Interaction

Freeware

Current Version: 4.1 / 4.5 (December 22, 2004) / 5.0.2 (May 25, 2005) / 6.0 (May 5, 2009)

Interaction is an application that adds threaded discussion forums, chat rooms, and a shopping cart system to any WebStar, MacHTTP, Web Server 4D, WebTen, Quid Pro Quo, NetPresenz, Zeus, or Mac OS Web Sharing server.

Versions 4.0 and higher can generate WAP documents and other XML based formats using XSL, making the pages available both for web browsers and PDAs. It can extract and include data from other sites (included web enabled databases) using the revised Resource entity type, with form data optionally forwarded from the original request based on configuration in a dialog on the Mac.

Interaction 4.5 is "Carbonized" and runs on Mac OS X Classic (but not natively on Mac OS X), in addition to Mac OS 8.6 and 9.x with CarbonLib 1.4 or higher.

Version 5.0 is the first "native" Mac OS X version, and version 5.0.2 is presumably a bugfix release. Changes are somewhat detailed in the online release notes.

Version 6.0 is the first new release in almost four (!) years, and makes the following enhancements:

• Components - The components have been moved to the Plug-Ins folder inside the application bundle. They can be managed using the Get Info item of the Finder's File menu (under plug-ins).
• Menus - Quit and Preferences menus are on the Apple menu.
• Themes - Theme manager supports multiple predefined themes.
• Chat - XSLT templates for the statements.
• Chat - Case insensitive matching of keys in form submissions
• Chat - Fixed the 28 entity so that it can be used correctly in chat statement template entities.
• CGIs - Better feedback when a back-end CGI fails to respond.
• Preferences - All preference groups have documentation.
• Preferences - Process Order preference has been superceded by new Responders preference.
• Preferences - Menus for Preferences is on the Apple menu as prescribed by MacOSX.
• Dialogs - Modernized Visitors Monitor.
• Dialogs - Visitors monitor dynamically updated when a visitor arrives or expires, with real time update of each session item.
• Dialogs - Modernized Recent Visits monitor.
• Dialogs - Restores the triangles in the Document outline palette.
• Dialogs - Fixes the Resource Entities dialog in OSX so it no longer fails to accept input or misehave in other ways.
• Dialogs - The pop-up menu on the Composite Restriction dialog fits.
• Dialogs - Drag & Drop works again for files and folders from the Finder.
• Dialogs - Updates the Locations dialog when files are removed.
• Services - Fixes bugs in the theme selector of forum/chat.
• Services - Predefined themes are no longer separated from custom themes in the theme selector.
• Services - Many fields now display special characters instead of character entity references e.g. the Forum dialog (thanks to Pat Sheehan).
• Mailer - Sends mail even when it isn't possible to resolve a domain name for the local host
• Mailer - Fixed OS X problem where the mailer considers hidden unix files (.*) to be mail and attempts to send them.
• Mailer - Mailing works better under NAT.
• Mailer - Queue emails instead of failing if a mail host preference has not been provided.
• Multiple Sites - Sites without a host in their domain name is used as default for requests where there are no site that exactly matches the hostname.
• Multiple Sites - Each site has it's own Components folder (in with the site specific data) with extensions to provide site specific features.
• Scripting - Allow arguments to headers in with-open-http-resource.
• XSL Transformations - Disabled evaluation of XSL instructions in an entity referenced in an XSL template.
• XSL Transformations - Improved XSLT processing with a new experimental command called 'apply'.
• XSL Transformations - Experimental XPath 'ip:entity' function accepts a URI to represent the optional location of the entity.
• XSL Transformations - Fixed bug in xpath != with two booleans, which behaved same as = with two booleans (i.e. opposite of correct).
• XSL Transformations - Corrected xpath string comparisions using = and != to be case sensitive.
• XSL Transformations - Don't pass on DOCTYPE declaration and comments from source document in pages generated by XSLT (bug fix).
• XSL Transformations - Corrected issue with not using local variables when expanding template parameters
• Server - Customizable number of responders.
• Etc - Menus for Quit is now on the Apple menu as prescribed by MacOSX.
• Etc - The Problem Report has been moved to ~/Library/Logs/com.in-progress.Interaction/ and is no longer an item on the Windows menu.
• Etc - Cache Database has been moved to ~/Library/Caches/com.in-progress.com.Interaction/