Dev Log

Employment Looms

Nick — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 01:39:06 GMT

As full time employment looms I’m starting to reject clients, if you have a really simple job that needs doing, like theming a CS install to look like your site, or working off a PSD, then I’ll still take on work for this, as I can even work on this over weekends outside of work.

But as for the big stuff, the last clients for this are LiveSide and Reperion. If any other clients have gotten in touch with with, sorry, but if I start work, I won’t be able to work on side projects.

Cross Post on techie nick, and dev log.

Presenting Athena 2008 Beta 1

Nick — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 21:19:56 GMT

I’m proud to announce that as of 10pm BST (GMT+1) on 1st August 2008 Athena 2008 Beta 1 is officially available for download.

WARNING: THIS IS A BETA PEICE OF SOFTWARE!

Words of warning:

This release is a beta product and has bugs
The user cannot save the customisation changes that he/she has made
Transparencies do not work
Header background images are all that are allowed now
Form background image (main base background image) is a gradient effect in this release, and is configurable.
No CSLive controls are installed, although you can add CSLive 1.0 Controls after installation

Download either the Web or Windows Installers, and extract them into your community server installation. Once done you should see the athena 2008 theme in your control panel.

Included in this package is 1 header image, released at the same time as Athena 2008 will be Athena 2008 Header Image Pack 1. This package will contain a set of images that need to be uploaded into a gallery in community server. Once this has been done set the relevant settings in the site theme settings under the Athena Tab. Note that you can tag these images for better filtering of a gallery.

To Download Athena 2008 Beta 1:

browse to http://www.nbdev.co.uk/media/g/athena/tags/Athena+2008/default.aspx
Download 1 of the 2 installer files

(Optional) Download the Header Image Pack

Athena 2008 is Coming

Nick — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 09:23:00 GMT

Athena 2008 Beta 1 is almost here. Just a few hours away from it’s public release.

Words of warning:

This release is a beta product and has bugs
The user cannot save the customisation changes that he/she has made
Transparencies do not work
Header background images are all that are allowed now
Form background image (main base background image) is a gradient effect in this release, and is configurable.
No CSLive controls are installed, although you can add CSLive 1.0 Controls after installation

The main point is this a BETA 1 release.

It will appear later tonight on nb development.

If you spot any major bugs outside of the Athena bar, please let me know.

CSLive 2.0: Virtual Earth in your Profile

Nick — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:25:37 GMT

Today, apart from applying to a few places for a job, I’ve been working on the Virtual Earth Control for CSLive 2.0.

Now this control, although 1 physical control, it will do mostly anything

These will hopefully include:

Your Location Map (Picks up on the current user’s location and displays a map accordingly). This is the version I’ve been working on today
My Friends Map. In the user’s profile, the user will have a tabbed sidebar box, one with a friends List, and one with a Friends Map.
The friends map will act much like the current User Location Map, but will show all of your friends.
Controls that can be placed anywhere in CS.
These controls will mainly just be a wrapper for the Virtual Earth control. It will eventually have children controls that can be added, these children controls will be <CSLive:MapPushPin /> controls and <CSLive:MapZone /> controls. You will supply coordinates to the VE control, and it will render it.
Post Viewers. Much like the File Viewers, the Map Viewers will be placed inside Posts, and will use the syntax [CSLive:Map Long=”xxx” Lat=”xxx” SearchFor=”xxx” ZoomLevel=”1-19” Collection=”xxx” Width=”xxx” Height=”xxx” Controls=”Full|Tiny|None”]
A limited version of the full mapping control.

So big things from this tiny little control, which we hope to release for RC1.

For more info visit http://communityserverlive.com

CS Media Manager now Supports full gallery download

Nick — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 23:41:28 GMT

CS media manager 1.2.0.0 now can get all of the stuff in a gallery, yes all of the posts. Now I’ve had to hack this a little to get it to work, ie stick a for loop in, but the end result is the same

Hehe, that’s 228 images loading, on a tag none the less.

Tags load up 2 images at a time, we as a gallery will load in 20 at a time, or what ever CS has defined as the default post list page size.

I might need to add a stop button on the loading of a big selection, tho I’m not quite sure how to do that, lol. Anyhow, it’s all good, shame CS don’t support the full loading of the gallery.

