Good news! We're pushing hard for the next release. Our release schedule (tentatively) is as follows:
Release Schedule
- 0.8 alpha - Friday, April 23rd. This will only be available to people who have signed up as beta testers.
- 0.8 rc1 - Friday, April 30th. This will be available via our download page, beta testers will also be notified.
- 0.8 final - Friday - May 7th. This will be available via our download page. Everyone who has subscribed to the mailing list will be notified.
Front-end (User) enhancements:
- New UI - Completely redesigned front-end user interface.
- HTML 5 video support - This will make MediaCore compatible with the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. We are supporting the H264 and Ogg Theora codecs. An administrator can upload encoded H264 or Ogg videos, and MediaCore will automatically select the best encoding for the device the user is browsing with.
- Better Accessibility - The whole front-end will be highly accessible to users with visual disabilities. This includes support for adding closed captioning and audio descriptions to videos.
- Categories - We are now allowing categories to be nested.
- Search - Allows a user to search for videos and podcasts.
- Share - Allows a user to share a video with their friends via email, Twitter, or Facebook.
- Embed - Allows a user to embed any clip from MediaCore on their own site.
- Multiple flash players - Users can now view videos in either the FlowPlayer or JWPlayer. This is set by the administrator
- Improved Comments - Integration with Akismet for anti-spam, and Gravatar for user profiles.
- Related videos - If you view a video, it will also pull up related videos.
- Featured videos - A special category that will allow an administrator to feature video content.
- Filter Video - Adds the ability for a user who is browsing videos to filter video by popularity, date, and whether it was featured.
- Over 100 of minor bug fixes and UI enhancements.
Administrative Control Panel Enhancements
- Tiered categorization - Allows the administrator to tier categories. You can have subcategories and sub-subcategories.
- Improved add file mechanism - Allows for easier adding and removing of video/audio from the administrative back-end. This also adds support for HTML5 video.
- Add Closed Captioning / Audio Descriptions - Allows for an administrator to associate an XML closed captioning file, or an mp3/m4a audio description to any video.
- File deletion - When an administrator deletes a file from the back-end, it will now automatically remove the file from the server.
- Multiple flash players - Ability to choose which flash player you want to use (JWPlayer or FlowPlayer).
- Revised settings interface - We've cleaned up the settings interface, and given the administrator more power in customizing MediaCore to their specific needs.
Programming Enhancements
- Moving to Pylons - We have moved from TurboGears to using Pylons as our web framework of choice.
- Easier Installation - As a result of moving to Pylons, people who have tried installing MediaCore and have run into dependency issues should no longer have these problems.
- Model cleanup - We've really cleaned up the models and made everything a little more simple and straightforward.
Front-End Internationalization
- Although we are not ready for internationalization quite yet, this release does bring MediaCore closer to this goal. We've removed a lot of the buttons so that it will be easier to translate MediaCore into other languages. Once we launch version 0.8 final we will start looking for people to help us with internationalization. Hopefully the next release (version 0.9) will have a French and German translation.
- If you are interested in helping us with this please contact us at info@simplestation.com.
