Aggiorno Online is finally ... Online!  Well, at least in Beta!

 Today we are releasing parts of the Aggiorno functionality through a new web interface.  All you need to enjoy several of the web optimizations that Aggiorno provides is Silverlight 2.0.

 With Aggiorno Online all you need to do is provide some HTML/ASP/ASP.NET/XHTML... input through one of our 3 input methods: URL, File Upload or a Copy/Paste Text entry; choose the right optimization and its options and just execute it. 

 We are providing 6 Optimizations that we feel are super useful for web developers:

 - Fix Structural Errors: This optimization helps you find all the syntax errors that are present in a web page (invalid tag structure, unclosed tags, shuffled tags... avoid the tag soup!)

 - Fix Syntax Errors: This optimization helps you find all the syntax errors that are present in a web page (missing doctype declaration, wrong label case, wrong use of quotes, add entities, declare default values, remove duplicate attributes)

 - Fix Deprecated Elements: Find and fix depreacated elements in your web source code (CENTER, FONT, many other deprecated tags and attributes)

 - Add IE8 Compatibility flag: Add the IE8 Compatibility Flag to your pages

 - Generate Google Sitemap: This option allows for the generation of the Google sitemap, one of the newest additions to our SEO optimization series.

 - Generate ASP.NET sitemap: This option allows for the generation of the ASP.NET sitemap, an important input for many ASP.NET controls.

 We are using Silverlight so we can provide a rich interface, specially for our "explain" feature.  Aggiorno shows you all the changes that are happening to your source file (unlike many other WEB optimization tools) and you can analyze them before proceeding.

Enough said!  Please try it out and let us know what you think: http://www.aggiorno.com/Application.aspx

Your feedback is more than welcome!

Today we launched Aggiorno 1.3beta.  Wow!  Things are moving fast!  I think it is good to summarize what has happened with Aggiorno since its release a few months ago and also to introduce its newest feature the Smart Search and Replace.

Let's review the main themes of the previous versions:

Aggiorno 1.0: Clean Up the Web.  The main focus of Aggiorno 1.0 was to provide enough functionality to easily convert your pages to XHTML compliance. Many developers do not care about web standards but they SHOULD care a lot more.  It is certainly important to Aggiorno.  We need pages that are at least structurally correct so that we can begin to fill our vision of providing lots of Transformation with encapsulated knowledge to maximize the productivity of webmasters.

Aggiorno 1.1: Internet Explorer 8 Compatibility.  The main focus of Aggiorno 1.1 was to help with the adoption of IE8.  Aggiorno support IE8 in several ways.  First, IE8 by default renders pages in standards compliant mode, so, if you use Aggiorno to clean up your pages your certainly making sure your pages will render correctly in IE8 (and most other modern browsers).  Second, if you are not ready to make your pages web standards compliant, then you can use Aggiorno to add the IE7 compatibility flag.  Your pages will immediately render correctly in IE8 even if you force the browser to emulate its previous version.  Aggiorno makes the adding of the flag a breeze.  Third,  Aggiorno also has a feature to simplify adoption of a new very interesting feature of Internet Explorer 8: web slices.  Aggiorno makes it very easy to introduce slices on your pages.

Aggiorno 1.2: Enabling Every Day Workflow.  The focus of Aggiorno 1.2 was to build the basis of Aggiorno as an everyday assistant for webmasters.  We focused on improving the interface making it more user friendly and we also improved the overall performance 4x.  Features like converting Text to Paragraphs or Text to List become really useful.  Once you use them you will never want to go back and format text in any other way!

Until this version, Aggiorno was exclusively available to Visual Studio users as an add-in.  Aggiorno 1.2 also introduced a standalone version so that non Visual Studio users can also take advantage of Aggiorno.  We provide a basic HTML editor so that you can open your web sites in an integrated environment and also benefit from Aggiorno.  Aggiorno Stanalone is based on Microsoft Visual Studio Shell technology.

