Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Some updates.
I haven't posted for a while so this is a bit of a catch up entry....
Some updates on things mentioned previously in the blog;
1. I'm taking part in the community acceptance testing process of NetBeans 5.0 , which kicks off next week , I'm glad to be putting something back after being a bit hard on NetBeans over the years , I'm going to be testing the new cvs stuff , eclipse project importing and Mobile. Looking forward to it!!
2.Gmail still Rocks!!! I'm so pleased with gmail , I've uninstalled inboxer - there's just no need for a client side spam filter when gmail zaps all but one or two a day. I still get a few good emails marked as spam but you have a month to retrieve them before they are zapped for ever. The ability to bring up my email wherever I can find a browser is just awesome , and with it's Ajax features it is responsive.
3. An update on my current projects (what am I coding basically!)
I'm getting really stuck in to Ajax (I think of a cleaning product which used to be sold in the UK when I hear the name !)- a fair few years ago I tried various iFrame hacks, dhtml and javascript ad nauseum to try and build some interactivity and flair into my web apps with limited success - things tended to work on only one specific flavour of browser at a time ie not just it works on IE but it works on ie 5.5 build xxx or mozilla 1.1 etc. This coupled with the pain of debugging javascript kept me away from the area. Now we have a level playing field with good browser support for style sheets javascript and xmlHttpRequest. So far I'm building ajax into java (servlet/jsp) web applications and a new Ruby on Rails front end to Quest the ror framework has ruby built in which is excellent I've found it useful for sanity checking stuff I'm doing in the java space. I'll post more later on both my ajax experience and my Ruby on Rails journey.
I'm also getting stuck into JFreeCharts , which is going great , I went down a bit of a dead end with EasyCharts , which as its name implies is easy to get up and running , but for us hasn't delivered on performance when compared with JFreeChart , so I bit the bullet and switched over to JFreeChart - as we had put our own intermediate layer between Quest and the charting engine it has meant the transition has been pretty painless - most of the difficulties have been because of shifting and increasing customer demands for different types of charts - all good fun.
Lastly I'm finishing off our Windows mobile apps (Quest Mobile will be out in a week or two and the other one which is still secret will be announced before the end of the year) , Visual Studio 2005 has really made this a lot faster than it would have been with the older toolset and is worth a post in its own right.
4. Have been trying to work smarter not harder recently , making sure I go for a walk at lunchtime , get to the gym a couple of times a week and so on - there's more to life than coding. Get as much out of each day as you can because life is what we do between the great holidays , evenings out , days in the sun.
Some updates on things mentioned previously in the blog;
1. I'm taking part in the community acceptance testing process of NetBeans 5.0 , which kicks off next week , I'm glad to be putting something back after being a bit hard on NetBeans over the years , I'm going to be testing the new cvs stuff , eclipse project importing and Mobile. Looking forward to it!!
2.Gmail still Rocks!!! I'm so pleased with gmail , I've uninstalled inboxer - there's just no need for a client side spam filter when gmail zaps all but one or two a day. I still get a few good emails marked as spam but you have a month to retrieve them before they are zapped for ever. The ability to bring up my email wherever I can find a browser is just awesome , and with it's Ajax features it is responsive.
3. An update on my current projects (what am I coding basically!)
I'm getting really stuck in to Ajax (I think of a cleaning product which used to be sold in the UK when I hear the name !)- a fair few years ago I tried various iFrame hacks, dhtml and javascript ad nauseum to try and build some interactivity and flair into my web apps with limited success - things tended to work on only one specific flavour of browser at a time ie not just it works on IE but it works on ie 5.5 build xxx or mozilla 1.1 etc. This coupled with the pain of debugging javascript kept me away from the area. Now we have a level playing field with good browser support for style sheets javascript and xmlHttpRequest. So far I'm building ajax into java (servlet/jsp) web applications and a new Ruby on Rails front end to Quest the ror framework has ruby built in which is excellent I've found it useful for sanity checking stuff I'm doing in the java space. I'll post more later on both my ajax experience and my Ruby on Rails journey.
I'm also getting stuck into JFreeCharts , which is going great , I went down a bit of a dead end with EasyCharts , which as its name implies is easy to get up and running , but for us hasn't delivered on performance when compared with JFreeChart , so I bit the bullet and switched over to JFreeChart - as we had put our own intermediate layer between Quest and the charting engine it has meant the transition has been pretty painless - most of the difficulties have been because of shifting and increasing customer demands for different types of charts - all good fun.
Lastly I'm finishing off our Windows mobile apps (Quest Mobile will be out in a week or two and the other one which is still secret will be announced before the end of the year) , Visual Studio 2005 has really made this a lot faster than it would have been with the older toolset and is worth a post in its own right.
4. Have been trying to work smarter not harder recently , making sure I go for a walk at lunchtime , get to the gym a couple of times a week and so on - there's more to life than coding. Get as much out of each day as you can because life is what we do between the great holidays , evenings out , days in the sun.