1.2.0.0 is now available via OneClick or the download page.

Note that for this to work your site needs to be running CS 2008 SP1

Busy Time for Me

Nick — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 20:59:59 GMT

Well it’s all hands to the pumps this month, I’ve started soo many free projects that I’m hopefully gonna get done soon. Then a load of paid theming work, so you’ll have to excuse me for not getting athena done.

Just an FYI.

Themes I’ll be doing:

Reperion
Bink (already done, just waiting on developer to finish converting the html template to a cs theme)
Extended64
Liveside.net

Free projects:

CSLive 2.0 (beta 1 expected end of the week)
Athena 2008
AddThis controls (released today)

Other Projects:

Help mum around the house
be taxi driver for brother
look for a job
maintain home network

so a lot of work on at the moment.

nb development gets updated to CS 2008 SP1

Nick — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 16:53:53 GMT

Just finished updating nb development to CS 2008 SP1. Took me about 2 hours to figure out why the site wasn’t working after the initial upgrade. Lol. Note to self, remember to run the upgrade SQL Script. lol.

Anyhow, you may of noticed in the new look athena theme, complete with header images, which change both randomly, and with your mouse movements. Click on the << paint pot to get the athena bar and then look at the header images.

The script that generates them takes a image and adds the gradient effects to the sides, so you’ll be able to use the new image packs that will be shipping with Athena 2008 for header images.

CSLive 2.0 – The Control Panel

Nick — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 23:33:01 GMT

Just a little blog about the new control panel, there will be a webcast on this later tonight, so keep an eye out.

Nice and simple, so far.

CS Media Manager 1.1.0.2

Nick — Mon, 12 May 2008 23:03:43 GMT

Just released on www.nbdev.co.uk/Products/CS-Media-Manager.aspx is version 1.1.0.2.

Screenshots

The change log from version 1.0.0.5 is:

Changes in Media Manager 1.1.0.0:

Added Multiple Site Support
Improved the Shell Interface to use a treeview for gallery selection
Moved to Registry entries
More Threading
Image Icons show while the image is being loaded
Reload and Browse context options added to the site level

Changes in Media Manager 1.1.0.1:

Image Quality now fully works
Added Copy context menu's to Item Property dialog URLs
Coded the change button
- NOTE: the change button uploads a new attachment to the post attachment of the media item, however something isn't quite working in the API and the contents are not being updated. However I would like some confirmation on this, so if someone is brave enuf to set that registry value, I'll be very grateful.
- The button can be creating a REG_DWORD named "enableediting" with "1" as the value in
  HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\nb development\CS Media Manager\
Directory Upload will only resize images that are bigger than the specified sizes

Changes in Media Manager 1.1.0.2:

File Attachment Box actually closes after click "OK" if you've used the image editor (Problem Deleting the temp file)

Fixed in 1.1.0.2

Known bugs:

Change Button doesn't work in some cases
The images can timeout while loading, and require hitting the retry button on the popup message

Features to be added:

Gallery Properties
Group Refresh and Browse context Menu
More Effects
- Grayscaling
- etc...
More options on the Item Context Menu
any recommendations...

If you can think of anything I've missed contact me using www.nbdev.co.uk/learn-more/contact.aspx

CS Media Manager

Nick — Sat, 03 May 2008 17:17:00 GMT

Just a quick post about the new CS Media Manager that I've been developing over the past month.

View it at http://www.nbdev.co.uk/products/cs-media-manager.aspx

and watch the webcast on the 1st version at http://www.nbdev.co.uk/blogs/webcasts/archive/2008/04/12/cs-media-manager.aspx

A updated webcast will be uploaded tomorrow.

In version 1.0.0.6 (as found on the OneClick Page), most of the program is complete, with just a few little outstanding issues, which I'm hoping to mostly resolve next week. Mind some of the problems are REST API related, and can't be fixed.

For more information, visit Re: Anybody developing a Windows application to manage media? on CS.com

Some screenshots:

CS 2008, Athena 2008 + nb development

Nick — Sat, 03 May 2008 17:06:00 GMT

After a week of issues with the database, I've finally moved Virtual Servers on Digistic, and have upgraded to CS 2008. Athena 2008 will look something like nb development does at the moment, only with a lot more tweaks.