Aggiorno 1.3:  Enabling Extensibility.  Up until this version all the Transformations came prepackaged.  Users could only manipulate them via a number of options (btw, check out the Aggiorno options for a breath of customization possibilities).  With this version we are incorporating a new feature that we call Smart Search and Replace which is basically a mechanism to write your own Transformations.  Read on to learn more about this awesome feature!

Aggiorno 1.4: Many more supported scenarios. What to expect from the next version?  Still to early to be specific but you will see many more Transformation to assist web masters in even more daily activities.

Smart Search and Replace

From the perspective of Aggiorno, Smart Search and Replace is a way to expose all the inner infrastructure to webmasters.  Aggiorno comes with a very powerful web source code parser and transformation engine that has a deep knowledge of every piece of information in a page and that is expressive enough for web developers to use directly.  

From the perspective of a web master, how would you describe Smart Search and Replace? It is very similar to Regular Expressions but with a deep knowledge of the markup syntax.  Smart Search and Replace lets you write sophisticated patterns to extract parts of your html knowing that you are searching on a markup not on plain text.  What does it mean?  It means that you can easily write things like the following that would be very difficult with normal reg exps:

• Find all heading 3 and change them to heading 4.
• Find all the content in a table and extract it into divs.
• Find all tags with a certain attribute and change that attribute.
• Find all text that is both Bold and Italic and convert it into a span with a class id.

With Smart Search and Replace you do not have to worry about trailing spaces, changes of line, text that is part of a string or a value.  You write the expression almost as writing HTML with variable content.  It is very easy and very powerful.  We have a good tutorial with samples and videos that you can follow.  I really encourage you to look at it.  It will save you many many hours of work!

In the coming days and weeks we will be publishing many more knowledge capsules in our blog and they will also contain Smart Search and Replace patterns so you can use them directly or tweak them based on your needs.

Let us know what you think and let us know if you use Smart Search and Replace to solve a specific problem.

Enjoy Aggiorno 1.3beta!

It’s been a great couple of weeks and there has been a lot of action going on. We started at Web 2.0 Expo in New York, two weeks ago, sharing the booth with the Internet Explorer 8 team and it was great! Lots of positive feedback for Aggiorno. A lot of people were interested in what we are doing and we got the chance to show some of you how much value can our transformations bring to your web sites.

As part of this visit to the Big Apple, we also had the opportunity to visit the .NET User Group at the Microsoft Offices in Manhattan, where we had the chance to introduce Aggiorno to a great group of people and we will be back in the spring for a full session on how Aggiorno can stream line you Web development tasks, along with a couple of great features we’d have prepared by then. Also in the last couple of weeks we got the chance to support Microsoft in several of their events related to its MSDN Tour Latin America. We had the chance to introduce the new Internet Explorer 8 as well as the integration features we have for making your site shine under Microsoft’s newest browser.

During these events we have been giving away licenses of Aggiorno plus a whole year of updates, news and more transformations, just as you would when getting the retailed Full Version of Aggiorno. We hope these guys are enjoying it as much as we do building it. Now the time has come for PDC, Microsoft’s most important conference this year, and we will be there! We will be sharing the booth again with the Internet Explorer team, where we will be showing you how easy it is to get your code to standard compliance as well as some really neat features for getting your own personalized transformations up and running, just as if you were creating templates. Come join us and be part of this great experience, we build Aggiorno to be a platform of knowledge encapsulation by means of providing business value to your Web development, giving you back time you didn’t have so you can put in place in making your dev dreams come true!

At Aggiorno we are always looking for additional ideas for new aggiornings.  Over the past months we've been collecting a lot of information from the web from snippets of code to snippets of knowledge.  It is clear to us that web developers want to be productive and for that they need all this knowledge available at their fingertips.  We looked for a place where web developers would go and find the right information at the precise moment but we could not find it.  So... as good geeks we decided to create one: Knowledge Capsules | Practical Knowledge for Web Developers

What is knowledge capsule?  It is basically a problem and its solution.  What is an aggiorning?  It is an executable knowledge capsule!

