Thingy
The Thingy is a really cool asset with a funny name. The Thingy is a point-and-click web-based application builder. That means you can build complex web based applications without any knowledge of Perl, HTML, CSS, or Javascript. With it you can build employee directories, contact list, inventory databases, and a whole lot more. Here are some screen shots to give you some ideas on how it will work.
Gallery
Folders and Collaboration Systems filled with images and movies can only go so far. Eventually you need a real media management system. The gallery asset is that. It provides thumbnails, albums, ratings, cross linking, tagging, and more for images and movies. Think YouTube meets Flickr built right into WebGUI. Here are some screen mockups to whet your appetite.
Commerce
There are many improvements to the commerce system coming. We'll be introducing a better backend with hooks for special after purchase processing. We'll add the ability to deal with unique items. There will be a plugin for Paypal built in. Many new helper macros. We'll merge the existing products system with the product asset. And we'll rework the entire checkout process to be simpler, more streamlined, and prettier.
Maps
We'll be building in a maps component tied to the Google Maps API. From there you'll be able to add your own pins to the map and attach data to the pins. This will allow you to build locators for businesses that have locations, such as restaurants and stores. It will also allow you to create "Where are you" type applications, so we could allow all the WebGUI users in the world to show where they are on a giant map.
Improved Interface
We're going to improve the performance of the administrative interface. There are a lot of CSS, Javascript, and image files used to support the admin interface of WebGUI. By making some changes to how the admin interface looks and works, we can make it much faster, and use less resources on the network and server. These screens are examples of what the new interface may look like.
Update: This will definitely no longer be a part of WebGUI 7.5, but it is in our future. It's just a matter of whether it can be done in a 7.x release, or if it will have to wait for 8.0 because of the API compatibility promise.
