The Box

[dflemstr]

Hey,
I've sent you an e-mail with the title "The Box reaches version 1.0". I'm sending this PM because I know you get a lot of spam-email, and wouldn't want my message to get lost

Wow, that was fast already
Haven't seen the mail yet (and too tired to read it right now), but I'll try to do so tomorrow

Nice work!

Hey,
thanks for considering this. It's been 3 days now, and I haven't heard from you yet. Which is OK; there's no real need to hurry, but the thing is that I'm going to have my vacations soon, and it'd be good if we could get this stuff over with before then.

So I have two questions:

1. Are you still interested in hosting this?
2. If yes: When would be a good time for you to set this up?

In the mean time, I've uploaded 2 new versions of the app (1.0.1 and 1.0.2) with hot fixes, and I will continue to release such smaller releases, so be sure to grab the latest version from http://github.com/dflemstr/box/downloads if you decide to host it!

Cheers,
dflemstr

Yeah, I'm still interested
Good time to set it up might probably be next week... I didn't find your mail yet, got too many mails
If you tell me what name you used to send it, I can use the search feature to find it

Aww, I'll actually be gone the whole of next week (as mentioned:vacations), so bad timing there... But any other time would be fine, or you might manage to set it up on your own; my instructions should be fairly complete.
Oh and I'm (unsurprisingly perhaps) called David Flemström.

The mail that I sent contains complete installation instructions and such, so even though I'm gonna be gone for the whole of next week, ED *could* manage to install it without assistance (He's an experienced hosting provider and has surely dealt with Servlet Containers before). The communication is slow because we both have lots of stuff to do so I haven't head back from him yet.

By the way, I'll be leaving today at 5 PM (and I'll figuratively be gone from the surface of the earth; unreachable), so if there's anything I should know about before then, let me know.

EDIT: Installation instructions are here: http://wiki.github.com/dflemstr/box/installation

 

[foxblock]

Well then, looking forward to this
Do you have any objections to a blog post before your return (if ED manages to set it up) or should I wait before reporting?

Here is an updated German translation:
http://pastebin.com/WTQj7SRS
please note that the current core.properties file is outdated and does not feature the latest additions (like "Popular Categories", etc.), so I could not translate them yet.
Also it's nice that you add not-translated lines to the bottom of the file, but actually this creates more work for me than not doing so would as I use TortoiseMerge to check for untranslated lines.

Have a good vacation and see you in a week.

foxblock out

 

[dflemstr]

Well then, looking forward to this
Do you have any objections to a blog post before your return (if ED manages to set it up) or should I wait before reporting?

Well, if that happens, then sure! As long as the published URL is final; don't want to confuse users.

Here is an updated German translation:
http://pastebin.com/WTQj7SRS
please note that the current core.properties file is outdated and does not feature the latest additions (like "Popular Categories", etc.), so I could not translate them yet.

Ok, core.properties updated, and added the two lines that weren't translated yet (I don't know whether I missed anything else except "Popular {categories,searches}", don't have time to check)

Also it's nice that you add not-translated lines to the bottom of the file,

It's just me being lazy; I use a script for adding translation lines, that involves "echo 'foo' >> bar.properties"

but actually this creates more work for me than not doing so would as I use TortoiseMerge to check for untranslated lines.

Ok, new policy: I add the translations in core.properties and nowhere else. Untranslated entires in different languages will fall back to the language neutral (English) translation.

Oh and before I go, I'll release v1.1 so that ED won't have to compile the app himself to get the latest changes from the last couple of days (no other reason than that).

For those of you asking themselves what version scheme I use (a very select few of you, I'm sure ):

Spoiler

1.0, 2.0 → Major release with groundbreaking changes
1.0.1, 1.0.2 → Maintenance changes that have been made after a release, based on that release (aka: nothing from the 'develop' branch was pulled in)
1.1, 1.2 → Not-so-groundbreaking releases, but that introduce new features and that originate from 'develop'

See Vincent Driessen's branching model for more info: http://nvie.com/git-model

Have a good vacation and see you in a week.

See ya!

 

[God Ginrai]

Does the Pandora have a JVM that I don't know about?

It doesn't? I thought that JamVM was in there... I'll use Python or something then, or just straight C (it has to be done sooner or later), but not today, no time.

Did you already started with this?
If not focuss on the webpage, i'm currently starting to develop an C++ programm.

Any progress on this? I'm patiently waiting for a command-line utility for installing my PNDs, so I'm very interested in this.

-God Ginrai

 

[dflemstr]

OK so I'm back...

Did you already started with this?
If not focuss on the webpage, i'm currently starting to develop an C++ programm.

Any progress on this? I'm patiently waiting for a command-line utility for installing my PNDs, so I'm very interested in this.

I'll make a GUI tool for you if you wish. Why GUI? Because I don't own a Pandora, and don't know which hacks to use to add a binary to the CLI $PATH.

(EDIT: and it's also easier to simply use the PND appdata dir for storing configs rather than having to mess with /etc/pandora and permissions... as I said, I don't own a Pandora)

 

[God Ginrai]

OK so I'm back...

Did you already started with this?
If not focuss on the webpage, i'm currently starting to develop an C++ programm.

Any progress on this? I'm patiently waiting for a command-line utility for installing my PNDs, so I'm very interested in this.

I'll make a GUI tool for you if you wish. Why GUI? Because I don't own a Pandora, and don't know which hacks to use to add a binary to the CLI $PATH.

(EDIT: and it's also easier to simply use the PND appdata dir for storing configs rather than having to mess with /etc/pandora and permissions... as I said, I don't own a Pandora)

That would be appreciated.

