Category: Development

Cool trick for parsing URLs without JavaScript libraries

 

Ryan Baxter tweeted this out earlier and I wanted to share it with all you JavaScript developers out there as it is a nice and elegant way to not have to use a library such as URI.js:

var parser = document.createElement('a');
parser.href = "http://example.com:3000/pathname/?search=test#hash";

parser.protocol; // => "http:"
parser.hostname; // => "example.com"
parser.port;     // => "3000"
parser.pathname; // => "/pathname/"
parser.search;   // => "?search=test"
parser.hash;     // => "#hash"
parser.host;     // => "example.com:3000"

Enjoy and thanks Ryan!

Part 1: What has Bruce been up to?

The last year has been a total absolute blur. Between teaching at Clark Collge, working on projects at Elguji, volunteer work and more has consumed every available minute of my time. I have also been quiet on a few fronts on purpose. Let me first start with Elguji.

Elguji Software

Elguji has been very fortunate to have a loyal (and still growing) Notes and Domino customer base. While sales of our flagship IdeaJam for Domino have slowed down a bit, we are still serving dozens of customers around the globe. In fact, we are hard at work (and have been for some time) on IdeaJam 2.0. IdeaJam 2.0 is not simply an upgrade to IdeaJam 1.9.2 but, a complete re-write of the core application made to be “mobile first”. Yes, it will still be a great web application that will blow your mind and we are very excited at the progress we have made. For now just know that we have done our best to include the feedback we have received from our customers. Stay tuned for more on IdeaJam 2.0.

Where Elguji has really transformed and rolled with the times is with our “event-based” IdeaJam cloud platform. We are now providing customers around the globe with what we call “event-based” jams. These jams can be provisioned in 60 seconds or less. Jams run anywhere from 1 day to 3 months. It’s whatever the customer needs. Some of you may have seen that we are running jams for IBM Rational, IBM Websphere and IBM developerWorks. In fact, we just completed a project directed by IBM CEO Ginni Rometty. Our customer work also includes colleges and universities, branches of the US Government and many other global institutions. We couldn’t have done with without the professionals at The London Developer Co-Op.

You might ask “who is driving all of this business to Elguji?”. Let me tell you that there are two primary product evangelists for Elguji 1) IBM and 2) Existing customers. IBM is constantly referring customers to us, primarily for our event-based jams. One of the worlds largest financial institutions who will go unnamed has also sent us plenty of new customers. We are very fortunate to have such great relationships with IBM and our customers.

Elguji is also cooking up a brand new product that frankly, I’m super psyched about. It’s 1,000 times bigger than IdeaJam and I am lucky to be working with some of the brightest people in the world on it.

OpenNTF

In October I departed the world of OpenNTF and not longer after that the community which I was part of for over a dozen years gave me the most wonderful send-off I have ever seen. Dozens of blog posts, tweets and more – all with the #thanksbruce hash tag. I wanted to thank everybody sooner but as usual, life got in the way. Thank you to all my friends and colleagues for their heartfelt love on Wednesday, November  2, 2013. I owe much of my success in this world to many of you.

I am now wrapping up the development of a new website for OpenNTF with Niklas Heidloff, Per Henrik Lausten and Martin Rolph (Oval Systems). A new website was long overdue for OpenNTF and I felt compelled to see the project through it’s fruition. It will be a few more weeks before you see the new site. We are now in the user acceptance testing phase.

Once the website launches, I will remain an Honorary Board Member and continue to help support the efforts of the open source community. I do however wish that the IBM Connections team would embrace OpenNTF more than they have. It’s important for the overall IBM Collaboration Solutions app dev community more than ever. </getting off my soap box>

Part 2 coming on Monday.

