Brighto Paint App

i have recently finished few simple web applications for BrightoPaints. I was hired / contracted by Evolve (Company which is doing complete web campaign, website etc). My role in project was to work as flash developer. I had luxury of having a flash consultant as well (if needed), Huge thanks to Nadeem Manzoor for providing such a wonderful help  n support from his valueable time.
first and foremost important thing about this application, since its inception was, where user can pick areas (pre-defined) and fill colors and see final image. its almost same, but while discussions with client it has evolved a bit . Project can be seen at live website (BrightoPaints). it consits of few simple small apps / modules.

Paint App
paint application, where user can fill colors (from client data base) into images








Paint Calculator

estimate required paint amount (in-directly cost)

Color Browser
browse colors from client database and see other relevant color schemes based on simple logics.








NOTES:
this is my first implementation of OOP.
this is also my first implementation of Design Patterns. i have used MV design pattern.
evolve team still busy in filling up images and improving earlier testing masks, so quality of output is still WIP but generally application is working. hopefully, it will be finalised soon..

FUTURE:
initially, we wanted to make this a product, which evolve can resell, but due to time contraint, we had to drop that plan and test possibility via simple implementation. Now when this proejct is over, i think, it still has its potential as product in evolve products catalog.
to do this, i have to implement MVC design pattern , so Custom GUI's and skins can be added per client.
plus, i also feel, i'll write two more simple components for this in future
1- search client colors via name or code
2- search client closests colors based on any user picked color via custom attributes, where user can give hue / sat / val ranges and search database.

Firefox vs Chrome Thoughts

its been a year almost i have using both of these browsers and was trying switch to chrome and it was such a bad expereience that i finally stop trying.
without a doubt, chrome is speedy but thats only plus i found in chrome its not enough for daily use.
what confused me about chrome

• chrome simply sucks while dealing with proxies and any big corporate has proxy / firewall setuped so its almost impossible to use this in a corporate environement. i have seen official link 100's of complains and google not paying attention to this.
• whats the point for making google bookmarks service and then syncing bookmarks via docs. etc. and again if all of these new sync features can't work for proxy, why would i simply want to sync between office n home, where office has proxy setup......

recently firefox has announced a sync feature and i m glad it really works, helps to remove frustration...
plus amount of extras / addons that help are amazing...
may be if i kept breathing, i'll try chrome in 2011, ideally i think, if google has given that money to firefox and helped them to rewrite core or add speed thingy, that would have helped whole world more...

XAMPP on linux ( ubuntu )

while shifting myself from windows to linux (ubuntu) i found this topic a bit confusing (time taking), lots of old websites still mentioned installing lots of packages to get it done but below are my notes for myself future reference.


installing xamp

• http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=61776&package_id=60248
• Go to a Linux shell and login as root:
• $su -
• Extract the downloaded archive file to /opt
• #tar xvfz xampp-linux-1.5.5a.tar.gz -C /opt
• XAMPP is now installed below the /opt/lampp directory.

setting it up (www folder) >> because defult location won't allow to place files without root

• open /opt/lampp/etc/htppd.conf
• update line below as per your requirement
• DocumentRoot "/home/lala/www"
• create "www" folder if it won't exists there... (offcourse)
• save and quit

setting default xampp / phpmyadmin so can be access easily, via (http://localhsot)

• move contents from "/opt/lampp/htdocs" to above folder you just created "www"

TIP: for this you might need to open nautilus as root and you can do this by typing "gksuo nautilus"
hopefully it will work ;)

wordpress feelings

after a month:

i recently shifted my website from joomla to wordpress after realizing that individual doesn't need to have CMS and as most important thing is content its easy to display this with wordpress.




process i have done uptill now is mentioned below for quick and easy steps

1. install wp on local system (just copy paste files/folder, unzip, setup db and ready to go)
2. export wp from wordpress.com and import on local one and remove wordpress.com account
3. install wp-columus (tag cloud plugin)
4. install next-gen image gallery for quick ajax based typical gallery viewing features
5. install all video plugin for video (flv) embedding
6. install all-in-one-SEO pack
7. install google-analyticator
8. install wordstat
9. install wngc(google calender)

todo: i noticed that all in one seo>> somehow not showing proper links, ideally catagory naming should work for seo as well, will work on this laters...
hopefully these notes will be helpful for other collegues (raj,jab,etc)
after a year:
it was wonderful and i love it. reason for switching to blogger was ease of use and tension free life. as my website start getting bigger, traffic start raising and gradually i need to pay more per year. the hosting company has already asked two times about additional money and i have finally concluded that i m going to put that on blogger.
i know i can use wordpress.com but i can imagine that as my website is going to be bigger or i m going to ask more features / support, they are going to ask for money as well.......
any ways, i'll miss wordpress cool features, there are so many and it will take blogger huge time....

