Neoderma release and Soma v2 progress

| 2 min read

Hi everyone,

I've been working on the version 2 of Soma and its generator. I'm pretty busy so I didn't post for a while, but I'm going to give you some news today.

We've just released at Less Rain the Neoderma international website. It is not a "crazy-kick-your-ass-3D-website", nothing is complicated there, but it has a very nice and clean "look and feel" and a complex CMS where everything can be changed (structure, content, animations, language, and so on). The content is pretty big so it is a complicated site in terms of data. Neoderma is a multi-language site (translations are not done yet but will appear in the future).

I'm talking about Neoderma here because it has fully been built with Soma v1 and the framework has been a great help (and also a joy) to keep a strong and solid structure. Soma has been very effective in responding to (almost) whatever I needed, and because Soma is very flexible, it worked perfectly with a site where everything can be  changed via a CMS.

I'm not allowed to give any source code of course, but I can advice Soma users if they wonder how to do something. Soma v1 is lacking documentation and examples but this will be greatly improved in the v2.

About the v2 I'm working on, it is in a pretty good shape. The framework is almost done. I'll make the full documentation before releasing it. It is easier to use and more consistent, not at all completely different though. Templates disappeared as we could do without them, a real node parser has been built to dynamically instantiate classes (custom or built-in) straight from the XML, a new page mode appears for Flash IDE users making you able to build something in no time, SomaLoader implemented, and more features we'll see at the release.

SomaUI, the generator is done at 80% and will make you able to build the XML Site definition with a friendly user interface, as well as exporting and compile the sources created. You'll even be able to build something very quickly from SomaUI, without knowing the framework and opening a documentation.

Thanks for your patience, it is on its way :)

Hopefully, I'll post more if I can get a bit more time!

Happy development.