Jquery

Computer screen and data stream

A major change in this release related to the complete rework of the Javascript support in the directory. Some legacy code still remains that uses the Prototype and YUI libraries, but this will be phased out shortly. jQuery has been selected as the client-side javascript library of choice due to its wide range of plugins and its active community following. All websites now include both Prototype and jQuery to avoid conflicts while prototype is phased out. In addition to these structural changes, all the mapping code has been fully rewritten to be based on jQuery and more specifically the jMaps jQuery plugin. Tribalogic has contacted the author of the jMaps plugin and are planning on working together to add new features as part of our ongoing development.

Data Strean

By adopting jQuery, Tribalogic will be able to rapidly deploy rich client-side features in the future.

Extras and Discounts

A second major improvement in this release concerns the Online Booking Platform. As clients demanded more flexiblity in their pricing models, Tribalogic has improved the "Extras" system to be able to cope with more supplements and subsidies. Over time this capability has come to replicate and surpass the functionality offered by the "Rate Adjustments" system. Rate Adjustments are three fold: Adjustment, Relative Adjustment and Discount. The first two affect the "Rates" in the system. The third is an additional item included on a booking. A discount is very similar to and Extra and this release sees this consolidation completed with support for Discounts transparently merged with Extras. Internally all run-time code to calculate what discounts to add to a booking has been removed. During consolidation, all Discounts specified in the Rate Adjustments Information Record are transparently mapped to Extras. The user experience and the pricing is unaffected but the code is now simplermore efficient. Newer models of automatic pricing (e.g. based on how many people are in the party) can now be added to "Discounts" which was not possible previously.

All users using the old formats should be completely unaware of this change.

In addition to these internal changes, we now have the ability to specify an extra (e.g. a discount) based on a "Yield Profile" rule: namely offer a discount if the person books within a certain period of holiday uptake: e.g. Book a holiday for this weekend and get a 10% discount!

While Tribalogic has always been proud of the capabilities of our Booking System, we appreciate we have had a problem in the past relating to publicly available documentation. We acknowledge this failing and have embarked on a fresh drive to ensure that all documentation is up to date and available to those who need it. In addition to this we will begin a program of deprecation of (i.e. removing support for) older versions of our APIs. The previous lack of documentation meant that we really just had to continue supporting older code, but with this new focus on documentation, we will begin a program lasting approx. four to six months during which period we will help clients implement the latest versions and allow them time to deploy updates to their clients. While we will attempt to ensure we do not create unnecessary API churn, we will use this opportunity to create a fresh basis for moving forward.

A number of smaller incremental bugfixes were also included in this update including:

  • New internal configuration option to suppress the notifications of reviews to entries (per-userpool)
  • Revamped slideshow based on jQuery and the jCycle plugin (available soon via an interim release)