This page is for discussion of the uPortal 2.6 project and release.
Expected release date: the current expected release date for uPortal 2.6 is October 2005.
There was a presentation about uPortal 2.6 at the March 2005 Developers' meeting in LA.
Release goals
What are we looking for from a uPortal 2.6 release? What could we achieve in uPortal 2.6 that would make deployers very interested in redeploying on a uPortal 2.6?
The following outlines some goals we might adopt for this release. What will actually be accomplished will be driven by interest in doing this work.
Stability, Stability, Stability
One important continuing issue in the uPortal 2.x codebase is stability in terms of bugfixes and memory leaks. Rutgers has applied significant resources to tracking down memory leaks and related bugs.
Skinning
Jason Shao of Rutgers has posted thoughts and a proposed process for imporving the skinnability and potentially the default look and feel of uPortal, to better use technologies like divs and css. This effort will likely have deliverables in the 2.6 timeframe.
Layout Management
Among the most cxciting contributions to 2.5 is SunGard SCT's DLM alternative layout management from their Luminis product, which is based upon uPortal.
Looking towards the 2.6 timeframe, we may see synergies between the alternative layout managers. Another place for improvement here is in enabling programmatic creation of layout fragments. Sources for layout information may extend beyond databases and XML files to enable such things as a runtime interrogation of a CMS for generating layout portions presenting appropriate managed content.
Nested tabs
As more content becomes available, we may need more screen real estate upon which to present it. Nested tabs and even more tree-like skins for uPortal may be the way to achieve this. Nested tabs have already been implemented by schools such as Virginia Tech. Even more schools may be able to take advantage of this approach if uPortal includes transforms/skins out of the box demonstrating more advanced presentations than the current tab-column approach.