umbracoDbDSN” element in web.config into yafnet.config.  Note the “datalayer” keyword is not supported.

For example, if the Umbraco web.config contains the entry:

<add key="umbracoDbDSN" value="datalayer=SqlServer;Server=.\sql2005;Database=umbraco;
    User ID=umbraco_user;Password=password;Trusted_Connection=False" />

Then copy the connection string but do not include the datalayer section, e.g. yaf.config should contain:

<connstr>Server=.\sql2005;Database=umbraco;User ID=umbraco_user;Password=password;
    Trusted_Connection=False</connstr>

7. Still editing yaf.config, add a <root>/yaf</root> element.

8. In IIS create a new virtual application on the wwwroot/yaf directory:

• Right-click on the /yaf directory in IIS
• Choose “Properties” from the context menu
• Click the “Create” button on the Properties dialog
• Click OK

NOTE: at this point on the Umbraco website will stop functioning.  It will begin working again once the YAF application is removed (later in this guide).

9. Open a web browser, and navigate to http://www.mywebsite.com/yaf/install.  Follow the YAF installation wizard instructions.

10. Navigate to http://www.mywebsite.com/yaf and check that the forum is working.

Get Umbraco Working again

11. Right click on YAF, choose properties, click the “Remove” button to disable the YAF application.

Note: The Umbraco web application will now begin working again.

12. Move the yaf.config file to the root website directory e.g. wwwroot/

13. Rename wwwroot/_web.config back to web.config

14. Rename wwwroot/yaf/web.config back to wwwroot/yaf/default.config

15. Update web.config with config settings from the /yaf/default.config

 <section name="yafnet" type="yaf.SectionHandler,yaf"/>

 <yafnet configSource="yafnet.config"/>

 <authentication mode="Forms">
    <forms name=".YAFNET_Authentication" timeout="525600" />
</authentication>

 <customErrors defaultRedirect="error.aspx" mode="RemoteOnly"/>

Note that you will need to comment out the following line in the web.config file:

<forms name="yourAuthCookie" loginUrl="login.aspx" protection="All" path="/" />

16. Copy or move wwwroot/yaf/yaf.dll to wwwroot/bin/yaf.dll

17. Copy or move wwwroot/yaf/framehelper.aspx to wwwroot/framehelper.aspx

Add the forum to your website.

Create a document type and a template.  The template will look something like this:

<%@ Register TagPrefix="yaf" Namespace="yaf" Assembly="yaf" %>
<%@ Register TagPrefix="yc" Namespace="yaf.controls" Assembly="yaf" %>
<asp:Content id="Forumcontent" ContentPlaceHolderID="ContentPlaceHolderDefault" runat="server">
    <form runat="server">

        <yaf:Forum runat="server" ID="forum" />
    </form>
</asp:Content>

A Problem

Unfortunately there is a problem.  The YAF User Control will not work properly – it will attempt to reference default.aspx which is ‘owned’ by Umbraco.  This can be fixed using UrlRewriting.

A solution

To get around this:

1) Obtain the nodeId of the forum.  One way to do this is to log into the Umbraco Backend, place your mouse pointer over the forum node, and look at the browser status bar.  This will contain the node id.
For the purpose of this tutorial, we will assume the Node Id is 9999.

1) Update urlRewriting.config with the following (Note the Node Id in bold should be replaced with your node id):

        <!-- Redirect any requests for the-forum.aspx to forum.aspx -->
        <add name="forum-redirect"
                    virtualUrl="^~/the-forum.aspx"
                    rewriteUrlParameter="ExcludeFromClientQueryString"
                    destinationUrl="~/forum.aspx"
                    ignoreCase="true"
                    redirect="Application"
                    redirectMode="Permanent" />

        <!-- Internally rewrite the url -->
        <add name="forum-rewrite"
                    virtualUrl="^~/forum.aspx"
                    rewriteUrlParameter="ExcludeFromClientQueryString"
                    destinationUrl="~/9999.aspx"
                    ignoreCase="true" />

2) Ensure that the page (node) in Umbraco which contains the forum is called “Forum” and resolves to the url, “/forum.aspx”.