From the OpenNTF Way Back Machine

While cleaning up my Mac today I found this oldie but goodie from 2002:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 

OpenNTF.org Releases OpenNTF Mail V1.0 for Lotus Notes 6

 Vancouver, WA – October 15, 2002 – OpenNTF.org has announced OpenNTF Mail Version 1.0 for Lotus Notes 6.  OpenNTF Mail is based on the standard Lotus Notes 6 mail template and adds many additional enhancements.  These enhancements include:

  • Quick Mail – A feature that allows the user to quickly compose a new memo to predefined recipients
  • Quick Forward – A feature that allows the user to predefine recipients, and using drag and drop, quickly forward a message
  • Reply and Forward indicators added to views
  • Follow-Up – Ability to flag messages for Follow-Up and, using drag and drop, place them in a
    Follow-Up folder
  • User Interface – Modified the Mail and To Do user interfaces to more closely resemble the Calendar color scheme
  • Productivity Actions
    • Added a Send/Receive action to the Mail outline
    • Added a Find Memo action to the Mail outline
    • Added the Outbox action to the Mail Outline
    • Added a Resend Memo action to the Sent view

Other features include an Advanced tab in the Tools | Show Delivery Information dialog to show additional message header information; a feature that lets the user stop the sending of a Return Receipt on a message; added a Message Size indicator within a Memo; modified views and folders to contain date and time; modified the size column to show kilobytes instead of bytes; and added a key icon indicator to the Inbox to let you know that a message is encrypted.

After meeting on the OpenNTF.org web site, a small group of OpenNTF.org developers or “cooks”, from Norway, The Netherlands, Australia, The United States, France, Chile and Canada, came together to collectively add features to the Notes 6 mail template.  The group used the OpenNTF Project Management Template (developed earlier this year) to manage feature requests, task management, bug tracking, documentation, discussions, news and other application development tasks.   Bruce Elgort, an “Iron Chef” for the OpenNTF Mail template, says “Working with a team of developers whom had never even met, many living in different time zones, is simply amazing!  We went from specification to a deliverable in two weeks.  Using email, Notes replication, Sametime Instant Messaging and Web Conferencing we had all the tools we needed to work as a global team.  Can you say collaborate?”   Vince Shuurman (Oirschot, The Netherlands) who is also an “Iron Chef” on the project says “We were able to work separately and replicate the portions of the template we were responsible for.  We simply refreshed our local mail templates and were then working with the latest build.  We also used the new Domino Designer 6 “design-element-locking” feature to control edits to design elements.”

The OpenNTF Mail Template V1.0 will be available on the organization’s web site at http://www.OpenNTF.org within 7-10 days.

About OpeNTF.org

OpenNTF.org was formed in December 2001 by Bruce Elgort and Nathan Freeman.  The mission of OpenNTF.org is to provide applications for Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino as open source which may be freely distributed, in order to increase the awareness of the power of Lotus Notes and Domino.

Contact:

Bruce Elgort
Co-Founder, OpenNTF.org
Bruce.Elgort@OpenNTF.org

Nathan Freeman
Co-Founder, OpenNTF.org
Nathan.T.Freeman@OpenNTF.org

Do you remember this?

Coming Soon – Bruce and Steve’s Coding School

Sometime in February 2014, Steve McDonagh and I will be launching an online coding school. I hear you saying “Bruce, there are tons of these available already. Why would you do this?”. Well, let me tell you why. Our school will hold one class at a time and will be limited to twenty students. Ten of them will work with Steve and ten of them will work with me.

Our first course “Introduction to JavaScript and jQuery” will be ten weeks in duration. We will be using an online Learning Management System and there will be homework (lots of it), quizzes, graded discussions and a final project. Let me tell you, the course won’t be easy but, if you work hard you will come out with an awesome set of foundational JavaScript skills. Steve and I will be there every step of the way for extra help via online meetings, Skype calls etc. Whatever it takes for you to succeed in our course – we will be there along the way.

Upon completion of the class, attendees can make a $50 donation that will be given to charity if they wish.

Enrollment will open starting in January. Stay tuned for more information and for a list of other courses we plan on offering.

Mac-cessibility Network: All Things Accessibility for Apple Products

On the October 13, 2013 episode of the legendary MacCast, Adam Christianson interviews  Josh de Lioncourt, a blind Apple products user. Josh is part of the Maccessibility Network which focusses on accessibility of Apple products:

Maccessibility is devoted to connecting, compiling, and providing easy access to the best resources for blind, visually impaired, and other disability groups using Apple products. It is maintained by a dedicated group of visually impaired volunteers, who are Apple enthusiasts themselves.

Maccessibility began in 2007 as a project on Lioncourt.com to provide news and informational materials to low and no vision users of the Mac platform. Additionally, it served as a resource to dispel false information regarding the accessibility of Apple products.