You may notice that the web site looks slightly different. The new theme is mostly Hawaii, but with some major improvements.

The 1st you will notice is a new home page. Yer, it's not much, but it does what I need it to. The 2nd should be the new menu bar. New tabs are products, and showcase, showcase has been merged into the main website, from it's sub domain.

The last you may notice is the new footer, it contains quick links to most of the key points of the site. Hopefully making navigating nb dev a bit easier

It uses CS 2008 now, so it should be slightly quicker, and smoother. Hopefully.

The product's page is actually based on blogs, but a highly customized blog page. All using CS's Controls. I will be doing a web cast on how I did the showcase/product/learn more pages next week.

I hope you enjoy the new look nb development. Any problems, please report them, either as a comment to this post, or in the support forums.

Thanks, Nick.

Athena 2008

Nick — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 15:10:34 GMT

It's coming....

The beta of Athena 2008 should be released in may, with the RTM planned for July 2008.

Athena 2008 will sport a huge amount of AJAX, almost 2x the amount of Athena. It will be for CS 2008 ONLY, and contain a semi update the theme.

The drop down menu's have been replaced with Drop line menu's, to take up less room. The next and previous buttons utilize JavaScript to scroll between the items in the drop line menu.

The athena bar will get a slight update, when you change tabs it will darken the rest of the page so you can focus on the part that your editing. And the styles tab will be implemented.

New to athena 2008 will be the REST API which will allow client side editing and changing of the athena style settings.

Also to come in athena 2008 will be a better Control Panel interface. An interface that will control the athena.config file.

Athena 2008 will also be the 1st theme to use CSLive v2, complete with it's own Control Panel Interface.

The search box will be AJAX'd to provide the 1st page of results instantly as you type, and a link to the full results.

A webcast will follow shortly with more information.

CS Live Presents: Silverlight Live

Nick — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 22:25:49 GMT

Enjoy this sample Silverlight application on codeplex no, visit http://www.codeplex.com/CSLive and download the silverlight release. The release is under the releases tab

Athena

Nick — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 15:15:34 GMT

I'm proud to release Athena to you all. It's had styles and variants dropped due to lack of time on my part.

By all other aspects work, and it even works in Internet explorer 8 Beta 1. Mostly.

To download Athena: http://www.nbdev.co.uk/files/folders/athena/tags/Version+1/default.aspx

For more information:
http://showcase.nbdev.co.uk/Athena.aspx

The Migrator Wizard - Progress

Nick — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 03:38:44 GMT

Check this out on codeplex: http://www.codeplex.com/TheMigrator/SourceControl/DownloadSourceCode.aspx?changeSetId=30635

It has something cool on it. If you download and build the solution (Press F5) you'll get something cool, a pretty much fully working interface. Yes fully working.

TMP is working. It doesn't do much atm tho, just sleeps for 100ms and then updates the progress. Bug this is all going on Asynchronously, well almost, it's only a user provider so it can only work synchronously while that is done. Rule of the migrator core.

The core is becoming solid now, with only a few changes to the status and event classes to enable GUI sorting.

AS can be seen in this screenshot the migration is in progress, and the bars are being updated according to the status.

Along with the progress is the log viewer, which is basically a List View, lol. But that is updated when you click on View Log, inline.

Next to code up on the UI is if an error is detected to make the progress bar yellow or red depending on the error type.

After the migration has finished, you will be able to export a XML log file, the butting isn't on there yet, but it will be. When 100% on all actions is achieved then, the button will come out, asking if you would like to save a log file. It'll be XML based, so you can XPath it, basically it'll have all of the logs, and some extra exception info (if exists) in there.

As you can see at the top, the progress bar is full. I was going to add another page with the close button on it, but I've decided not to do that now.

After the UI is done, the CS provider will be coded up, and then a vBulletin provider. And if I get time, a WordPress provider. If everything goes to plan the project should have a Version 1 release in April. I hope you like what I've done so far, it's been a pleasure to code this up for you all.

I'm also debated on making the project completely open source with the UI on codeplex as well, at the moment it is, but with version 1 it will be removed. If I remove it or not is still up in the air at the moment.

Work will probably stall for the next 2 weeks as I have some presentations to give, but after that it'll be all hands to get the project done, and work begun on the API documentation