Note: Alternatively you could add a property to the Document Type called “umbracoUrlName” and set the value of that property to “the-forum”.

3) Ensure that there is NOT a page in Umbraco which resolves to “forum.aspx” (perhaps add to the list of reserved names?)

4) Ideally, any links (in templates, xslt etc) to the forum should link to “/forum.aspx” – NOT “the-forum.aspx”.  This means when linking to the forum, avoid using umbraco.library:NiceUrl(…)

Note: This is a recommendation rather than a necessity.  The “forum-redirect” rule above will ensure that all links to the forum will work.

Thats it – we’re done.  The forum should now be visible at www.mywebsite.com/forum.aspx , embedded into an Umbraco page.

Reserved Paths

You will also need to add /framehelper.aspx to the list of reserved paths in web.config

<add key=”umbracoReservedPaths” value=”/umbraco,/install/,/bingo,/framehelper.aspx” />

Also, if you wish to place the forum in a directory other than the root of your website, you will need to add a url rewriting rule for framehelper.aspx.

E.g. if you place the forum in /subdir/forum.aspx, you will need the following rule in urlRewriting.config:

<add name=”forum-reply-rewrite”
virtualUrl=”^~/subdir/framehelper.aspx”
rewriteUrlParameter=”ExcludeFromClientQueryString”
destinationUrl=”~/framehelper.aspx”
ignoreCase=”true” />

References

In fairness I should mention that most of the implementation details on how to embed YAF are actually covered on the YAF website.  Also, once I had worked out how to integrate YAF into Umbraco, I stumbled across this post by Skiltz on .NET, Integrating YetAnotherForum.net into Umbraco.  This post is concerned with Umbraco v3 but the steps are much the same so it’s great to see that others have been able to get this to work.  In this case, YAF was recompiled to get around the default.aspx issue – I solved this problem using UrlRewriting.  If you’d rather not use the UrlRewriting, you could try using the yaf.dll file provided by Skiltz instead.

Also thanks to Lars (see comments, below) for his tip on the use of the NodeId in the URL Re-write.

http://umbraco.org/blog/

http://umbraco.org/blog/2007/12/2/dec-2-resources-and-where-to-find-help
http://umbraco.org/blog/2007/12/3/dec-3-umbraco-basics-document-types
http://umbraco.org/blog/2007/12/6/dec-6-document-types-part-ii
http://umbraco.org/blog/2007/12/7/dec-7-templates-part-i—the-introduction
http://umbraco.org/blog/2007/12/12/dec-8-adding-page-information-to-templates
http://umbraco.org/blog/2007/12/13/dec-9-using-master-templates

Right now all I want to do is render a Blog Description in a “Home Page” template but I cannot figure out how to do it.  Umbraco uses a lot of XSLT which I am not too hot with – something else I need to address.

The initial learning curve for developing in Umbraco seems to be much steeper than Joomla!

Well, following some of the tutorials on the Umbraco website seems to have helped: the information is there if you need it!

The CMS of choice is Umbraco – a .NET based open source system.  As I am a J2EE developer, I’m going to need to cross-train toot suite!

The Indego site has some custom modules written to display RSS feeds from external websites and to highlight latest news information.

Why not check it out?

The other problem I have found is, how do you get involved? I’ve looked for advice on the web (Google) and have yet to find a good description.

The best I have found so far is this: Getting Started With Open Source Development.

Well, recently I discovered Songbird, an iTunes challenger based on the Mozilla codebase, which is at version 0.2. I am resolved to take part in some way, even if it is simply to fix a few minor bugs.

So far I have downloaded Song Bird onto my Linux (MEPIS) laptop, but installation has proved problematic: I had some difficulty getting the gstreamer libraries to install correctly. Specifically, I couldn’t get Songbird / gstreamer to play files over http. I think I’ve cracked it now: It looks like I need the gnomevfssrc package.

Well it is a learning experience after all…

So, initial advice: make sure you install all the gstreamer libraries!

If you are having trouble installin Songbird, there are plenty of tutorials available; here is one which may be useful from arsgeek.com: How to install Songbird on your Ubuntu box and then enjoy the music

Now to play for a while, then I have to try to install it from the source code!