MX Kollection User interviews

Turning HTML designers to programmers

This review is done by several people. Be sure to come back often, as I will be adding reviews for the individual parts of the MX Kollection 3 package. It has a ton of feautures!

Nancy Gill, Joyce Evans, Barbara O’Neal and Steven Redden

Web development is a changing industry. Technologies are born, thrive, and then die, while web developers experience a great stress helping their clients get an Internet presence. Nowadays, the buzz word in web development is “dynamic”. Not “dynamic” as in DHTML, but as in “using a database”. MX Kollection is a Dreamweaver extension designed for HTML designers that want to take a plunge into database-driven development.

We’ve asked several of our beta testers on how they feel about the product. They have met together on our forums to discuss if and why they like MX Kollection. Nancy Gill coordinated this effort – Thank you! This is their story.

Tools for your productivity

When you discover a set of Dreamweaver extensions that improve your productivity by 100% and more, when you can create complex SQL queries that solve problems and allow functionality within your applications beyond your wildest dreams with no more than a few points and clicks, you know you’ve found something special that demands a further look.
Such is the case with InterAKT Online’s new MX Kollection 3, the latest super-extension set from the powerhouse of Dreamweaver extensions who have broadened their target market from original PHP to include ColdFusion and ASP.  Already having sold to almost 6,000 developers worldwide, this recent expansion will now cater to 2 in every 3 application and web developers.

“I like that I can quickly recoup my investment and go on to use these extensions for an unlimited number of future clients” says American developer Barbara O’Neal.  “I can create very complex web applications in a fraction of the time it used to take in coding .. the hard work is all done for me in the MX Kollection 3.”

CSS Skins

California developer and Team Macromedia member Nancy Gill says that it’s not the many functions that are her favorite. It’s the simple addition of skinning the interface by site.

 “I can choose Aqua for the tool’s look in Site A and go on to define Site B to show the Arktic skin.  The advantage in that is that I have so many similar folders from site to site that I won’t get confused about where I’m working today.  It helps me sort my work flow like never before."

“Moreover, the Interakt Control Panel gives me the ability to fine-tune my settings on a site to site basis, giving me the kind of control that I have never seen before”. I can change the date format, the language for the labels and warnings and other parameters, such as mail server and such with extreme ease.

Visual SQL Query Builder

Barbara O’Neal goes on to rave about the Query Builder which is “so good I can build complex queries I would have to use Enterprise Manager to build otherwise.  And this means I don’t have to leave Dreamweaver MX 2004 to do it ... It’s all right here.”  A fantastic bonus is the ability to create a query and click on the Create CFC button to store the query in an independent document, making reuse of the same functionality instantaneous, something ColdFusion gurus have come to love in their chosen server model. 

Moving along to the many wizards that power the MX Kollection 3, Nancy Gill reckons that while some may have issues with feeling a wizard “dumbs them down”, she thinks this approach is great for getting up to speed with the tool.
“Click, click in answer to the questions and it’s all created for you. What could be easier to work with in a new environment or to improve the flow and get the job done faster?”

Editing Multiple Records at Once

There are wizards for everything from insert, update and delete forms, to the neat displaying of data. You can use the wizards to build pages for inserting and editing multiple records at the same time.

Barbara O’Neal says her very favorite is the “Insert into Two Tables” wizard since this was an operation in ColdFusion or any other server model that required the functionality to be hand coded in the past.  Specify your tables, bind the appropriate fields and it’s all created for you like magic!  This feature alone would make the Kollection worthwhile but there is so much more, it boggles the mind!

Form Validation

“The validation… You must talk about the validation” says Barbara O’Neal.  “This is the best I’ve seen validation and it’s so complete. There is point and click validation for everything I can imagine.”  Barbara went on to describe how her business partner is a stickler for details and in looking over her site created with MX Kollection validation, he couldn’t find anything wrong with it. “That’s nothing short of a miracle” she gushed. “Nothing gets by him, believe me.”

The validation interface is completely intuitive, adjusting menus for the kind of form field being validated. Every possible validation rule is present with a text field. Changing its value to a numeric one, the validation choices will be different. This feature makes it a cinch to instantly know if you’re going in the wrong direction or if your database was properly designed.

Building CMS Websites

Steve Redden, Technical Director of 3-wise Internet Solutions, also agreed to tell his story.

“Time and time again, we demo Content Management Systems and web-based applications to potential clients only to see looks of wonder on their faces when MX Kollection 3 allows me conjure up lists that can filter, sort and re-order at the click of a mouse. NeXTensio has been our bread and butter application for the past three years in the construction of lists and create, modify and delete transactions in my developments.”

Steve’s clients are delighted to find positive answers to most of their questions and requirements.
"Can we change the content ourselves?" Of course. This is the most common website requirement from clients than any other. Meet KTML, a WYSIWYG HTML editor which allows me to create a Word style interface to my client's content.

What makes it a winner? It integrates with MX Kollection in seconds. It's a familiar interface, so little or no training is required. KTML will automatically create e-mail addresses and website URLs as hyperlinks, and display content based on the site's cascading style sheets.

"Can I upload my own images to my website?" – Yes, of course!
The KTML interface to your server’s image processing library, offering you the ability to upload and resize images, then see the image thumbnails for selection, is a big hit with clients.
One of the more advanced features of MX Kollection 3 is the ability to create custom actions that can be fired before or after an insert, update or delete transaction. This allows me to make my applications zing with magic!

For example you can:

• create a trigger to automatically un-publish content when new content has been published.
• create a trigger to delete expired content - wow, automatic database maintenance.
• create a trigger to delete records from related tables - wow, referential integrity in MySQL!
• do much, much more probably limited by your imagination.

To put the power of the MX Kollection 3 in perspective, we can create a Content Management System from the ground up, with user authentication, free-form content management with KTML, form-based content management such as a news module, events module and a validated contact form with send e-mail trigger in around 4 hours. This used to take us at least 40 hours to achieve re-InterAKT. Our business is turning round more complex websites, quicker and at greater profitability.
If you are serious about growing your web business or delivering better solutions quicker, then you *need* MX Kollection 3.

Documentation and Support

Noted Dreamweaver and Fireworks author and instructor Joyce Evans adds what she likes about the MX Kollection 3.

“I'm not only a Web Designer but I teach new Designers and developers so I always look for tools to make their jobs easier,” she said. “I think the Wizards really help the beginner developer get up to speed quickly and produce complex applications in no time at all.  With the Kollection 3, I can easily use ASP, PHP or ColdFusion, even if you're not a programmer at all”.
Joyce went on to talk about the greatly improved tutorials that ship with the MX Kollection 3, calling them an “invaluable addition to any developer’s toolbox. 
“The Contact Management Application tutorial is so easy and quick to use! I've added the ability to view and edit database entries in a matter of minutes. My clients think I'm a genius, of course it's InterAKT that are the geniuses, but we won't tell!”

There’s more to MX Kollection than meets the eye. The code is generated in an Object Oriented manner, for you to be able to understand and change it. More, we’ve tried to make the code XHTML compliant, also making sure we respect the WAI (accessibility) standards as much as we can. This should help you create sites for government and educational clients.
Joyce has summed up  perfectly the bottom line about the MX Kollection 3 with “I could go on and on about the Kollection, but the best thing I can recommend is to just get it and start saving a boatload of time!”.