If you like what you saw on the Laszlo site, then be sure to check out IDE4Laszlo, an Eclipse-based IDE specifically for Laszlo.
Mar 092005
Mar 092005
Oliver Steele (I like the skin of his weblog!) has a very nice article about webapplications, dealing about how you should switch from server-side webapplications to client-side webapplications, thereby enabling a more rich experience on the client-side and reducing the load on the server-side (amongst other things).
One of the frameworks to create such a rich client-side applications he mentions, is Laszlo. This is an impressive piece of work. Try some of their demos. I had to reposition my jaw manually, since this gui-experience is mostly only achieved in native applications or in applications that require a huge install of libraries or components on the client-side. Laszlo does not. It requires that you have (Macromedia) Flashplayer 5 or higher and have Javascript enabled in your browser. Technically it caches about 200K on your PC, but that’s it.
While you are there, click on the link that brings you to Laszlo Mail and have a look at the screenshots. Yes, this is a webapplication.
Why do I tell you about yet another web-application framework? Well, on the one hand, you don’t need anything new on your clients. On the other hand, this is a Free and Open Sourced product.
Mar 082005
I have installed Mantis 0.19.2 as my issue/bug-tracker, and sofar I like it. Simple, fast and with more features than I will ever use.
Of course I will keep you updated on how (or “if”) I like it.
Mar 082005
No. I should. Perhaps I should buy Joel’s latest book and read it.
Most of the time when developping I can remember what I was working on, or what bugs bugged me. But sometimes solving one bug takes a lot of time, or there’s a weekend, or something else that takes the attention from developping, I just forget about the smaller bugs. Tracking them in a database is wise.
Does anybody have suggestions? Preferably ones that are free? I’ve looked at Mantis in the past, but never got so far to actually using it. Open Source is not mandatory, but a pre. Other than that, it should run on Windows XP + Apache2.
Mar 082005
Functionality sofar working:
- Saving directory is created if it does not exist
- AfterPaste working properly
- Basic functionality for splitting URL into seperate parts (filename, startnumber, etc)
- Basic functionality for finding out which part is the numeric part of the filename
I didn’t work on it last weekend, because I had other things to do. After the “determine where the numeric part is” will come the implementation of the download-function into a seperate thread. If that works, the number of threads will be a configurable item.
Mar 072005
Ouch. That’s gotta hurt, Microsoft?!
Dan Fernadez’ (Visual C# product manager) answer
Mar 072005
This is another Delphi Architect vs MSDN Universal post. It was brought to my attention (mainly by this post) that MSDN Universal only gives you the right to use the software (for a period of time) and that you don’t own VS.NET and the other products.
Currently, I own Delphi 6 Enterprise. I bought the full product, and even with the Borcon price-reduction, it still had a hefty price tag. Now I find myself that I need to upgrade, because I own the software, and I am not entitled to use the latest and greatest. To be able to develop .NET with a Borland product, I need to buy something new. The upgrade is about $2300 (FP is $3500).
The full product of VS.NET Enterprise Architect costs about $2500. Apart from Object Pascal, it will give me the same .NET development environment that Delphi2005 gives me. It will give me a stable environment (Delphi2005 is slow and unstable on my system, and it gives me an unfinished feeling). It will give me Compact Framework. If we only want to address Win32, .NET has no meaning at all. So the development environment should have this flexibility. Delphi2005 does not have it.
So if I want to OWN the software, Microsoft gives me more bang for the buck.
Most developers have some sort of MSDN subscription. To test your software, you need multiple OS’s (Windows versions) for instance. Or several Office versions in the same Windows version. Or different browser versions. I bought VMWare Workstation just for that purpose. I can’t have 10 machines (moneywise and physical space wise) running different combinations of OS/Browser/Office just because I develop for the Windows.
If you have the choice: buying Delphi2005 with no support (that’s an optional product), with no CF, and with an unfinished IDE. Or buying MSDN Universal, that gives you VS.NET Ent Architect, All-Office and All-Windows and support what would you choose? Heck, working with Delphi6 is like putting on my gloves I had for years. Developing in Delphi2005 is hell. I can develop the same in VS.NET quicker and without less hassle, even without knowing C# that well, than I would in Delphi2005 in Pascal. It’s a shame.
I haven’t bought anything yet, but if a nice client (good hourrate and not too shortterm) comes along and Delphi did not change by then, I know what I will buy.
Thanks for listening.
Mar 072005
I don’t have much information about it yet, but Suredeath has put on his weblog that he’s saying goodbye. To all. To the world. His story is in Dutch, and probably only relevant to people who know him, but if you have a heart (that’s no laughing matter) please find the time to read his story.
Mar 042005
By clicking on the “Valid” links on the bottom of the page, I just found out that this page is not a valid XHTML-transitional document (as output by blog.php suggests). The reason is the Nedstat-icon, used for hit-counting. First of all, it uses the NOSCRIPT tag, which is not allowed. Second, it uses tags without a closing tag, or without the /> ending, like <BR>.
Got to clean that up a.s.a.p.
Update (21:24): apart from the NOSCRIPT tag, the code is cleaned up now. I’m not sure why the validator complains about it, since it is a valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional tag.
Mar 042005
My TRaReEdit now has an OnPaste and an AfterPaste event. To check that they fire at different moments, you could put a ShowMessage in both of them, showing the Text-property in a ShowMessage.
With that in place, I can create the procedure to split the image-URL into base-URL, base-filename, starting picture number and image-type (not handled yet, but needs to be in place to handle different filetypes, like .png, .tiff, etc).