We ran a survey in December and one of the most requested features was to be able to define file releases in your project and provide links to download the latest package directly from the summary page of your project space.

I admit that I was not surprised by the request and in fact we had already started working on it. We used the neat DownloadsPlugin as a base and we integrated it with our system and added a couple of features that we needed.

Defining a new file release is quite easy, go to the admin panel and there is a new menu called Downloads.

The above screenshot is for our QtQuickPlayground and as you can see we have already uploaded a few files.

To add new files all you have to do is fill the form on the right.

You will have to pick the file from your computer and you will have to type an appropriate description. All the other fields are drop-downs and are pre-filled with the information you entered in the appropriate sections via the admin interface. We have defined some defaults that should work for most projects, but you are invited to change them to match your needs. If you don’t want to define any of those fields, all you have to do is go in the appropriate section in the admin menu, for example "Platforms", and remove all entries. You may add them back at any time in the future.
Note that these are all extra parameters to help you and your users to recognise the different releases, the only fields that are required are the file itself and the description.

Featured downloads

The first column on the left is a checkbox, use it to select as many files as you need and below the list of files you can see a drop-down, use it to select the action you want to perform on the selected files. You may mark them as "Featured downloads" or remove them.

Featured downloads are identified in the admin menu with a green tick in the second column. In our case all the uploaded files are featured.

The most important part is, of course, how will your users see the new downloads. We added a new section in the summary page called "Featured downloads" and that will show those files that you have marked as featured. You may also use the new macros that are described in the small guide below the list of files to show a table, try them in your wiki.

This is a screenshot of how the featured downloads appear in QtQuickPlayground, as you can see we shortened the filenames that were too long.

Happy releasing!

It’s been at least a few weeks now since we deployed the improved layout and features for the Files and Discussion board sections in Forum Nokia Projects. We are very excited about them and we think the latest changes add a lot of value to both.

Files now look a lot more in line with the rest of the site, but most of all we have made uploading much easier. You can now select multiple files and upload them all in one go. It is developed in flash because that allowed us to do more things, but if you don’t have flash we "fall back" to the standard HTML file upload so that should work for everyone.
We decided not to go into all the directory management because it involved too much complexity and the UI would have suffered. If you want to organise your files you can still do it by mounting the share on your computer using WebDAV. If you are not familiar with WebDAV I suggest you check out on wikipedia. For Windows users I would recommend BitKinex a free client that is simple to use and very powerful (and has that 90s look that reminds me of Norton commander).

While for the Files it is mostly a restyle with a little addition, for the Discussion boards (or forums) we did quite a few changes. Not only we improved the design but we added a number of small features that you expect from a board. We added the number of views per thread, we added quick links to jump to the last posts and a label to identify threads that have been updated since your last visit.
Last but not least we improved the editor, although it still needs some work.

If you are tired of reading and would rather watch a short (about 2 minutes) video, you can check this out. Yes, we were SO excited about these improvements that we made a video.