Upgrades with Enhancements Released for Many Plugins

Tuesday May 15, 2012 | News & Updates , Plugin Upgrades | Leave a Comment

- Enhancements in Advanced Photo Albums Plugin

- Enhancements in Advanced Activity Feeds / Wall Plugin

- Enhancements in Suggestions / Recommendations / People you may know & Inviter Plugin (Suggestions / Recommendations Plugin)

- Enhancements in People you may know / Friend Suggestions & Inviter Plugin

- Enhancements in Directory / Pages Plugin and its Extensions

- SocialEngineAddOns Plugins Upgraded to their Version 4.2.3

Enhancements in Advanced Photo Albums Plugin

We're glad to announce exciting enhancements in the "Advanced Photo Albums Plugin" which will take the photo viewing and browsing experience on your site to another level. These further make photo viewing on your community more attractive and engaging.

We have developed a New Photo Viewer (Theater Mode). The "Theater Mode" photo viewer is more advanced and elegant than the old "Lightbox Mode" photo viewer, and has the following advantages:

User Interface and Experience:

- "Theater Mode" photo viewer is bigger, more beautiful and crisper.

- Photos are shown larger and clearer. Supports high resolution images.

- Its design minimizes distraction while photo viewing.

- Comments easily accessible: Comments and commenting have been moved to a right Interaction Panel next to the photo. Users no longer need to scroll down to comment on the photo.

- Improved navigation and better overall utility: Its design makes the photo viewer more usable and interactive as links and other options for user actions are easily accessible. Actions like Share, Like, Comment, Report, etc can be quickly performed from photo viewer without page reload.

- No browser scrolling for photos. The viewer and the photos automatically fit into the browser viewport area.

New Features:

- Fullscreen Mode: By clicking on an icon on photos in the viewer, users can switch to Fullscreen Mode for photo viewing. In supporting browser, this also switches the browser view to fullscreen mode, and in other browsers, it hides the right Interaction Panel to show a bigger photo.

- "View All" option: Enables users to view all the photos belonging to the album of currently viewed photo in an attractive photo strip which smoothly slides out from the bottom of photo viewer.

- More visibility for the Title and Caption of photos: The Title and Caption of photos are displayed prominently in the right Interaction Panel. Additionally, in Fullscreen Mode, Photo Title and Caption appear in an attractive fading tooltip on photos. Another utility this brings to this plugin is that of "Photo Essays" feature.

- Intelligent display of Community Ads: Ads from "Advertisements / Community Ads Plugin" are intelligently displayed at the bottom of the right Interaction Panel. Space occupied by comments on a photo is auto-detected to decide whether an Ad should appear in the interaction panel.

- Increased Keyboard Interactivity: Along with using Left and Right cursor keys for jumping over images, Esc key for closing the viewer, users can now also quickly "Like" a photo by pressing the "L" key.

- Mouse-over Tooltips on names of tagged users show the name of user who has tagged, and also an option for authorized users to remove the tag.

Enhancements in Advanced Activity Feeds / Wall Plugin

We're happy to announce enhancements in "Advanced Activity Feeds / Wall Plugin":

- Sharing Photos in updates using Webcam: Till now, users were able to share photos in their updates only by uploading from their computer. Users can now share photos also by using their Webcam from the Status Update box.

- Quick Comment Box in Activity Feeds: A "Post a comment" box can be displayed for activity feeds that have comments. This will increase interactivity on your site via comments as users will now be able to quickly post a comment on activity feeds. Admin can enable / disable this.

- Bigger Photo Size and improved alignment of Album Photos in Activity Feeds: The bigger size of album photos in Activity Feeds make the feeds for album photo uploads / sharing look very attractive. This also induces users in clicking on the photos, thus increasing interactivity on your site.

- New, attractive "Scroll to Top" Button: The old "Scroll to Top" button has been replaced with a more attractive button. As a user scrolls down to see more Activity Feeds on a page, the "Scroll to Top" button appears with a fading-in effect from the bottom-right side of the screen, enabling user to easily move to the top. This makes it easier for users to navigate through Activity Feeds on your community and enhances user experience.

