Top 10 Affino Developments in 2011

These are the Affino developments I rate as the most significant for 2011. Let me know what you think in the comments below.

1) 5 Times Faster Pages

Quite simply nothing beats Speed. Seeing Affino sites zip into the browser is a great feeling. Everyone is so much more productive now as a result.

2) Rock-solid Stability

It took a while, and a lot of effort, but we really nailed the stability gremlins in Affino 6.0.11, and 6.0.12 just improved on it. It helps that along the way we spent months analysing every part of how an Affino page is generated and improved on it.

3) Control Centre

Upgrade

The new look Control Centre is so much better than before with all the hundreds of enhancements. The fact that most people won’t notice most of them is in truth much of the point since so many things now simply work and are responsive and intuitive in great new ways.

4) Store Management

Upgrade

Managing Stores became a great deal easier and much more effective in Affino during 2011. We made hundreds of improvements throughout the store management to address practical day-to-day task management more effective.

5) Adaptive Design

New

The ability to have dedicated skins for tablets and mobile devices is a great boost for Affino on portable devices. Although just in Beta, it’s already useful to experiment with mobile skins and they’re going to improve dramatically in 2011.

6) Consistency

Affino now has a definite Style and we modernised just about every element in the Control Centre to work in the same great new way. We used to have four different looks for entry forms in Affino, now we just have one, and hundreds of similar improvements.

7) Forums

Upgrade

Affino Forums have been completely transformed over the year with over 100 updates. We liked them before, now we love them.

8) Smart Media

New

The ability simply to drop in a URL to YouTube and Vimeo videos, SoundCloud tunes and SlideShare presentations has transformed the way users can create rich engaging sites in Affino.

9) Realtime

New

For the first time we have a load of smart realtime elements in Affino, from seeing who’s online through to online chat, status updates, badges and baskets. We’re just getting started on this but already it’s transforming the way users are interacting through Affino.

10) Detailed Skins

New

It’s early days for Detailed Skins, but this is without going to be one of the most used features we’ve introduced in Affino this year. It just makes sense that the detailed article and product pages can look completely different from the listing ones.