We just started a few days ago but we are committed to create many capsules and become the place for web developers to hang out.  If you are interested in collaborating just let us know and we'll give you the tools to do so.  We also want to hear from you.  What are the most interesting topics to you?  What capsules would you like to see? There are tons of knowledge around the web, let's make it easy to access it.

Things are moving fast at Aggiorno.  We didn't even make a big splash when we launched V1.0 and it is already 1.2!  But what is really screaming fast now is Aggiorno itself. 

In the past few weeks we have concentrated on three themes:

1) Improved Performance: In version 1.2, that you can try now, the performance of the product is a completely different thing -- for the better!  If you are now applying Aggiorno on small and medium size files the response time is almost immediate.  If you had been using Aggiorno's previous versions I am sure you will note the difference.  The performance effort is tied to our goal of making Aggiorno part of the everyday workflow for web developers.  Even if most of the version 1.x features are related to making pages web standards compliant, this is just the first step, we need to create a common base of source code upon which we can start performing more Aggiorno magic.  Very soon we will be launching additional features that web developers will find super useful in everyday tasks and not only when you are having your "standardization after thought"!

2) Internet Explorer 8 aggiornings: In version 1.2 we have also included 2 new aggiornings related to Internet Explorer 8.  The first one is about the effortless introduction of the IE8 compatibility flag in all the pages of your web site.  The best way to make your pages IE8 compatible is to make them web standards compliant.  However, we know that this requires some effort (a lot less if you use Aggiorno!) and while you are working on it you can simply introduce an IE8 compatibility flag in your source code and "snap" your pages become compatible.  The second aggiorning in the IE8 wave is about taking advantage of a new feature of Internet Explorer 8: web slices.  Web slices are segments of a page that can be treated separately from the rest of a page.  You need to tell the browser that a portion of your code is sliceable, here is where Aggiorno helps you.  You only need to select the portion of code that needs to become a slice, give it a name and Aggiorno does the rest.  It generates all the required markup depending on the section of the code that you have picked.

3) Ability to invoke Aggiorno in more contexts: In previous version of Aggiorno you could apply aggiornings on files, group of files or portion of code.  Many of the early adopters asked to be able to apply Aggiorno on solutions or projects or folders.  Well, this is now possible.  If you want to apply a specific Aggiorno on a complete web site you just need to select it and go.  You still have the ability to review all the changes for every file before committing the results.

In addition to all the new features, Aggiorno now no longer requires Visual Studio to run.  If your machine does not have Visual Studio installed the Aggiorno isntaller will detect it and download a few additional dependencies and install.  The stand alone version is based on the Visual Studio Isolated Shell technology which allows us to deploy all the Aggiorno functionality as well as an IDE for web developers.  The IDE that Aggiorno deploys is fully functional and has most of the functionality that Visual Studio 2008 offers to web developers.  This is another feature that many of you have requested and it is now available.

We're eager to listen for your feedback.  Please let us know what you think.

Last week Aggiorno was selected among hundreds of companies to present at the fall 2008 edition of PlugAndPlay Tech Expo.  Let's provide some context.  PlugAndPlayTchCenter is a very successful Silicon Valley incubator that hosts a vast array of companies and has many successes under its belt.  The Expo is an event very similar to TechCrunch50 in which a small number of companies are selected to present their ideas.  The whole purpose is to get feedback generate networking and put your business plan in front of the hardest of critics: VCs!

The whole experience was awesome! Since you step into the incubator building you start smelling success!  The energy that flows in that environment is incredible.  Well... if you put together smart people, great ideas, entrepreneurship and lots of resources you are bound to create the perfect mix for the next billion dollar business.

