Playing Hookie: Dolphin 7 Alpha Notes and Observations

I played hookie the other day for a couple of hours and had a closer look at the Dolphin 7 classes and functions. Here's what I found:

BoonEx has released it's Alpha version of Dolphin 7 and it was just as they had said it would be. There were more classes and as it appears a better way to make modules and extensions for Dolphin. Here's the download for Dolphin 7 alpha as of June 12, 2009.

These are two key items that from a programmer's point of view that will help make Dolphin more popular and extensible. Namely, the ability to standardize the install of modules and also keeping all the classes in smaller and tighter bundles. Organizationally, it looks much better. Below are some other observations:

Dolphin has a several different types of users. Some are hobbyist, designers, developers, programmers, small business and media companies. Yes, the market range is that vast and the expertise definitely varies from group to group.

For the hobbyist, alpha is not the way to go as it is too raw to be of any use. I say stick to 6.1.4/6 version of Dolphin. If you can't find a downloadable version, check out dialme.com. The site keeps track of the versions of Dolphin. I think he has a few downloads going back to 5.x.

For designers, developers and monkey-coders this alpha version of Dolphin 7 is a tease. It gives you just enough to get it working but not much more as it really is an intro to the admin side of things. The front end is incomplete and raw. But fear not, there is a public SVN that has been made availble. However, the SVN as of June 20, 2009 is not accessible. So what does this mean? It means you will need to download the .zip file at the bottom of the page. Here's the location of the Dolphin 7 SVN. To be of any real use, it needs to be set up on an SVN server or the current install needs to allow developers to connect via an SVN client. If anyone is interested in a basic SVN tutorial, I will post it if I can get enough interest.

For programmers, well it's a big munch. You will notice that compared to the class listing for Dolphin 616, Dolphin 7's class listing is much more extensive. You can see the class and functions listing for Dolphin 6.1.6 here and the class and functions listing for Dolphin 7 alpha here. I used phpdocumenter to list the various classes and functions straight from the file. I will be notating it as I find more info. It's the same as in D6 except there's much more to work with. What's great about classes that programmers can extend the class to customize it to their needs. However at this time, there is no documentation for any of the classes and functions and that's why I've started to create self-documenting classes for my own work and will also document helpful tips and notes to share.

Above: Dolphin 7 Alpha - List of classes and functions. There are a lot of classes and some new functions.
Dolphin 6.1.6 list of functions and classes is available here.

For media companies, don't even touch this unless you have the money for research, development and you have your own team of coders. This is as raw as they come and it would not be a good idea to use any type of alpha to do anything. Good for testing tho and for poking around. Stick to D6 and it's various flavours. I've had a lot of success with Dolphin 6.1.4.

Dolphin 7 packs more functions than previous versions and that's good news for the hobbyist, designer or developer who just can't do without the social net toys. For modders and programmers, Dolphin 7 opens up a way to standardize how they can deliver their mods or apps whether free or pay. With the new modules standard, I trust it Dolphin will follow the path of Joomla and WordPress with regards to how others can add to the current set of functions.

I think the Dolphin 7 alpha is acceptable to look at as a preview (as per BoonEx's notes) in the admin section and also how the code was structured. It's also a way for programmers to take the module/extension paradigm for a quick spin. There is an example file within the modules folder one can take a look at. I've had a chance to roll my own and it was pretty easy. I just took the example file and poked around until I got a simple mod to work. You know, the standard "Hello World" test. It may seem uneventful, but the tiny step will mean great things for both free and fee-based mods.

...sip...