Blogsphere
Ok, I am starting to get the hang of this Blogshpere software. Especially
since I also started using the picture database template for my photo
gallery. Picture gallery is based
on the same Blogsphere template (available at openNTF.org)
I am using for this blog site. By putting all my pictures in the gallery
right off the bat, I have access to a thumb, a 800×600 scaled version,
and the original "bild".
I am not so "up-to-date" with all the web interface advances
over the last few years, such as XML, RSS, CSS. I also was never
much into web development before that. But, by necessity, I am catching
up quick. I always seemed to wind up coding all the applications that were
back-end-process heavy. A lot of Notes security, the "middleware"
portion of data migration both batch and real-time, building relational
data models to store Notes data in Oracle and SQL Server, fax server integration
into a large scale trading operation, and meetings. Meeting, meetings,
meetings.
Looking under the hood of these two open source templates has not been
very fun. Very enlightning, but not very fun. Like touring a sausage factory.
Maybe I am being too critical because I don’t really understand how the
entire open source process works. I guess I will sum up my understanding
of the process to date: Cook 1 did his or her or their part, any other
chefs out there want some more functionality, feel free to cook it up yourself.
As I contemplate contributing to the open souce effort for software that
I find personally useful, I realize the amount of time that must be committed
to such efforts. Its just like work, except for free.
Anyway here is a list so far of what I am going to look into.
1. Saving from the web after a conection time-out.
2. Waaayyyyy too slow saving a story.
3. The html insertion to a RTF is no bueno. I can see by browsing thru
the web that it is a buggy situation, but hey, thats what they need good
developers for right, to go around?
4. Easier form modification. Too much sausage. I know documentation is
the bane of coding. Two things short of real chapter and verse documentation
that is absolutely mandatory is self-documenting code and liberal use of
comments within the code to outline your logic. Six months to a year down
the road, if I dont do this, I cant read my own code. You think you will
never forget, but trust me, after twenty years in this gig, I know, you
will forget your logic sooner rather than later. Also, if the original
developer does not do this, it makes it very difficult for the next programmer
to come along and modify it.
5. Display is not correct when the IE browser text size is set to one of
the higher sizes. The columns tend to over lap. This probably can be handled
with css settings? Display also seems to not like 800×600 on a 19"
monitor. (The kids change resolution on the wife’s computer for games.)
I dont know really how to fix these issues, but I am sure it is doucmented
somewhere.