RandomStringOfWords

So something that I have been pondering is the creation of a rapid application framework/IDE similar to Delphi for javascript, in javascript..  Bear with me..  This is more or less theoretical conjecture at this point, but it amuses me and I wonder what kind of value there would be to be had from such a platform.

Where Delphi has always excelled, even to this day, is where its IDE and it’s VCL meet – you design the look of the application first, and then slap code in behind it second.   Not the other way around.   Users are given a “form” on which they can drag components from the visual component library.   The VCL is a vast palette of components and elements really allowing you to make your program look however you want..   Afterward positioning everything and making the program look “correct” you go into each component and add the various bits needed to make them do what you want.  

When it comes to rapid application development, Delphi is king.   It beats VB, VC and Java hands down for easy of program design.  This is my opinion of course and largely an opinion based on my experiences with it years ago.   I don’t use it any more but I know a lot of folks still do and it’s doing fairly well..  I also see a lot of elements of Delphi’s innovated IDE in other IDE’s out there.. (*cough*Eclipse*cough*)

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WPOS7 Screenshot

So I have been plugging away at creating my OS7 theme.. I previously stated that IE8 sucked completely and I have to take that back.   It doesn’t suck completely.. infact, it sucks a lot less than I realized..

I found that I was using IE8 in “quirks mode” and of course it behaved quirky.  My main question is;  What the hell is the point of quirks mode?!  “Here have our browser in a mode that is completely broken.” I just don’t get it.. I guess quirks mode is basically IE6 as they seem to render similarly.. (I have IE6 on my laptop still for testing purposes..) If that’s the case it couldn’t be better named..

Apparently since I had a misspelling (or something) in my doctype it defaulted to quirksmode.. Once I found that I was in the wrong mode, found out why and fixed it, I started to test my new UI in IE7 and IE8.. It actually works!!  Ever so minor bug in IE7, but its hardly worth mentioning..   IE8 works fine, but a little slow. er.. in fact, a lot slow.. IE8 ain’t zippy at all.. continue reading…

Wordpress OS7 Theme

So I have been using Windows 7 for a while now and I really do like it.  It’s no Snow Lepoard but it’s what I have.. heh  Honestly, its not bad at all..  I also have been using wordpress for a goodly while with the same theme “Microblue” a theme I created a year ago.

I’m getting bored with Microblue so its time for a change and I thought it would be fun to combine Windows 7’s look and feel into a wordpress theme.    This lead me down the road that I had started with my jQuery Windows post and posed an important question;

Do I implement a windows manager within a webpage?    God what a pain in the ass..

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Surfs Up!

I have been playing with the jQuery animate functionality a bit today and it occurred to me that jQuery would likely be the perfect library to build a browser based game on top of..

I did a little browsing about the web, and sure enough.. someone thought of it before me.

The games I would want to create would be less animated than this one.. but I could totally see a Masters of Orion remake as a browser based game using the jQuery library..   Or any number of other turn based games..  You could even make them multiplayer fairly easily..

As computers get faster, and as browser trend towards threaded javascript engines.. Why the hell not?! At this point I think it would be just as easy/difficult to create a game via a webbrowser as it would via any other medium..

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Example Windows

So as part of my on-going exploring and learning of jQuery I want to create a window system.  This will let me explore the wonderful world of jQuery as well as create something functional and useful for my work project.

This window system will need to be dragable, droppable, completely resizable via all standard and expected methods.  It will need to be able to have x number of configurable buttons within the border both left and right, have other customizable data within the top header..

I want to make it so that each window is basically a container, and thus can contain anything.. including other windows.

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Lightbox Test Image

I have been playing with the javascript library jQuery for a couple days now.. My intent is to learn the ins and out’s of it for a project at work.  So far I like what I am seeing.

I need to learn a “best practices” as there are many ways to do things in jQuery and I am very likely going about some of it incorrectly..  But, there is only one way to try things and that’s to jump off the deep end!  So far it’s cake.. Something I have wanted for my site for a while now was a lightbox implementation.  And while Wordpress has quite a few lightbox like plugins, I thought it would be interesting to create my own using jQuery such that ANY link (on any website) with an attribute of rel=”lightbox” would be opened as a lightbox. This is the file I’m actively developing on;

http://info.rsow.com/wp-content/themes/microblue/jquery.lightbox.js

And the image above will be my lightbox test image for the time being.  Clicking the image will close the lightbox. continue reading…