As somebody who relies on accessibility on both OS X and iOS I am surprised I didn’t know about the Maccessibility site sooner. Many thanks to Adam for a great interview with Josh and for his awesome MacCast podcast.

 

Camtasia 2 Update for Mac

TechSmith released version 2.5 of their Camtasia 2 for Mac software. Here are a list of the fixes and improvements:

Enhancements in Version 2.5.0

  • Added a share history window
  • Added Facebook and Twitter buttons in the share history window using the built-in social features of OS X 10.8 and later.
  • Improved capture frame rate by leveraging a new capture method on OS X 10.8 and later
  • Added an integrated color picker and a user preference for those who prefer the system color picker
  • Added a “Mix to mono” option which is useful when all the audio is in the left or right channel, and you’d like it in both
  • Added the ability to lock tracks to prevent edits from affecting the media on the track
  • Added the ability to turn tracks off, which hides the visuals and mutes the audio on the track
  • Added the option to use linear interpolation for key frame actions
  • Fixed an issue where the Media bin thumbnail was black for images larger than 5000×5000
  • Allow user to press Shift key after mouse down in order to make a range selection
  • Added the ability to use the Shift key with the comma and period keys to fine tune a timeline range selection
  • Limit the max width of an arrow to 100 to prevent rendering errors
  • Fixed an issue where the timeline didn’t auto-scroll when dragging the edge of a media clip to extend its duration
  • Disabled context menu items that will not work for offline source files in the media bin
  • Fixed an issue where keystrokes are not recorded correctly when the system is configured with JPN language settings
  • Fixed an issue where the canvas width could be selected but typing would not change the number in the edit box
  • Fixed an issue where a project could get into a corrupt state where it could not be saved or opened
  • Fixed an issue where thumbnails in the media bin could appear stretched
  • Fixed an issue where a freeze region effect is added to entire media rather than a set duration when added from the context menu
  • Fixed an issue where control + click did not bring up the contextual menu for an effect in the asset bin
  • Fixed an issue where repeated use of cut and undo could lead to a crash
  • Fixed an issue where the zoom slider could get stuck at a particular zoom level
  • Fixed performance problems when 2 stacked clips have a freeze region effect at the same time
  • Fixed a crash when exporting an annotation that has a device frame applied to it
  • Fixed an issue where dragging an action to the end of a media does not move it to the end unless you first zoom in on the timeline
  • Fixed a crash when exporting to Screencast.com using a project that contains markers
  • Fixed an issue where not all mask properties were red when in global edit mode
  • Fixed a crash when entering the captions view on systems where the “Arial” font is disabled
  • Fixed an issue where the lock aspect ratio in the Adjust Canvas dialog was not working correctly
  • Fixed an issue where you couldn’t tab between the input boxes in the Adjust Canvas dialog
  • Fixed a crash when trying to split media with multiple actions selected

I’m a big fan of this software and use it in my course development for Clark College and highly recommend it.

Please join me in welcoming three new OpenNTF Directors

OpenNTF announced earlier this week that there were three new Directors elected to the OpenNTF Board. They are:

  • Paul Withers
  • Nathan Freeman
  • Mark Leusink

I have the privilege of knowing and working with Paul, Nathan and Mark on many occasions. I’m confident that their knowledge, experience, creativity and vision will continue to infuse momentum into OpenNTF. Please join me in welcoming them to OpenNTF.

Please also be sure and thank Ulrich Krause and Julian Woodward for their time serving as Directors on the Board. Both Julian and Ulrich are both amazing individuals who I personally admire immensely.

As I announced in July I will not be returning to OpenNTF as a Director/Chairman of OpenNTF.  I will however remain as an Honorary Director and help OpenNTF in anyway I possibly can.

 

Source Control for Notes, Domino and XPages

A few months back FoCul Ltd. launched a wiki to collect all things related to source control for IBM Notes, Domino and XPages application development:

Source Control has many many advantages for both developers and organisations but it is a complex subject. At FoCul we have been running a project to adopt Source Control on our XPage projects. There is not much documentation about Source Control with DDE and getting this far has been both a difficult and rewarding process.

We don’t have all of the answers and we are still very much learning how it all works. We wanted to share what we have learned and also create a forum where others could share their knowledge so that the ICS community could maybe develop some best practices in this important area.

— Sean Cull

FoCul Source Control Best Practices Wiki

FoCul Source Control Best Practices Wiki >