The activity was divided into two main parts.  There was an expo floor where each company had  a small table for demos and the opportunity to make a 2 minutes pitch in front of a community of investors.  Many of the companies that participated at the expo were building web applications and therefore were potential customers of Aggiorno.  We demoed and demoed and demoed all day and received great feedback both from web developers as well as business feedback on our ideas. 

"So... tell me, what is Aggiorno?" was the most common ace breaker question and our perfected pitch was "Aggiorno is a tool to enhance the productivity of web developers". Then we continued: <Improving the web one tag at a time> is our lemma. The millions of web developers around the world are always looking for snippets of knowledge and snippets of code to deliver on their boss business requirements; for example SEO, accessibility, improved performance, lower maintenance cost.

Aggiorno is a software tool to create, distribute, and execute knowledge capsules directly into web sites’s source code. Keywords to describe its value proposition are Business oriented Refactoring Tool, Productivity Enhancer and Code Assistant, all for Web developers.

People really liked Aggiorno, they not only liked the concept, the initial focus around making pages more web standards compliant but also the "explain"features that shows you what is changing in the source code before it actually happens.

We even shot a video of the pitch that was the most entertaining of the show (and it was not only my opinion!).  We shot it with an iphone so the quality is not good, but it gives you a clear idea of what happened there.

All in all we were very proud of having been selected to participate and we the feedback we received was invaluable.

Everybody (at least all of us interested in web development) has been following and chatting about Chrome, the new browser from Google.

I personally care about how web pages will render in Chrome versus other browsers.  I looked at the Google Chrome FAQ for developers and found this explanation about rendering differences:

"

9. My site renders differently in Google Chrome than in Internet Explorer

Google Chrome uses a different rendering engine than Internet Explorer, so may display web pages differently. Apple Safari uses the same rendering engine as Google Chrome (WebKit) and should display pages the same way.

• If your site isn't rendering properly in any browser, make sure your HTML and CSS are valid by testing them at http://validator.w3.org/.
• If your site doesn't render properly in Google Chrome or Apple Safari, file a bug at webkit.org as described at http://webkit.org/quality/reporting.html.
• If your site renders properly in Apple Safari but not in Google Chrome, please file a bug against Google Chrome at http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/list.

"

I have some observations regarding the above statement:

1) There are 17 entries in the FAQ for developers and 6% is devoted to cross browser compatibility.  To me this is a huge percentage and it means that the number of pages that actually render differently in Chrome is probably very high.  -- Well... if about half of Fortune 500 companies have syntax errors on their home pages, what can you expect??  

2) Up until today the market share for a Safari (webkit) based browser is still low and therefore a rendering difference might not have been that important depending on your audience.  -- still... shame on you for not writing cross browser compatible code!  Or.. was it your fault?? (this is a discussion for a different post).

3) Google has the potential of altering market share numbers for browser utilization (we'll see how Google can change this in the next few months). -- This means that you should at least add Chrome or Safari as one of your test environments!

4) Once more, web standards and page validation are endorsed by a large Internet player (GOOGLE!!) as the way to fix the browser compatibility problem.  -- So... do you think web standards are important or not??

If you read some of my other posts in this blog you will find that I am building a practical argument in favor of web standards.  I am not advocating for web standards from a theoretical point of view but from a very pragmatic one.  If your code is web standards compliant or at least if your code validates your are on your way to solve many many potential problems around cross browser compatibility, search engine optimization, accessibility, performance, etc.  Web standards are a guide that you should follow in your daily coding.

aggiorno can simplify dramatically how you can make your page standards compliant with many of its aggiornings that are there to clean up the web without taking a toll on developers productivity.  How come we still have some many SYNTAX errors on our pages?  How do we expect browsers to behave consistently if we are not consistent in the use of the language and if browsers have to " guess" our intentions?  Let's standardize our pages! Let's use aggiorno to help us in this endeavor.

References:

Web Standards and SEO

Accessibility and Web Standards

Even the gurus sometime slip...