Project Management ( Dot Project )

while using project fork for joomla and all forum based help / hacks, i wasn't much satisfied in terms of easy usage for non-technical pupil in ( specially when working with artists), i thought about searching web based project management applications / features
here is online wiki list which even compare features for almost all available web based project applications
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_project_management_software

also noticed that one of best products to this context are
dotproject.net ( thanks to ahsan )

udpate:: ( after few weeks )
it has missing font issue in gant chart view
Error is that it cannot locate the file arial.ttf.
If the task is no longer marked as a milestone, this problem goes
away and the Gantt chart is displayable again.
Solution1:
This is just that the font file is missing. jpgraph doesn't supply
fonts anymore as part of their package but if you have a valid windows
license you can copy the fonts from there, otherwise you may want to
look at http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/
Solution2:
If you do install the Microsoft Core Fonts, you should then also create
a truetype symlink in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts to point to
/usr/share/fonts/msttcorefonts. This will allow the library to just see
the fonts where it expects them to be and you shouldn't have to
configure anything else.
udpate2:: ( after few weeks )
few helpful tips ( remember stuff )
main help page
http://docs.dotproject.net/index.php?title=Main_Page
user vs contact
user is person who can login on dp, can update tasks (working as team member) (ideally users should have contact linked)
contact doesn't necessarily have user linked. client contact person could be contact. practically uptill now it does'nt worked so we even give them user ID linked with company representative of their own
static vs dynamic task Notes:

• operative tasks should have one person assigned
• operative tasks should be static (time measured)
• milestones should be administrative
• milestones should be dynamic

administrative vs operative task
approach 1:
milestones should be administrative and should have client person added as either assigned user or owner so he can reply to logs and update response
approach 2:
milestones should owned by team leads and they should update logs and send those to client intentionally to get review / feedback if needed

joomla 1.5

i just started evolve.com, and on third attempt of putting it online, i noticed that joomla 1.5 (stable) has been launched. Quite amazing, because i have tested, joomla 1.5 RC4 (code name: takreeban) and wasn't happy, because it wasn't stable.
So i finally decided to take rist again, i know its not good thing to test things when short time and not sure about stability. thats what i am suffering from right now.
still below are my comments based on first project on joomla 1.5 after delivering two websites on joomla 1.0
make sure all the components / modules / plugins will work. it seems they will but actually they won't unless developers / community hasn't confirmed.
seyret video component didn't worked. but i was lucky enough to found xe-media galleries. they worked and they are good.
simple image gallery and pro version totally don't worked. developer is working on new version but not out. so i wasted almost 3 days with ahsan(radical) to find a new, easy to use (generate thumbnails from folders) one of main requirement from studio based websites. it all went waste. because there are so many galleries out there, a lot with plugin support rather than component (which is of no use in my case). i am still stuck at this point. Any way, hopefully it will be solved soon. Other than that, it is definitely one of the best joomla update i could imagine. They have really shrinked / reduced interface the way it sould be, slick, slim and smart.

joomla stuff & Notes

while using joomla, i have tested so many components that i fear soon, i’ll forget everything about them. below are my feelings so when i have to use them next time, i’ll waste less time in searching and more time in getting output

Image Galleries

simple image gallery pro is best for creating run time thumbnails and works as mambot
FPS (front page slide show) extremly decent for front page artwork showcase, only drawback is you need to enter slides manually. still worth it.

Video Galleries

seyret is best video component available out there, super good.
xe-video gallery v3, looks more good then above :)

Boards/Forums

fireboard is best even i was unable to remove the “register button”

PMS (online project management)

project fork is best and was extremly helpful because only component to help / allow manage groups

News Letter Signup

letterman was which i choose from rest, simple, easy and usefull ( kees these separate from registered users)

BLOG

mojo wasn't as good as myBlog was.

FORMS

philAform was most suitable for me, simple , visual and easy to setup
will keep adding more
update: next year
IMAGE RANKINGS

recently i had to finalize logo for kids channel and we had so much options.
i had studied different methods / solutions. as i had to consider team votings so i found HOT OR NOT2 to be best possible solution. it is one of the best, it lets easily users to vote everything and add comments, which was very helpful
SURVEY's
i recently, had to do some surveys online ( my company 500+ ppl in office) to collect feedback
i consider lots of different extensions / components. major conclusions are mentioned below
some components which seems good are $ based. even major have feedback agisnst them
just like dotProject best product on PM available for free as huge/ massive open source product
company named LimeWire ((http://www.limesurvey.org)) has done lot of useful work to help everyone.
such a nice and decent stuff.
typical problem with beginner / simple users like me is not liking of separate application and digesting the headache of management this. so impressive thing is i found same software ported / implemented in joomla by one of pious and genius guy on earth. and just like other gurus, he has shared it for free.
component named was "joo survey" and definitely one of best possible thing as per my needs
huge thanks to guy

wamp on LAN setup

today i was setting up kids channel local lan PMO Stuff. just for my memories
i started with installation of WAMP 2.0
then install joomla 1.0.15 and it worked perfectly.
then to make it available for LAN, i updated



configuration.php. changes made to that specific files were mentioned below find and replace “localhost” with “pc_name” in line...

apachee “httpd.conf” and replace server “name”:80 with my pc name and restart pc
it worked fine

update: 2010
i heard now there is a switch "turn online" which lets you acess this via lan card
also there is helpful post.