Dolphin 7 (Hookie) Public Preview. Build 12.

The very first public preview of Dolphin 7 is available now. As many of you know, we were initially planning to release an interim 6.5 version and a few months later - v7, but while working on it we realized that this renovation should not be "half-baked". We went on to develop the biggest version upgrade BoonEx has ever had.

Dolphin 7 is the last major update based on the current engine. We plan to officially support and develop it for about 3 years after the Dolphin 7 release and will be issuing smaller updates (7.1, 7.2, etc) every 6-9 months (not sixty nine, but six to nine months). Dolphin 8, based on Poseidon (BoonEx proprietary software engine and development framework) should replace Dolphin 7 once functionality is matched and the proper upgrade path is developed. Dolphin 7.x and 8.x will live together for a while, so plan accordingly.

Hookie is based on Dolphin 6.1 (Spunky), but has been re-worked to an extent that they are almost absolutely different. We had to freeze development of all BoonEx projects for a few months (including Poseidon, Expertzzz and Unity) just to focus on Dolphin 7. It is still far from ready, but the day has come to show you what we have already done and what it is going to be like. Please, engage your imagination and patience while "previewing" the demo - many of the bells'n'whistles are not added yet and we have a list of known issues. We do, however, believe that at this stage you can see and appreciate the amount of work done towards improvement of every single aspect of the script.

Dolphin 7 will re-shape the BoonEx organization, policies and licensing terms dramatically. We expect a wave of upgrades and realize that we need serious internal restructuring and a policies update to keep up with demand.

Dolphin 7 is being designed to WOW your site's visitors and members, monetize your traffic and get your business into the world of mobile communities.

General Overview

Historically, Dolphin has been developed based on webmasters' requests. This time we've taken a different approach and re-designed it for end-users, placing usability and UI consistency first. We researched functionality of Facebook, MySpace, PoF and many other social networks and dating sites; we designed a logically-structured navigation tree; tested numerous use-cases; talked to people and tried different approaches. Now Dolphin 7 boasts significantly improved navigation, layout and UI logic.

On the back-end, Hookie has received proper attention as well. We moved all major modules to separate folders and re-wrote the code to separate them. We added caching to most of the "power hungry" pages; introduced standardized forms; integrated jQuery and optimized DB queries.

Hookie is an all-in-one package. It includes Ray Widgets and Orca Forum as native components now. So, the whole thing is now called Dolphin and will require just a single license. Flash apps have all been dramatically improved and new ones were added. Dolphin 7 will at last come as a single-install - no more Free/Ad-Free variants - just run it for free or add license to have all BoonEx links automatically removed (no re-installation of flash-apps required). Flash apps won't have banners or ad-links anymore, just "powered by BoonEx" links.

Take a look at...

... new design and layout. It is now unified across all pages and cleaned thoroughly almost everywhere (yet the work is still in progress).

... new "adaptive" navigation structure, design and logic

... new members browsing, pagination, search, QuickBox, simple + extended views

... Google Maps integration (far from final though)

... new "Leaders" box

... new Join and Login forms

... new language-sensitive Promo

... searches: keyword search, people search, quick search (and more planned)

... new Account

... new Friends

... new Mail

... new Activity

... new Profile

... new Boards (with Rooms, visible attendants, and soon - saved boards)

... new Video Player with "related videos" stream

... new Music Player with EQ

... Media Albums

... Categories

... new Polls

... completely new, dynamic Comments, integrated for all modules, with multi-level nesting and dynamic post-editing

... Video Comments, integrated with text comments

... multi-functional Wall with text, video, photo and music posting, link sharing and nested comments

... integrated forum

... Calendars, World Maps, Hot or Not and numerous other browsing options

... new Events

... random quotes

... AJAX site-alerts

... new Videos, Music, Photos pages with a huge pack of improvements, new players and browsing options

... multiple files upload for media sharing modules

... new "Sites" module, replacing old "Links" page

... new Ads (classifieds)

... new eCards

... Desktop App, based on Adobe-Air

... ok, at this stage I'm tired remembering every new feature and you're probably done reading them. Just go and play, but please read this post to the end first.

Don't look at (so far)...

... floating member menu. Still at the early stage of development, this menu will feature AJAX-based Quick-IM, Presence, Friends Tracker, Alerts Tracker, Fast Mail, and more. It can be put on top and can be "frozen" there, by the way.

... OpenID support is still under development

... Google OpenSocial is already in, but not quite in full, so give it some time

... Facebook Apps support is still at the early development stage, so you can't see it

... Profile customization is going to be in as well, better than ever but not yet

... Couple Profiles are working now, but still need some thought and time

... Settings, including Privacy Settings are yet another major feature, which you can't see now but is under active development. It's a very sophisticated and exciting new system, which will allow grouping and selective control over information access/permissions for profile owners.

... speed and security. Although we made quite a few improvements, we still plan to use the professional services of MySQL consultants and security verification consultants to improve the script when all features are in.

... admin panel. It has been re-worked, but is not ready for preview yet.

... iPhone App - it's working, but you can't install it to your iPhone yet, anyway.

... Android App - not working yet and is in fact 40-50% ready

... mobile version, yes, yes we do work on mobile versions of dolphin as well. It's an optimized version of the site that works with mobile browsers.

... pages/blocks that say "under development"

... Module "Files" based on "media sharing" with any file, presented via Flash Presenter

... "micro-blogging" and Statuses (nearly done)

... More "location-awareness" functionality (getting close)

... Mobile payment, sms payment, micropayment

... Games (open platform, "widgets")

... Site-map generation, SEO improvements, targeted "canonicals" and "no-indexes" and improved URLs

... HTML notifications/letters and notification settings (a cool new system's coming up)

... matchmaking system

... community moderation tools

... affiliate, banner and advertising systems

... many other things, that will definitely be added, but I'm getting too sleepy to even try to list all of them.

So...

As you can see there is a huge list of things we've challenged ourselves to do, but trust me, the most difficult part is over - bits and pieces will be going together a lot faster now.

Dolphin 7 is 100% open-source. I mean 100%, including Flash Apps, Adobe Air App, iPhone App and Android App. We plan to start providing access to code as soon as the first Official Beta is ready.

Remember, this is a PREVIEW version only. We know about lots and lots of things that should be done, so chances are that we know what you were going to say, but don't let it stop you. Share your impressions, observations, ideas and suggestions. We're happy to hear from you, but please let's stick to the proper discussion channels:

- if you want to share you impressions/opinions - comment in this post.

- if you want to engage others (BoonEx-ers included) into a discussion, use this forum.

- if you want to give a detailed review or publish your ponderings/observations about Dolphin 7, but out of this post context - post in Blogs.

Now I just hold my breath in hopes of a warm welcome for Hookie.

drums...

THE URL:  http://www.demozzz.com/dolphin7a