Web Design/Development Entries
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Jun192010
Unifying Django Pluggable Apps?
So I have been thinking about this for a while now. I love Django and one of the features I enjoy most is the ability to easily plug in any third party app. But there has always been one issue that I'm sure many of us have thought about.
1. Different App, Different Author, Different Approach
The biggest issue I have with re-usable apps, is that every author uses a different naming scheme, and not only that, they may also use a completely different widget for a …
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Jun022010
django-video: A long overdue update
When I first developed django-video, it was mainly for personal use, and to plug a gap in django re-usable apps (there was no open and freely available video apps for django at the time). Shortly after I released my app, I discovered that another app exists by the name of django-videologue.
I have not tested django-videologue because the app I created suited my personal needs perfectly. It is my understanding hower that django-videologue was created by the django-photologue author (please correct me if I'm wrong) and if so, I believe that django-videologue will be an excellent application.
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Apr272010
Switching Themes in Gnome Shell
As many of you may know, Gnome3 is due for release later this year, and with it's release, we will see Gnome-Shell become the new window manager for many Linux distributions based on Gnome. I have played around with Gnome-Shell and I have to say that I really like how it's making everyday tasks something that feels natural and simple. I really look forward to the end result.
I did however have one initial complaint about Gnome-Shell, and that was that it's not easy to change themes, yet. What I do like, is that the gnome developers decided …
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Apr242010
Open Standards in Digital Design
Though I consider myself a mediocre designer, I have long held the opinion that, good design is not limited by the tools the individual uses, but by the mind of the individual using the tools. What this means is that, using certain “industry standard” tools, does not necessarily make you a better designer.
For this reason I have long been in strong opposition of certain “industry standard” design tools, like for example Photoshop. Don't get me wrong, I think the guys at Adobe have done a phenomenal job and created one of the best tools for digital design. …
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Apr222010
Hosting a Git Repo on Dropbox
Since my laptop is in for repairs, Chris de Bruyne from DesignWave agreed to help me put together the image above.
UPDATE: After using git on dropbox for a week now, I would recommend against using git in this way. I find I'm having far too much trouble for what it's worth, especially when using it on multiple machines. I feel that it's better to use normal git protocols and hosting solutions.
I have been using Git for quite some time …
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Apr172010
Animated PNG on the web
I'm slowly getting more excited about the new web technologies. One of these is the move to support animated PNG in browsers. Animated pictures are nothing new, we've had GIF for ages now, but the problem with GIF have always been that it only has 1 bit transparency. Which means, if you have a transparent background, you will see nasty edges.
PNG's on the other hand are much higher quality images. Here is a quick example of an animated PNG that I quickly made this evening. Note that this picture wont work in all browsers. You can have …
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Apr122010
Integrating CKEditor into Django
After writing a post on my reasons for writing my own blogging app, I received a couple of questions on how to integrate CKEditor into Django.
I thought I would write a tutorial post on how to do this, but a friend have since developed a great application that works brilliantly. Shaun's django-ckeditor can be found on github. (Note that we have since found out that django-ckeditor has a name conflict, and will probably be renamed soon)
The app provides 2 methods to integrate the editor, either …
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Apr052010
Moving a django site from MySQL to PostgreSQL
I've recently worked on a project where the client initially insisted on using MySQL for their website. I didn't have any reasons at the time to protest this choice since MySQL is ok for majority of sites and so I used MySQL as per their request.
With the latest updates to their website, we have however run into some MySQL limitations, in particular the default storage engine that MySQL uses.
We added an application called South to django, which manages database migrations as the models are updated etc. South works brilliantly …
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Mar202010
Don't anchor me down
The World Wide Web has long been a new and exciting application platform, and it just keeps getting better. No longer do we have to be confined to a single platform for an application, nor do we need an extra budget to develop for other platforms because these days, all we need is a browser and an Internet connection.
New technologies like HTML5, CSS3 and SVG is gearing up to make the web even better and more interactive. One of the biggest reasons I love web, is that it simplifies interface design. …
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Mar102010
How I deploy Django via Buildout
I used to just jump in and develop my webapps in Django without giving any thought about how I'm going to deploy the project. I always maintained that I can worry about that later, and that it's either more important, or more fun to actually sit and write some code and put together that exciting new project. I'm sure there are many other that may share that sentiment. I mean, the deployment of the project is just a minor and final step, right? Not always.
After deploying my first and second, and …
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Feb222010
My Django Blogging App
Why yet another django blogging app?
