Coming Soon: TaskTHIS² (A Titanium Application)

In the next week or so, I’ll be releasing the first beta of TaskTHIS².

Unlike the original, this version is a cross-platform desktop application. It’s being distributed on the Titanium platform.

Over the next few weeks I’ll discuss the technology behind it (all WebKit based: HTML/JS/CSS). And some of the libraries I built to make development easier (including my build script and a JavaScript class library called Klass.js). So be on the lookout for that!

TaskTHIS is Back!

TaskTHIS is up and running again. Sorry for the downtime, but since I host it for you guys for free, I don't think you can complain too much.

In the process, it's moved URLs as well. You can now find it at:

http://taskthis.elucidata-apps.com

The old URL (taskthis.darthapo.com) should redirect you there automatically.

I had to convert TaskTHIS from Rails 1.1 to Rails 2.1, which was not too fun. Especially since it had already been converted from pre-1.0 to 1.1.

Anyway, it's probably still a little rough around the edges, so if you find any bugs please add a post in the support forum.

Shuffling Servers

I'm in the process of shuffling servers around, so a lot of the apps/sites I've created will be down whilst I make the move.

Some things are already back up: ZooDotCom and Lil Monstas. Others, like Maelstrom and TaskTHIS are not.

In fact, TaskTHIS may take a little while longer to bring back up. I'm going to update it to Rails 2. That having been said, I did make a backup of the database before bringing it down. So when it returns all of your data will still be there.

Also, I've noticed that I post a lot fewer blog posts these days since I generally vent on my Twitter account, I wind up having not too much left to say. Funny that.

Comatose, TaskTHIS, and Theme Support. Oh My!

Well, I’ve been a little remiss in my open-source development of late. Many apologies, things have been a bit hectic. You know the feeling, I’m sure.

But that’s not why I’m posting. I thought I’d outline my ideas for the future of these projects and get your feedback and/or ideas.

Comatose, The Micro CMS Plugin

The things that are definitely coming…

Edge Rails - Since Rails 1.2 is now official, it’s time to finally support ‘edge rails’.

Actually, I have a version that runs on Rails 1.2 now, but I’m debating about Rails 1.1 backward compatibility. The new version changes quite a bit. The DEFER_COMATOSE_LOAD stuff goes away, replaced by better configuration support and a Dispatch::to_prepare block. Plus you no longer override the ComatoseAdminController for authentication, instead in the configuration you specify modules to include in the class. Oh yeah, and the controllers no longer extend ApplicationController.

Test Harness - The tests in the plugin itself are very spartan, at best. I have a horribly ugly test harness I use for the actual unit testing that I’m going to clean up and release.

Some possibilities…

Liquid Only - I really think I’m going to drop ERb support. How many of you use ERb over Liquid for page processing?

RESTful Pages - Perhaps using the new RESTfully CRUDDY support would be useful. The idea of having an API for pages is interesting.

Mount Behaviors - I haven’t thought this through yet, it just popped into my head: map.comatose_root 'devblog', :index=>'blog', :behavior=>'blog'

This example would add ‘blog-like’ support such as all children being paged entries (showing last 10, next page, last page, etc.), automatic hAtom microformat support, and maybe some sort of archives… I don’t know. I still haven’t thought about this too much.

The behavior support would be pluggable, much like text-filters and drops… Can you think of any other behavior that would make sense?

Maybe :behavior=>'syndicated' to create RSS/ATOM feeds of the child pages? Perhaps they’d be mixable by saying :behavior=>'blog syndicated' or :behavior=>'blog,syndicated'.

The probably nots…

Media Management - It just feels like too much. I have a hacked up version of Comatose that supports page attachments. But you wind up having to deal with upload directories, and file permissions and… It just feels too heavy. And too heavy != micro.

Perhaps it could be a separate plugin?

TaskTHIS

TaskTHIS is getting a bit long in the tooth. It was written right about the time some of my AJAX patches were being added to Rails. Which was pre 1.0. So, yeah. It needs some love.

It was created as a show-and-tell for the then-new-and-nifty AJAX support. Which, of course, is now old hat.

In keeping with the tradition of show-and-tell, I thought TaskTHIS would be an excellent application to show how to use the new CRUD/REST/Resources stuff in Rails 1.2.

I have a few ideas outlined here. The biggest ones are:

API - This is fairly straight-forward, we’ll get most if it from Rails. We’ll just add the appropriate authentication for the XML requests.

OpenID - I was thinking replacing the existing login system with OpenID authentication. I like the idea of just typing in my domain to login… Who needs passwords? Seriously though, this may be a bit controversial — please weigh in.

Oh, I forgot to mention, TaskTHIS.com is working again.

Theme Support Plugin

Basically, just add any outstanding patches and ensure it works on Rails 1.2. I imagine the routing stuff will need to be tweaked.

Whadda Ya Think?

What would/wouldn’t you like to see in any of these projects?

Who Stole December -- and, uh, January (and February)?

Wow, I haven’t posted in quite a while! Sorry about that. Things have just been kinda crazy.

Well then, lemme catch you up on a few things… I finished up a stint with Site5. I was helping them out on their new offering: Flashback — Be sure and check ‘em out, they’re a good bunch of guys ‘n gals that really care about web-hosting. [/plug]

There are a couple of patches to the theme_engine that I need to integrate and publish — look for that in the near future.

In the next few weeks I’m planning on releasing version 0.6 of TaskTHIS. It will fix some issues with Rails 1.0 (probably 1.1 at that point) and have better database support. Also, it’ll have some examples of AJAX failure handling (which I’ll talk more about in the next few days).

Activity on the Zoo Dot Com front! I’m writing several storylines now so that I can keep well ahead of schedule. And there’s something else, very exciting, in the works for ZDC — I can’t tell you about it now, though. Hopefully soon. Very soon.

I guess that’s pretty much it — Oh yeah, I moved too. Heh, a little time consuming that is. Anyway, I will now return to my more regular posting self — Stay tuned. Same M@ channel, same M@ time. (Did I just say that? Oh jeez…)