Ernies Tech Thoughts

One tool I had missed from Windows days is tortoiseSVN which integrated svn commands into Windows explorer. Often the command line is quick and easy to use, but if I want to check in a subset of changed files I find the GUI way quicker.

In Linux it was all command line until I came across nautilus-script-collection-svn in the Ubuntu repositories which adds a menu on right click to perform subversion commnands. In Ubuntu 8.10 also need to issue the following at the command line: nautilus-script-manager enable Subversion

There is no visual highlighting of changed files etc in Nautilus like you get in TortoiseSVN.

I have begun the search for a software app to manage project tracking and collaboration. It will need to be browser based so I can have it used internally and externally for Aura Media. Using PHP as the scripting language is the preference as that is what I am most comfortable with, but I am not against a solution that used Python or Ruby. The last requirement is a free and open source license.

In the past I have been a happy Mantis user for bug and issue tracking. So much that I have installed it in a few client sites. However now I want a broader product that includes time tracking and more collaboration features. Also Mantis is showing its age in a visual sense, and this can put off less technical users. Project tracking is the aim, not project planning with features like gannt charts.

In the past I did look at ActiveCollab, but they changed their license, and Streber, but it was immature and moving in a more wiki direction.

My current investigation lisr is:

• ProjectPier (activecollab fork)
• the terribly named OpenGoo (another activecollab fork)
• Redmine (RoR based)

Open to any other suggestions.

When I do web development, my browser of choice is Firefox. With geat extensions like Web Developer, tracking down HTML / CSS issues is made so much easier. There are plenty of others like Live HTTP Headers and Search Status to name just 2.

However when I am just browsing the web, my browser of choice is Opera, and has been for a while now. Performance wise I have found it better than firefox. This is just a perception, without any rigorous analytics. part of the answer is probably to do with FF being slowed down by the instaled extensions. Remember I am running Linux (Ubuntu), so Safari and Google Chrome are not available at this time. Konqueror is a good alternative when I was on KDE.

Yes Opera is not free software, just freeware, but for me in this case, its the best tool for the job.

I am a better back end programmer (php, mysql etc.), but I like to play around with CSS and XHTML. So I decided to put together my own WordPress theme for this blog. It is not going to win any design awards, but I am happy with what I quickly put together. The theme is very lightweight with only 1 graphic currently being used. The colour choice comes from the m o d e r n . a r t palette.

This is just a first draft, and it will be refined over time. My old buddy IE6 shows a few differences, and only Firefox and Safari get the rounded corners from their versions of the CSS3 border-radius property.

But hey I like it.

A new version of Wordpress has been released. It is a minor security release related to the Snoopy class, and can be upgraded with just 2 files. Now just waiting for inbuilt threaded comments in WP 2.7.

For many years I have disliked JavaScript, and avoided its use unless absolutely necessary. This goes back many years from some of the atrocious things JavaScript was used for on the web, and the mess of a language it was to use in early web browsers. About 2 years ago I gave it another look, but all my dislike was confirmed by a terrible book I had purchased. I will not name it, as I am embarrassed actual money was handed over.
There can be no doubting that in the past couple of years, a lot of great work has been done using JavaScript to produce some really usable web sites. Obviously I am missing something. So given I had already decided to go to the web directions conference in Sydney, I paid up the extra to attend the javascript workshop by Douglas Crockford. This is a person who can show me the light.
Its seems js or ECMAScript, or whatever it is called, is really a chameleon. And for all its terrible parts, javascript does have good parts. My impressions of a simple language with some OO, has been completely changed. Prototypal Inheritance, lambdas, closures, object augmentation, and functions as first class objects. All of this suprised me, and many others. There is a different way of thinking possible, but it was cloaked in a classical inheritance model.

“JavaScript instead uses operators that look classical, but behave prototypally.”

Douglas had too much material to present in 1 day, so some was skipped, and parts skimmed. So after a mentally intense day, I now have a very great appreciation for js, and looking forward to giving it some real use. Ideas and preconceptions need to be unlearnt, but this is good.

A major challenge of web development is that a particular OS and browser of the end user is not guaranteed, and so many must be catered for. This is not as bad as it used to be, now that Netscape 4, and Internet Explorer 5 and earlier have been consigned to history. This leave IE6, 7 and soon 8, Firefox, Safari and Opera. That is still plenty of scope for variation, and the general problem is IE6. So the decision by 37Signals to discontinue support for IE6 in mid August is an interesting development. It is also a bold move, but that is the way 37 Signals so things, by not catering to the entire world.
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For the last 2 years I had planned to attend the Web Directions conference in Sydney, but various work and family commitments have meant this has not happened. Well this year there are no excuses, and I am there. I have signed up for the 2 day conference plus ‘Javascript - The Good Parts’ workshop by Douglas Crockford. From a front end perspective, Javascript is my relative technical weakness, but something I am looking to fill in, now that I have moved past my all javascript is evil mindset.
The one problem I do have with the conference program is that I know there will be clashes between presentations I want to see, as it is divided into 3 tracks, and my interest crosses all 3. But what a problem to have. The presentations I am most looking forward to are : ‘Elegant Web Typography’, ‘Javascript libraries - Putting the cross in cross-browser compatible’ and ‘Web APIs, Oauth and OpenID: A developer’s guide’.

See you there.

After my previous post regarding my struggle to find a Linux laptop in Australia, I have now been given a suggestion that may solve the problem. While waiting for my daughter to finish dance class, I stopped into a company called TopBit Computing. I have never dealt with them before, but the sales guy seemed to know his stuff.
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It is time to get a new laptop for work purposes. The current Dell laptop is now 3 years old, and although it still runs perfectly, it was always a desktop replacement, and never designed to be moved around. And although it originally came pre installed with Windows XP, it has been a Kubuntu machine for most of its time.
So besides being smaller (12-13″ screen), lighter and with much longer battery life, my other requirement was that I do not need Windows installed or pay for the disks. The Kubuntu Linux 8.04 with KDE 3.5 CD was waiting and that would be the operating system.
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