I still would like a text-based version, tho'. Would it be possible to add another app in the PND for the GUI that pops up a terminal that can use the utility? (By this I mean actually including a terminal in the PND) I know this sounds like I'm trying to overcomplicate things, but it sounds to me like this might be a solution to not knowing the hacks to make it work in the standard terminal, and I would definitely prefer a text-based version to a GUI one. (Not that you shouldn't make the GUI one, because I know a lot of people would prefer the GUI one to the text-based version) Or maybe the GUI could have a terminal mode where you can interact with it like it is a text-based utility? o_ô

-God Ginrai

 

[dflemstr]

OK, a quick status update...

As I've said before in this thread, I intend to get the site up and running completely (on an openpandora domain) before I start developing surrounding tools etc.

And this goal is soon to be reached; EvilDragon is setting up a sub domain and SSH account for me as soon as he has time (or as soon as he reads my response - basically containing "OK" - to his PM)

Meanwhile, in the lands of GitHub, where The Code of Pandora's Box rests, tidings tell that amazing things have happened.
Specifically:

• A HUGE database optimization has arrived. The whole site has half the loading time compared to before. Before, it could reach up to 300 milliseconds, which is catastrophic. It's now around 150 ms in development mode, and when the cache is active, it hovers around 95ms. This optimization has not arrived at dflemstr.dyndns.org yet.
  (All times measured with a ping to the server of 10 ms. So, if you're on a crappy connection, you'll still have long loading times of course; deal with it)
• The site has gotten small design improvements with gradients and shadows; nothing major.
• I'm now starting to work on a complete redesign of the front end based on the recommendations in a thread in General. It'll be live before the end of this weekend.
• I'll (hopefully) also have the openpandora site up and running by the end of this weekend if I get access till then.

 

[foxblock]

Update on the German translation (adding two new lines):
http://pastebin.com/J3WtZWxZ

I don't especially like the new "design improvements" the shadow puts me off, but I am anti-gradient in general, so don't listen to me
I am happily waiting for the redesign

foxblock out

EDIT: One thing popping into my mind:
To make the tag cloud more read-able could you darken every second word, just a bit?

Also:

Spoiler

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

 

[God Ginrai]

Also:

Spoiler

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

That's the icon for Firefox betas.

-God Ginrai

 

[foxblock]

No the screenshot was not about the icon (maybe I should have cropped that), it was more about the line-break in the top bar, shifting some text over the application name.

 

[dflemstr]

No the screenshot was not about the icon (maybe I should have cropped that), it was more about the line-break in the top bar, shifting some text over the application name.

Yeah well that design is old now anyways so no prob

Also, I'd recommend that you stop fixing the German translation for a while, since the new design might result in massive amounts of strings being removed, and a few being added as well.

 

[milkshake]

have you got a sneak peek for us yet?

 

[sebt3]

have you got a sneak peek for us yet?

Calm down, he is already working on it like a machine...

 

[dflemstr]

have you got a sneak peek for us yet?

Calm down, he is already working on it like a machine...

Well to be completely honest, I'm actually PMing ED right now, and then I'm gonna eat some kind of dinner (it's 7:30 PM here) for 5 minutes before going back to doing some coding.

But yeah, if you want to generalize... I do work on it like a machine

 

[God Ginrai]

have you got a sneak peek for us yet?

Calm down, he is already working on it like a machine...

Well to be completely honest, I'm actually PMing ED right now, and then I'm gonna eat some kind of dinner (it's 7:30 PM here) for 5 minutes before going back to doing some coding.

But yeah, if you want to generalize... I do work on it like a machine

You never responded about a more realtime way to communicate in the other topic. I want to talk to you about this in realtime; That way I don't have to wait forever for a response. <.<

-God Ginrai

 

[dflemstr]

You never responded about a more realtime way to communicate in the other topic. I want to talk to you about this in realtime; That way I don't have to wait forever for a response. <.<

-God Ginrai

Well, I'm on FreeNode now, ping me if you want something

 

[milkshake]

any update on this

I'll spare you the loading time, so here's a clickable thumbnail:

I spy a sneak peak on this desktop screen shot that you posted can we see more ?

 

[dflemstr]

any update on this

I'll spare you the loading time, so here's a clickable thumbnail:

I spy a sneak peak on this desktop screen shot that you posted can we see more ?

I have had to slow down the development pace a little, since I have other commitments and can't work on this as much as I was able to in the past. Before, I had self-imposed deadlines because I wanted to get the application up and running before day X, but now that there's a working version of Box available, and I'm still waiting for ED to get some spare time and upgrade his server with some new software (Tomcat 5.5 - the bare minimum for the app to work) so we can get this stuff up and running, there's not as much of an incentive for me to make progress.

So I have 3 concurrent redesigns in the works, and am deciding which one to use via process of elimination. They all use completely different frameworks and design decisions, and are each based on different suggestions from people in the community (I won't be able to "merge them" since they are so radically different). I try to create basic implementations for each suggestion and then discard them if they're unpractical before committing too much time to them.

So the thing in the screenshot is an early port of the application to Vaadin and GWT; I basically got tired of writing 10 000's of lines of CSS (believe me, I've counted them) and Javascript, and wanted to get something practical with fast loading times quickly, so I deleted all of my HTML and CSS and JS code, and started from scratch for the front end (The design I'm following would have required that anyways). So we'll see how it goes; the result should be sweet if I manage to pull it off.

I might have time for another coding session tomorrow; by then I might be able to generate some slightly more impressive screenshots as well. 2 AM, signing off, g'night.