It's true, you don't have to tell us -- it's been awhile since we've posted anything in our blog. No, we didn't disappear. Instead, we decided to focus more on the engineering of our Intellectual Property to make sure that the foundation of our ideas were sound; that is, why was Goodbinder created? Why create another CMS engine when there are scores of them around: SDL Tridion, Sitecore, Sitefinity, and the list goes on. Each has its strong points and weaknesses. When we started, our goal was to always create the best Enterprise level Content Management System available. [But] the more we developed Goodbinder, those nagging and time consuming programming methods were simply getting in the way. More importantly, aside from the binary or executable files that serve as the foundation of your code, the consensus feeling was that the use of files, such as .aspx, .ascx or .html were simply getting in the way. So what did we do, we got rid of them and started from scratch.
Around 4 years ago, we started to develop an application engine made for the browser. This engine could run on any web server container and would serve as the foundation for developing web sites, mobile applications, and multi-tenant systems. With inspiration providing wind to our sail, the idea of creating components directly in any web browser would allow not just our team, but any team in fact to iterate quickly. Designers could work in a disconnected fashion as they create the experience for your users, developers could then build components with the same designer but with greater allowance; these allowance would allow the developer to code instructions for plugins which the designers would eventually install in the necessary area within their application. The entirety of the experience completely created within the web browser. For the backend data, or the users data, API developers would create web endpoints with which front-end developers, using client script would call to retrieve their data and automatically bind to the front end code -- thus displaying data that makes sense to the rest of the non tech world. Yeah!
What separates Goodbinder from the list of CMS existing today is that Goodbinder is not a CMS. Well, theoretically, it can do the same things as other CMS', but Goodbinder is more of a development platform. Want a website, sure, it can do that; want a tablet app, sure it can do that too; want to translate into multiple languages, yeah, no problem -- that's pretty standard. Where Goodbinder excels is that it can become exactly what you want it to be, and all without the fuss. With Goodbinder, ActionAreas, or areas of where actual code logic can exist allow a developers to augment their apps with rules, security and other external programs. For example, a simple rule could be that only users with certain Access Security List level (ACL) should be able to see anything beyond a certain point in the application or site; in another instance, a speech to text program could target a specific ActionArea for it to create additional content dictated by a user. The content could be pulling HTML from an external website, creating new HTML content based on a required design, or crate additional ActionArea as a child of another for more logical code injection and manipulation. In programming terms and concept, the application usage is endless and flexible.
Where do we go form here? What's our roadmap. For simplicity, the framework should be able to serve up the basics. For us, the basics are if you take the best public website creation tools available, Goodbinder should be able to create all their offerings with far greater ease. Coupled with the platforms object oriented approach to in-browser development for sites and applications, true cloud development is possible where an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) - the tool used to write software - can be used write, revision and produce production ready code, but within the browser. At the minimum, Goodbinder can be used to prototype conceptual application and processes without incurring the cost. For example, customers should be able to create conditional flows, which in turn generate data-driven interactions, when once published, will automatically generate an application without the need to write a single line of code. The benefits of ActionAreas having the ability to create conditional logic driving dynamic content.
Without the existence of files on disk - and dynamically generated content - Goodbinder has the fastest rendering engine of all Content Management Systems available.