Removing web parts
We decided to remove a small subset of our web parts in Kentico 9. Which web parts we plan on removing and why? What should you do if your favorite web part is one of them?
You may be asking why. Why we decided to decrease our breath-taking number of 450+ web parts? There are two main reasons.
I outlined the first motivation in my previous article. We want to get rid of functionality for which the actual maintenance costs are higher than the value the functionality has for our customers. This means that we will have more time to focus on functionality with more value.
The second reason is that we want you to be in control of your HTML. We believe you need a clean, semantic, responsive-ready HTML that may differ from project to project. There is no way to fulfill these objectives when the rendered HTML is an integrated part of the product. Moreover, every one of you has his own, unique set of building blocks that you use for your projects. From our interviews with you, we have learned that the most of you are using the basic web parts like Repeater, Datalist or Universal viewer to build your own set of more specific web parts anyway.
This doesn’t mean that if you’re using the to-be-abandoned web parts, we’re going to abandon you as well. We want to maintain a set of web parts with specific code, but we don’t want it to be part of the core product. We are considering an open-source repository, so that we can all work on it and keep it up-to-date.
Now, what can you do if your favorite web part is on the list? There are two options:
1. Compatibility package
We will distribute a package including some of the abandoned web parts with Kentico 9. You can import the package and continue using the web part as before. It’s just no longer a part of the product.
Web parts included in the compatibility package:
- Attachment image gallery
- Attachments carousel
- Attachments carousel 3D
- Attachments lightbox
- Drop-down menu
- Language selection
- Language selection drop-down
- Language selection with flags
- Lightbox gallery
- Product filter
- Repeater with carousel
- Repeater with lightbox
- Scrolling news
- Shopping cart preview
- Tree menu
2. Best practices
We won’t be adding all the web parts to the import package, because there is a better way of implementing their functionality with the basic set of web parts. For that purpose, we’ll provide blog posts in which you’ll be able to read about the current best practices.
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