About a month ago, I finally decided to put my blogging application up on github. Now I know there are hundreds of blogging engines out there, and many of them are far better than the one I've created, but it was important for me to develop and keep extending my own, for the purpose of learning more. This is probably the biggest reason why I dont use some of the more well known blogging frameworks, such as Wordpress, or even django-mingus (which by the way looks …
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Feb192010
Why I Love django-photologue
When I first started working with Django, I didn't know about photologue. Whenever I needed an image for a particular model, I would use the standard django ImageField(). I would search on the internet for snippets and techniques on creating thumbnails for the images when they are saved. This became a bit tedious, and after searching for a while longer, I discovered a wonderful little app, which I still use from time to time, called sorl.
The next project I woked on required a gallery, I thought I'd take advantage …
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Sep132009
Block comenting python code in vim
Recently, I find myself wanting to do block commenting for my python scripts more and more often. Sometimes just to hide a piece of code, or disable it while I'm debugging etc.
Of course, in python the best way to do this is by putting a `#` at the start of the line, but this process can be quite tedious if you have lots of code you wish to comment. I decided to let vim do the work for me.
I placed the script in my vim plugins folder, and then mapped F6 to the BlockComment() call, …
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Jun162009
django-adzone Source Uploaded
I have been working on a django advertising application for use in some upcoming projects. Decided to make it openly available to the community. Please note that I found that there is another similair app called django-ads. I have not tested this one, so I dont know what it's like.
The main use case for this application is to allow a user to upload different types of ads, ie, text, banner, flash. These ads are added to a Category, and a Zone. Zones are just a silly name for the different areas on the site which can contain …
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Jun122009
teh_node moved to App Engine
For quite some time I've been bothered by the amount of memory and resources that my teh_node website was taking up on the server. This was mainly because it was running on Plone, and thought Plone is a very strong Content Management Framework, it was a bit overkill for the my needs.
I also wanted to integrate teh_node into my google accounts a bit stronger, so naturally, when I had some free time on Thursday, I decided to re-launch the website on Google App Engine, and also make use of other Google features within the site. The process …
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Jun052009
Spam bots halted with Akismet
Up until the start of this week, I was not really concerned about spam bots finding my site. In my naivity, I believed that my site is small enough to go completely un-noticed by them. I also thought that should any bot find my site, they still have to get past the django forms honeypot.
A couple of days ago, I found that I was very wrong. Luckilly I caught it early, and quickly disabled comments on by blogs and videos, and deleted the spam. Next my search started for a solution. I read up on Django's comment …
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May282009
Using beautiful fonts as images on the web
During my spare time this week, I was thinking of how I can make my webiste a little bit nicer looking. I have been bothered for quite a while now by the “portlet” graphics (the Items on the right). So I eventually decided, it would be really nice if the text looked like it was hand-written on the wall.
Of course, this immediately posed a problem. I realized that, I will have to create a Image of the hand-written font, every time that I add a Blog Entry, Video or Project. This is bad. I then decided, it's …
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May142009
django-video Source on GitHub
I have finally gotten around to launch django-video.
The biggest question on my mind was about what licensing model to use. I finally decided to use the BSD Open Source License, and implemented this throughout the project.
The app is now hosted github, and you can also follow it on Cloud27
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May102009
django-video on Cloud27
I have decided to create a project for django-video, my video streaming applicaiton for django, on Cloud27. This makes it more official and gives me a good starting point. Cloud27 also has many django users that can contribute to the project, should they like it.
The code will be hosted on github, but this will only happen once I've decided what licensing model to use. If you have any suggestions on licenses, please feel free to leave a comment, and I'll look into it. Note that I'll only be considering proven, well known open source licenses.
The …
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Apr182009
Preloading images using CSS
Some of us may be familiar with the problem of roll-over images that temporarily disappears as you roll over them. This is because the browser is downloading the roll-over image at that time. There are solutinos using javascript, and this method have become quite popular over the last couple of years. But what do you do, when the user has javascript turned off?
The method here is very simple, no extra javascript needed. I was quite surprised on how simple this process is, and I might just swap out my rollover script on this website, with a pure …
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Apr152009
New Site Up
I have finally decided that it's time to have my own, personal website up and running, with which I can advertise my skills and services. I previously used teh_node for this, but after much thought, and chatting to others, realized that teh_node may have been the wrong website to advertise myself.
There were 2 main issues:
Firstly, teh_node is advertised as a business, yet I was using it as my personal site and portfolio. People got confused when I sent them the link to teh_node, thinking I'm working in that company, and the work there are of …
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Dec202008
First Thoughts on Google App Engine
Yesterday morning, I finally got my invitation for trying out the Google App Engine. It was so long ago that I signed up, I even forgot I was on the list!
Well, I was busy for most of the day, but when I got home later the afternoon, I decided to give it a go. In about a hour I was done with the first tutorial, and was enlightened to so many new possibilities. I never realized that GAE makes use of google accounts, looking back now, it's obvious that it would, but I never thought …