Categories
Code Firefox Personal

Web Forms 2.0

I’ve recently picked up the task of implementing part of the Web Forms 2.0 spec from the WHATWG. So far I’ve got some work done on the RepetitionEvent Model and the RepetitionElement interface.

Well, my initial plans were to use XBL to implement a large portion of the code as per conversations with my co-conspirator Alex. Well, bz brought up an intersting point – XBL isn’t applied to elements that have a CSS property of display:none. Well, seeing as how repetition templates are supposed to be hidden with that CSS property, I couldn’t use XBL.

As a result, I get to test my knowledge of C++. Yey! I’d like to state right now that my skills in C++ are not great. In fact, I have very little expereice with it. I mean, I only have had two classes in C++, and one was a very basic course. I feel it goes without saying that I really have my work cut out for myself.

All is not lost, however. There are some really useful tools that are making this so much easier. For example, lxr lets me easily look at existing code and see how things are done the “right” way. Then, there is always a ton of documentation available on Devmo, XUL Planet, and occasionally Google comes into play. Then of course I always have the wonderful folks on irc in #developers. Folks like biesi, bz, and timeless have helped me countless times, and I am really greatful.

This is going to be a long and and winding road, but it will be very beneficial for me. I’ve already learned a lot, and I’ve got a lot more to learn.

Categories
Personal Technology

Google Spreadsheets

Last week I was helping a local political candidate with his fund raiser dinner. I knew that I would be manning the donations table and figured it would be a good idea to just type the information up right away instead of giving it to the candidate to do at a later time. So I grabbed my mother’s laptop and took off to the dinner. I knew that she didn’t have MS Office on there, but I figured it wasn’t a big deal since Quattro Pro was installed on it.

After helping setup a bit, I figured it would be a good idea to get the spreadsheet all set-up. Upon opening Quattro Pro, I was informed that the trial had run out and I needed to purchase the product. Crap. I thought she got the full version, but I didn’t have time to find out. Luckily, the place had WiFi, so I figured I’d just go download Open Office and install that. About a minute into the download I realized that I could sit here, wait for the download to finish, and then install it and waste about 20 minutes, or I could just use Google Spreadsheets.

I had never used or read any reviews about it, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I was pleasantly surprised, however. It’s no Excel, but it got the job done. The best part was that you can download it as an xls file, csv file, or as an HTML file.

They have several functions too, like SUM and AVERAGE, but I couldn’t figure out how to get DATE to work. Overall I was impressed with the service, but it still needs some work and better documentation. If you are ever in a bind and need some type of spreadsheet software though, consider using Google Spreadsheets.

Categories
Mozilla Personal

No really, I’m still here

I’ve been doing a lot of work, which takes away from time I could actually post something interesting here.

That, however, is exactly why I am writing now! I’m embarking on something new yet again (did I mention I like being busy and have a lot of projects ongoing?). As many of you may know, I have been fixing bugs in the Mozilla Code base. Primarily, those bugs are dealing with the DOM Inspector, which is a wonderful tool that can solve a lot of weird issues you might come across. I find it especially useful dealing with large documents because the DOM is often too complex to just understand by looking at the source code. If you haven’t seen it before, I strongly suggest you at least take a look.

Anyway, what I am wondering is how many people actually have heard and use the DOM Inspector? I know a lot of my friends didn’t even know about it when I asked them (these are my technical friends, so I kinda expected them to know), so this is somewhat of a feeler. Your feedback is greatly appreciated!

Categories
Personal

Who needs updates…

Well, it’s been almost two months, but that dry spell has been a rather productive one for me. Today I launched the newest version of the OOSL‘s web site. There’s still a little bit of work to be done with it, but I’m rather happy with the way it turned out.

I ended up using a WordPress back-end for it, and made a very simple template. We don’t have a need for comments, or at least not yet, so I didn’t have to worry about them at all. Makes for a really easy template :)

Work on RTSE was going great, and then I realized that there was a big problem with how we were doing something, so as of this week I had to scrap most of the code I’ve worked on over the past month or so. Yeah…it sucks.

I hope to get a resume posted up soon. It’s going to be a bit different from my one I would give out at a job application, as this will have links to bugzilla bugs that I’ve taken care of for Firefox (which is something I’ve recently picked up – more to come later on that). I’ll end this here as I have a lot more work to do, but updates will start coming a bit more frequently.

Categories
Extensions Personal

Web Site Work and Extensions Update

More work has been done with this website as I get it ready for the release of RTSE. You won’t see a lot of these changes unless you know what you are looking for because things are deliberately hidden right now. Don’t worry though, soon enough I’ll be releasing it to the general public. Beta1 is already underway, and several bugs have already been reported and fixed. We are still trying to add support for the editor to look ‘right’ when you have a theme enabled, but there are still some issues with that. It may or may not work by the time we release the extension, but we’ll get it in on a future version if it doesn’t.

As for things you can see that have changed with this site, I’ve added an about page which has very little about me. I’m never good at talking about myself, so if you think I should add something, let me know. Soon to come will be the contact page, which will have more contact info than just me.

This upcoming break, once RTSE is released, I’ll be revamping the Orion/Oxford Soccer League’s web site to allow the administration to post news entries, announcements, or other various things. I’m thinking that a WordPress thing might work out very well. I will probably put up a forum as well. Maybe with a new site look, people will post in it. Probably not, but it still allows for another avenue of communication between the players’ families and the administration.

The ETA for the release of RTSE is December 24. Until then, keep checking back for updates!