testing the new layout

I am doing a quick test if the new layout is actually working

playing with yui

I am playing around with YUI, the Yahoo! User Interface library for generating Ajax and Web 2.0 websites. I looked at several libraries, like Dojo, Prototype, and script.aculo.us, but YUI has a lot of documentation, a great section on patterns, seems very light. I was getting close to using prototype, but it is very close to Ruby on Rails, and I am not planning to use that stack for development, so YUI it is

The YUI library has a user, Jack Slocum who has added some great extensions. He shows off the effects very well on his blog. I love the way he creates pop-up comment boxes linked to specific paragraphs of his blog, and the smoot animation. He discusses his additions quite thoroughly and clearly, and dissecting his code is very educational. I will try to add some of my understanding in some entries here. I am not sure how far I can add code on the blogger site, but I will see if I can get some life examples to work

It is clear that working on this level with JavaScript needs a thorough understanding of the language, especially it's closures and object oriented nature. I will probably create a simple test site that lets me experiment with the features. Also working to create a more ambitious application

Comparing Java EE5 and RoR

I am planning to post a series of articles looking at setting up an EJB 3.0 environment using JBoss 4.04RC1 and comparing it with Ruby on Rails. I have been doing RoR for the last few months on my testbed programming, and I like it a lot. So you may ask, why switching back to Java/EJB? Well, several reasons, firstly I use the Java/JBoss/EJB combo at work, so everything I learn is far more directly applicable at work. Secondly, Java entusiasts are claiming that the new Java EE 5 will be far easier to start working in. Several ideas explored in Rails, such as no configuration for default situations, annotations, etc. make rapid web development much easier. Well, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. So here we go.

First of all, I made sure that I had Java 5 installed, then I downloaded JBoss 4.0.4RC1. Ran the installer and ran it by going into the JBOSS_DIR bin directory typing.

sh run.sh

at the prompt. And after a few seconds:






















success!

Progress so far

Well, the Smile parsing is working, and I am now working to make sure that I can edit transactions, and handle transfers. Then I need to handle liability accounts, and spending&saving categories. If that is done I have the basic outline of a useful budgeting tool.

The next step is making it into the outline of a basic PFM tool.

Frank's Blog

It is always annoying to find out halfway through a task that there is a better way of doing it. In this case I found out about XHConn.js, a nice javascript class for doing Ajax calls. It is a much cleaner way than I was planning so I can throw away my old template file and start writing a new one. When that is done I can finally start to think about adding some new functionality.

success with xdoclets

I am happy to report a lot of success with using xdoclets. I have now written a template that generates most of the JavaScript necessary for hooking the formBean with an ajaxForm in the jsp or html page. I decided for the moment to keep it simple and not use any of the merging functionality of xdoclet to inject the onLoad function straight into the jsp

Writing new XDoclet tags

VECNA Technologies : What We Do contains all the information necessary to write taghandlers and subtaks. I can do most of what I want using the standard templates method. The biggest problem is that using the standard template tags I can not see a way to create a simple comma-delimited list of all the properties defined in my forms.

The cleanest way to achieve this is obviously writing some taghandlers, what is what I am now doing. This link seems to tell me exactly how to do this, so I am off to write it.