In Medias Res – Mule 3.1
matt.brandabur on Friday, February 11, 2011
Mule 3 has been out since mid-September. Our developers have been working furiously to refine the new features in successive point releases. Testing and refactoring almost never stop here.
In the middle of all this activity, the ESB team has undertaken major improvements to our documentation. Last week, you might have noticed the appearance of a few topics based on a new template for module and transport reference docs.
We’ve added a huge amount of information to each topic, with the goal of providing a complete source of reference on a single page for each of the objects that constitutes the essential features of the Mule ESB.
For example, consider the following two files:
- Take a look at the previous version of the Previous SMTP Transport.
- Now check out the newly updated SMTP Transport Reference.
I’m not a wagering man, but anyone who says these new topics aren’t more useful than the old is welcome to my long out-of-print Lives of Famous Reference Librarians.
More on the Way
We will be publishing more of these documents as they are completed and reviewed, but we wanted to provide access to this information as soon as possible.
Please take a look at these topics, give us your opinion.
Sound OFF
At the top of each of the new pages you’ll find a Rate This Page macro. Don’t be shy!
Just in case you declined to Rate the page above, we’ve added a Ranking macro at the bottom. Clicking on the Thumbs-up (or Thumbs-down) opens a comment window you can quickly and anonymously add your feedback.
What’s Coming Next: Cleaner layout, search improvements, better navigation, more inclusive table of contents, and more tutorials, code snippets, and xml config examples.
Search tip: If you want information on a particular version of Mule, make sure an add it to search:
- Searching on “pop3 transport mule” brings up links to Mule 2.x pages first.
- Searching on “pop3 transport mule 3.x” shows Mule 3.x pages.
We are working to improve the search so that the Mule 3.x topics appear higher in the search results and so you can filter your results for only 3.x or 2.x results. In the meantime, the above tip should help.
Please keep sending us your thoughts on Mule documentation – we’re listening. Email me at matt.brandabur@mulesoft.com with comments, suggestions, beefs, attaboys, and questions.
As we chisel away at the next edition of ESB, we’ll continue to update docs in parallel, and to keep our community apprised of our progress.
Related posts:
The AJAX Transport Reference link needs fixing I’m afraid but the documentation itself looks very good indeed!
Alex – Fixed. Thanks for the note!
Super cool,
It will be great if we can have all transports covered!
How about PDF version of documentation?
Nirav,
Thanks for your comment. We are working through adding new reference docs for the remainder of the transports and modules, and will be publishing them shortly.
PDFs are available here. These are revised as we add more topics.
http://www.mulesoft.org/documentation/display/MULE3USER/Offline+Documentation
This is a great thing, it should make mule adoption a little less painful. Whilst looking at the code is the best way to learn, but for thsoe that don’t have teh inclination or time, useful documentation is invaluable.