What's new in Caucus 4.36

What's new in Caucus 4.36
(Last updated 1 February 2002.)

Caucus 4.36 is an interim upgrade release, between the main 4.3 (4.32) release, and the forthcoming 4.4. (Version 4.4 will majorly rearrange how CML interface files and directories are handled.) This document is a brief summary of what is new in 4.36, compared to 4.30. It assumes some specific and technical knowledge of the features in Caucus 4.30.

Reset password.
The default Caucus entry page (caucus.html) provides a link to allow users to reset their own password. A user who has forgotten their password can still ask Caucus to reset it -- a new, random, password is generated and sent by e-mail to the user.
This feature depends on a new swebd.conf parameter "pw_can_reset", which can be disabled by the Caucus administrator.

Print icons
The conference home page and each item page have a "print" icon, which is useful for people who would like to print the text. It pops up a new page that is "printer-friendly" and contains all of the text in all of the items in the conference, or of a single item, respectively.
(Thanks to Gabor Por for the inspiration for, and first version of, this feature.)

Expanded People and conference member display
The "people" and "conference members" pages now display the full "last in this conference", "last on caucus", and person's e-mail address.

FILES area
Frequently Caucus managers need a place to put large numbers of files -- especially if they are familiar with unix commands and don't want to use the Caucus file upload/attach feature for every single file.
There's now a directory called public_html/FILES for exactly this purpose. You can reference a file "xyz" in this directory as (a link containing "text") with the new macro %files(xyz text). Or if you are writing raw HTML, the %files_url(xyz) macro expands to the full URL of the file.
The %files() and %files_url() macros also work under CSNAP.

Template CML files for authentication integration
If you are contemplating integrating another web application with Caucus so that both share the same authentication method, your job has just gotten a lot easier. See the details in Authentication Integration.

Customizable Caucus banner
The Caucus "banner" at the bottom of the Caucus Center page is more customizable. Instead of displaying the CaucusCare credit and the browser version, you may display any or all of these pieces. You also may choose whether or not to display the Caucus toolbar at the bottom of the Center page.
See "Control the Caucus Center page layout" manager option for more details. You'll see more options in the pull-down menus.
The browser and platform detection has also improved; among other things, it now knows the difference between Windows NT, Windows 2000, and Windows XP.

CSNAP improvements
The Caucus Snapshot tool has been improved in several ways. More of the standard Caucus macros work; it also handles the customized Caucus Center pages much better.

IE pop-up windows fixed
Some versions of IE opened "pop-up" windows larger than the original (main) Caucus window. This has been corrected.

Longer userids supported
Caucus now supports much longer userids, including the "@" character. So you can, if desired, make your user's userids be their e-mail address. This is becoming more and more common for many web-based applications.

E-mail notification can select interface
If you're a conference organizer, using the e-mail notification feature for a conference, you'll see that the e-mail contains a URL directly into the conference. Now you can select the default interface URL (CML directory) that appears in this e-mail. (Within a given conference, select Customize, then Conference Information.) This means that people coming into Caucus this way will enter via the interface of your choice.

Better handling of SSL interfaces
If you want to use SSL (the https:) protocol for higher security, all you have to do is change the setting of the http variable in CML/CS41/Local/switch.i. Caucus handles it from there automatically.