Been a busy week - February 24th '10

Starting late on Monday carried over to a late night on Tuesday at work. It was an unexpected, but overall beneficial long day. I’ve managed to squeeze in a little time for refactoring the JavaScript portion of awFlickr app, which I plan to release into a private beta this weekend.

I’ll think of a better name once I get it out for testing. I’m planning on using this as a base for Spiral’s PHP version, and my tentatively named aw:Mail.

Finishing off a side project (finally!) - February 16th '10

This past weekend I started working on a Flickr app that’s REST/JSON/JavaScript based (with a PHP back end generating the JSON). It’s a very old project I never really got started on, but was pretty easy to (almost) complete in under 2 days.

I discovered… a Flickr ID is too large for any web browser JavaScript engine to handle; they rounded up randomly. HTML comments on photos are very annoying from a programmatic point of view. I really like JavaScript.

I used the code base from my portfolio and hacked it up, by taking out the # operations and using events on all the dynamic objects/elements. I also corrected the JSON transportation. Now I’m left with a few visual effects to create, and some misc behavioral changes.

I’m hoping to have v1.0 released this week under the MIT license.

Spiral has been delegated to “weekend only” status - January 25th '10

With the new employment at Maple Works Technology, working on Spiral has become very low priority due to other projects and having a fiance. I’m hoping to have a spring beta.

Holiday slow down - December 29th '09

With Christmas having come and gone, and New Years just around the corner; development has slowed to a crawl on Spiral due to a lack of time for this project. It should pick up again in January, after I return from Jamaica where I’m shooting a wedding.

I’m hoping to have a beta up and running on the in-house dev server soon!

The ADO Entity framework is interesting. - December 19th '09

I’m using it for the first time with Spiral, and it’s slowing down my planned rapid development cycle. It’s definitely worth learning, and I’m sure it’s going to be worth while based on Spiral’s schema. I’m not sure if I’m a fan of CUD (CRUD?) though, because it complicates things and complains about FK relations sometimes.

Spiral’s database is going to be fast - December 17th '09

Based on this Microsoft TechNet article I’ve refactored the Views used to access Spiral’s data via sproc . This is one of many changes which have allowed for a much broader role for the applicable. Spiral will be released as a community portal.

The database will be deployed as SQLExpress and be cluster ready if you attach it to SQL Server 2005 or newer.

Change in the dev roadmap - December 16th '09

Development of aw:Mail is being put on hold. Development of Spiral, a .Net MVC2 based blog is going forward.

aw:Calendar upgraded to 1.3.3 - December 9th '09

I decided to make a small incremental upgrade to aw:Calendar and created a “weekend” class for the days that fall on Saturday or Sunday.

aw:Browser upgraded to 1.3.1 - December 7th '09

Today after noticing I had left the application/javascript type set on the aw:Browser demo, I noticed IE 8 wasn’t running the JavaScript properly after going a few directories deep. Putting try() into a few functions was all that was needed. I’m not surprised only IE needed this.

Deployed avoidwork code for a personal project - December 4th '09

This week I relaunched jasonmulligan.com, my photography portfolio. The website was hastily put together almost a year ago, and was the basis for some ideas that became various aw:Apps (released, and in development).

This new version is running our JavaScript app “aw:Dashboard” which generates a very flexible GUI with skins for computers and smart phones like the Apple iPhone. An Android skin should be enabled today or Monday.

Moving the website to an avoidwork code base was extremely easy and the gains were immediate. Visual effects were rolled out within minutes, and later removed for Internet Explorer users due to the browser’s poor JavaScript performance.

I’m planning on integrating some of the dashboard changes in our web based E-Mail client that is currently under development.

Upgraded avoidwork - November 24th '09

I deployed a modified Master Page object this morning on avoidwork that I had made for a client yesterday. This method is lifted from .Net (and is pretty common in varying degrees of execution with PHP), and allows for a good amount of functionality; such as skins.

Holidays will be entertaining with skins, and automatically activated.

Guest account on the SVN - November 20th '09

A guest account has been setup for the aw:Apps that have been released. Daily builds will be available for download when they’re in development. More information can be found on the application pages.

Small server updates - November 19th '09

Our Linux and Windows development servers received a new dashboard. These will be upgraded quarterly.

aw:Calendar upgraded to 1.3.1 - November 13th '09

I added boolean() to handle the optional third parameter of createCalendar(). This fixes a potential bug. Download

aw:Calendar gets a fast incremental upgrade to 1.3 - November 12th '09

Shortly after releasing 1.2 a friend suggested I add a ‘Clear’ option to the calendar for scenarios where a null date is valid. A few minutes later the request has been filled as an optional parameter. Adding ‘true’ as a third parameter to the createCalendar() function will enable the Clear option.

aw:Calendar 1.2 is out! - November 12th '09

This little upgrade brings a lot with it. First there’s localization with an ISO 8601 standard default output. Next is the updated CSS allowing for anything, easily. Last is the addition of deleting variables, to keep things running smoothly in any deployment.

It’s licensed under the MIT license, so it’s free to use/include in your application.

aw:Browser gets a major upgrade today - November 10th '09

Today aw:Browser 1.3 was released, and it marks a substantial change in the application’s structure and feature set. It’s been moved completely to OOP from a mix of OOP and Procedural programming. Generally speaking, this is a very good thing. It allows for easy extension by users and gives a solid base for the next set of features to be built upon.

1.4 will feature a tool set for administrators, including a GUI control panel for even more customization.

Need a MIMEType XML asset? - November 2nd '09

I did today, and discovered there isn’t a relatively complete asset that’s easy to find. So, while working the next version of aw:Browser I decided to make one.

Starting next week… - October 30th '09

A few planned upgrades to aw:Browser and aw:Calendar are scheduled for release. These changes will extend the usability of the apps and make them more flexible for reusing in your own web apps.

After that, the exciting stuff begins. We’re in the prototype phase of our first iPhone app. I wish I could say more.

Website Upgrades - October 29th '09

In preparation for the next project, the contact page has been updated with an AJAX form, and the JavaScript asset file had a few functions added to it to facilitate everything.