Enhancements in Suggestions / Recommendations / People you may know & Inviter Plugin

We're glad to announce exciting enhancements in "Suggestions / Recommendations / People you may know & Inviter" plugin, which is also known as: "Suggestions / Recommendations Plugin". These enhancements make this plugin more powerful and relevant, as it could further increase engagement, user-base and connections on your site:

- Support for ALL plugins: This plugin now supports Suggestions and Recommendations for content from ANY content plugin.
~ Thus, the various Recommendation widgets from this plugin can now recommend content from any such content plugin as configured by you.
~ Additionally, using the "Suggest to Friends" links, users will now be able to suggest to their friends, content from ANY content plugin as configured.
A new content plugin can be added from the "Manage Modules" section in the admin panel of "Suggestions / Recommendations Plugin" to be supported by this plugin.

- More Popular Services for Inviting Contacts: In addition to the previously available numerous services for importing and inviting contacts, users can now also invite their contacts to your site using well-known services like:
    ~ Facebook
    ~ Twitter
    ~ LinkedIn
This will increase the popularity and user-base of your site. Web account services for inviting contacts can be enabled / disabled from "Global Settings" of the plugin. To see the guidelines for configuring respective services, please visit the "Invite Services" section in the Admin Panel of latest version of SocialEngineAddOns Core Plugin installed on your site.

- Widgets:
~ A new generalized widget: "Recommendations (selected content)" can be placed at desired places from the Layout Editor. Content type to be shown in the widget can be selected from the widget's "Edit" popup.
~ Many widget settings have been moved to the Layout Editor. Thus, it is now easier to manage widgets.

Note: Website administrators who upgrade this plugin on their website to the latest version can add a content plugin for integration, or enable / disable certain modules, from the "Plugins" > "Suggestions" > "Manage Modules" section in the Admin Panel.

Enhancements in People you may know / Friend Suggestions & Inviter Plugin

We're glad to announce enhancements in the "People you may know / Friend Suggestions & Inviter" plugin which would increase user-base and connections on your site:

Enhancements in Directory / Pages Plugin and its Extensions

We're back with more enhancements in the "Directory / Pages Plugin" and its Extensions:

- Additional Searching and Filtering Options:
    ~ New filtering options for Directory Items / Pages like: "Featured Pages", "Pages I Like" have been added to the Search Form.
    ~ If you have the "Directory / Pages - Offers Extension", then you can also add a "Pages With Offers" field to the Search Form that would filter Directory Items / Pages based on their offers, like: the ones which have Offers, ones which have "Hot Offers", and ones which have "Featured Offers".
    ~ In the content specific Search Forms for content from Extensions, you can now also choose to see content from Pages that you Like, example: "Reviews of Pages I Like", "Videos of Pages I Like", "Events of Pages I Like", and so on. This is a very valuable feature to enable users to easily see content only from the Pages that they Like.

- New Photo Viewer (Theater Mode) for photos from "Directory / Pages - Photo Albums Extension": To see details of this new Photo Viewer, please see the "Enhancements in Advanced Photo Albums Plugin" section above. This Photo Viewer takes the photo viewing and photo browsing experience on your site to another level. These further make photo viewing on your community more attractive and engaging. This enhancement will also encourage Page Owners on your website to add more photos to their Directory Items / Pages on your website, thus increasing the interactivity quotient of your site.

- Custom Page Profile Fields can be filled in the Page creation step: Page owners can now fill the the custom fields created by you for Pages while creating their Page. They no more have to go to the Page Dashboard to fill these details after Page creation.

- Minor enhancements:
~ In the grid-like "Categories, Sub-categories and 3rd Level categories" widget, you can choose not to show sub-categories if your site emphasizes more on Categories.
~ While creating a new custom Page Profile Field, you can now duplicate this field from another existing Page Profile Field.

SocialEngineAddOns Plugins Upgraded to their Version 4.2.3

We have upgraded all our plugins to their versions: 4.2.3, after the above mentioned enhancements, other minor enhancements, bug-fixes and compatibility with the latest SocialEngineAddOns Core Plugin (v 4.2.3). Please read all the guidelines mentioned over here: http://www.socialengineaddons.com/content/socialengineaddons-plugins-upgraded-their-version-423, to upgrade the plugins on your website.

The latest versions of our plugins can be downloaded from the "Files" section of your SocialEngineAddOns Client Area and used for upgrading on your website. We hope that you and your communities enjoy these enhancements. We have more exciting developments coming up!

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