The Clarion Magazine Roadmap

The Clarion Magazine Roadmap

by Dave Harms

Published 2009-07-17 Printer-friendly version

Articles Wanted

Write for Clarion Magazine

Clarion Magazine is looking for writers! If you have written some code of interest to Clarion developers, or have experience or expertise in a Clarion-related area, consider writing an article. You don't need prior writing experience, just a willingness to learn and share your knowledge with others.

Learn More

These are interesting times for Clarion developers. Recently I published an article titled Clarion and .NET: The 50,000 Foot View. In that article I discussed some of the significant differences between Clarion Win32 development and .NET development. And as Bruce Johnson pointed out in a comment to that article, there really is a divide in the community over how (or even why) Clarion should "do" .NET.

A lot (possibly a majority) of Clarion devs simply aren't concerned about .NET and neither are their customers, who just want software that works.

At the other extreme are those Clarion devs who have a pressing need for .NET but lack a Clarion-like path through the .NET landscape.

A focus on Win32

Here at the mag we've had a lot of discussions about how to best deal with these diverging paths. And what it comes down to is this: Win32 is still the sweet spot for most Clarion developers. Until that changes, Clarion Magazine will remain primarily a publication about Win32 development. We'll continue to cover important Clarion# news, of course. And once there's a .NET AppGen and at least one Clarion# template chain you can expect an increase in .NET coverage. But the reality is that most Clarion developers are far more concerned about the migration from C6 to C7 (or just getting the job done in C6) than they are with moving to the .NET framework.

If you are one of those devs looking to .NET, take heart. We have something special in the works for you, which I'll get to in a moment.

Clarion Magazine v.3

To better support Clarion developers in their Win32 work we've been working on a major update to the ClarionMag site. This is actually the third major version of the mag. The very first version was, if you can believe it, a static site. It had a flat file of logins for authentication and authorization, but other than that there was no back end database; each web page was a discreet HTML page. ClarionMag quickly outgrew that crude architecture, and for most of the last decade we've delivered the magazine using a combination of SQL, Clarion, and custom server-side code. We're now taking that server-side code to a new level with Microsoft's ASP.NET MVC framework.

ClarionMag version 1 was just a collection of web pages; ClarionMag version 2 went beyond pure article content and added reader comments, search functionality, a topical index, RSS feeds, surveys and a blog.

Here are just some of the things we're adding to ClarionMag version 3:

Improved site navigation and search
File uploads - share your Clarion code
A third party product directory
User ratings (of third party products and other site elements)
Skill sets - let other Clarion developers know what you do well
Favorites list - keep track of your favorite articles/links/products and optionally share that list with others

Our vision for ClarionMag version 3 is as much about online community as it is about publishing. We want the mag to be a place not just where you read content, but where you can share information with other developers.

We've enjoyed and appreciated the support of the Clarion community for the last ten years; we trust that Clarion Magazine version 3 will be a valued resource for many years to come.

A new .NET magazine

Along with a new ClarionMag site we'll be rolling out a new online magazine for .NET business software developers. Although we think this new mag will be immensely useful for any Clarion developer doing .NET work, it really isn't about Clarion per se. It's about .NET, and its purpose is to help business software developers choose the optimum path for their needs path among the many different paths available.

Our new .NET mag will have many of the features of Clarion Magazine, but with a .NET focus. These features include:

Articles focused on business software development
News items
Site navigation that actually helps you plan and execute your .NET strategy
Rated links to the best .NET business programming resources
Favorites list - keep track of your favorite articles/links/products and optionally share that list with others
Skill sets - let other .NET developers know what you do well
Glossary of terms
And much more

We're very excited about the new .NET mag and the changes coming to ClarionMag. These two publications will offer terrific new opportunities to learn, to share your knowledge, and to make the most out of your business software development options.

David Harms is an independent software developer and the editor and publisher of Clarion Magazine. He is also co-author with Ross Santos of Developing Clarion for Windows Applications, published by SAMS (1995), and has written or co-written several Java books. David is a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA).

Printer-friendly version

Reader Comments

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 by Kevin Dohren

Hi David,

As you say exciting times - lots of questions on how this will work, for starters...

Will you need a separate subscription to access it?

Will existing Clarion.NET and Clarion# articles be moved over to it, and only be accessible there?

Kevin

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 by Dave Harms

Kevin,

Yes, the new site will be a subscription-based publication and will be a separate entity from Clarion Magazine. There will probably be a discount for those who want both, but I haven't worked out the details yet.

I will not be moving any existing Clarion# or Clarion.NET articles to the new site. And while the new site might occasionally carry some Clarion-specific content, that won't be its primary focus.

So will the new site be of interest to existing Clarion developers? If they're doing any .NET work, or have any interest in doing .NET work, I think the answer is an emphatic Yes!

One of the great features of Clarion development is that it provides a standard architecture for application development. This, I think, is the foundation of the Clarion community: we have a common language and a common basis for discussion.

By comparison, the .NET world presents a bewildering number of architectures and development paths and a vast universe of tools and add-on products. This fragmentation makes it harder to form a cohesive view of what your particular kind of .NET development should look like, and hard to find the help you need.

Template sets from SoftVelocity (or third party vendors) will help, but only to the degree that the choices made by the template designers align with your specific requirements. Template sets are unlikely to cover such issues as multi-language development, continuous integration, test driven development, domain-specific languages, or any of dozens of other significant concepts common in .NET development.

We believe we've found a way to bring order out of that chaos, to impose some structure on the massive amounts of .NET programming information out there, and to make it easier for developers to find their way through the .NET universe whether they're using Clarion or any other toolset. And that's the purpose of the new site.

Dave

Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 by Dave Harms

Posted on Saturday, July 25, 2009 by Lee White

Sounds like a excellent endeavor and if you include something akin to Clarion 101, such as dotNet 101, maybe I'll eventually grasp the concept and consider making an effort!<g>

Posted on Tuesday, August 04, 2009 by Dave Harms

Lee,

Thanks, and yes, I think this will definitely enable a "101" kind of overview of the available information.

Dave

To add a comment to this article you must log in.

Copyright © 1999-2009 by CoveComm Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in any form without the express written consent of CoveComm Inc., except as described in the subscription agreement, is prohibited.

Clarion Magazine ISSN 1718-9942