Clean HTML: why not??

PS: of course I am biased but I truly believe aggiorno is a superb product!  Why wait?  Try aggiorno out.  It has two modes of operation: as a stand alone web tool that includes a sophisticated XHTML/HTML editor and as an add-in for Visual Studio 2005/2008.

After many (too many?) months of work and a very successful beta program aggiorno 1.0 has finally released.  With aggiorno, web developers easily make their ASP.NET and HTML sites compliant with the latest web standards, using the latest technology trends suggested by industry experts.  Beyond these features that are the focus of version 1 (cleaning up the web!), aggiorno is a platform to deliver encapsulated executable knowledge right in the hands of the web developer immediately providing increased productivity and business value.

Congratulations to the aggiorno team for all the hard work!

Version 1 is a demonstration that with hard work and support from the community not only a great product can be built but it is also possible to coin a new concept in the software development world: aggiorning. aggiornings are a bit like refactorings but their goal is to make transformations that add value to the business.  aggiornings are wisdom capsules that traverse your code and makes it faster, better, more standard...you name it! and aggiorno supports the creation, execution and delivery of new aggiornings.  Let me give you ashort example, just like Roger Johansson shows one of the most common validation mistakes in a site is the lack of alternate description for images.  In my opinion the reason why this happens is due to the fact that looking for each of the images in a site and adding the right description is a very time consuming task.  However aggiorno has an aggiorning devoted exactly to this task, I am sure you will find it most useful.

aggiorno works as a stand alone tool that comes complete with an XHTML editor, and it can also be integrated as an add-in to Visual Studio 2005/2008.

The focus of version 1 is about cleaning up the web.  Soon after we started conceptualizing aggiorno we realized that too many web pages were not valid or bluntly syntactically incorrect.  With some research it was clear that helping web developers make their pages standard compliant was the best first step in realizing the vision of aggiorno of becoming a true knowledge manipulation platform.  More sophisticated aggiornings require pages that are clean, so let's begin the cleaning of the web! and you'll be discovering the full power of aggiorno when we'll deliver more capsules through our subscription model.

Your feedback is very important.  If you have suggestions for new aggiornings or would like to tweak the existing ones please let us know.  For now, go try aggiorno and immediately increase your productivity!

This is us, the Aggiorno team:

We did not just build, but rather crafted Aggiorno.

We love the product and the way we did it.

We do hard-core Scrum.

We eagerly wait for the daily meeting to come.

We discuss lively during planning meetings.

We all add user stories to the backlog as soon as we think of a new feature.

We use post-its, lots of them.

We care and caress our task-board.

We relish in our very own, open space office.

We proudly demo a new product increment after every sprint.

We open our hearts every time a retrospective meeting takes place.

We insanely automate every kind of testing.

We build every hour.

We faint when a build breaks.

We draw diagrams on walls and windows.

We religiously time-box.

And above all, we love it.

Hope you'll love it too.

Aggiorno is coming.

Oh so soon....

Thanks for visiting. Today we are launching the Aggiorno.com web site in anticipation of our Beta 1 release.

During the past year we have been very entertained (busy!) building a tool to simplify life for web developers. The first versions of the tool have been used by a selected group and so far we have gotten raving reviews. Aggiorno is a product that helps automate many common tasks performed by web developers and help them get more efficient pages. We believe that Aggiorno is just the first incarnation of a new way of programming that dramatically improves productivity... follow the blog and you will understand what we mean.

For the time being, the subject matter of this blog include:

- Description of features included in Aggiorno as they get released

- Our ideas and philosophies on many topice around web development

- Product updates and announcements

We are looking forward to hearing everybody's feedback on the concepts behind the product as well as on the first upcoming release. This blog is our way of communicating about the progress of the product and discuss topics that are beneficial to both web developers and web site owners.

We'll announce the final date for our Beta 1 launch soon. Register yourself on our beta list and you will be among the first ones to know about it.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more updates!