SummerTime

Here comes a new version of SummerTime. It has been available on SqueakSource for a few days already, but I just uploaded the image on SeasideHosting.

New features and modifications:
- Todo List
- Double click to create an event, rather than the "annoying" single click
- I finally corrected the 'sumbit' typo in the login window

To come:
- Tabs to show/hide todo list, calendar list, a monthly calendar ...
- Hopefully a better user sytem
- Some redesign in the CSS (better look for todos mostly)

I also hope to find a way to correct the annoying bug there is, where text fields are not always submitted in the editors If anyone has a lead on that, I'd be glad to hear it

Please take a minute to try out SummerTime, and let me know of your impressions, remarks, comments, critics... by email or as a comment on this post.
With SummerTime, you can either use the anonymous account (not saved) or one of the two users:
- Yann Monclair (that's me ) login: yann password: yann
- Arthur Dent (from H2G2) login: arthur password: arthur

Thanks for reading, and taking some time to try this application,

Yann Monclair

I just uploaded a new version of my icalendar on Seaside Hosting.

http://icalendar.seasidehosting.st/seaside/icalendar

Please try it out and let me know of your impressions.

I posted about it on some squeak mailing lists too (seaside, squeak-dev and squeak-fr).

One thing I forgot to mention: to log in you must click on the user name (on the top line).

I'll post tomorrow more details on the new features and the bugs...

Yann

I finally figured out a random bug that had been sticking around for some time. I was using the #onBlur: event to trigger the validation of my text inputs in the editors. But Firefox has problems with it, so I changed it to trigger all my forms when the save button is hit.

This makes the current version of SummerTime (SummerTime-YM.3.mcz) usable, for mono-user mode only , I still have some problems with the login mechanisms.

Yann

I just received the first payment of the SummerTalk today. I've probably been postponing this a bit. I was more concerned about the project than the money (I've been staying at my parents so my expenses are down to minimal, only dvds, mangas and HW). But receiving the payment for a part of your work is always nice. It's also giving me a new energy to keep up to the challenge and move forward!

I've added users to the icalendar now, I'm still working on the login system and other details of it. But it's getting somewhere. The next highlights should be (not in order):
- recurrence rules
- allday or multiday events
- changing the hour of start / end of events.
- user login
- email notification
- subscription (webcal/rss)

Yann

If you have been trying the latest icalendar version, you might have also encountered some weird problems. Editing events or calendars sometimes doesn't work ... I haven't had time yet to look into it, but I hope to solve this soon. Then I'll resume my work on the user handling system More to come soon

Yann

Strangely I can't get the icalendar to be on icalendar.seasidehosting.st anymore, the link is :
http://icalendar.seasidehosting.st/seaside/icalendar. I hope I'll fix it soon.

Good news... You can now create calendar, events, delete them... To come very soon download of the calendar as an ics file. I'm running a test app over night to check out some of the background blocks that run now, in order to optimize a few things. The big test is a "Date today" wanabee that only stores the date and gets updated once a day which should save a lot of useless calculations.

Stay tuned, more to come soon...

Yann

As I said in my last post, I have been working on some optimisations. The first one I worked on, was the creation of the ICWebEvents, the web reprensetation of an event. They used to be all created at start up, and that was really slow. Now the ICWebEvents are stored in a dictionary on the class side of ICWebEvent.
When a new week is displayed, each day checks for each calendar which events he needs. Then he gets the ICWebEvent associated with it in the dictionary. If the ICWebEvent is absent, it is created and returned. That kind of creation works ok, there would probably be a better way still. I think we could keep the events only for so much time, and delete them afterwards, to free some memory space. But I'll get to these considerations later.

I also fixed the uploading of calendars as ics files. Thanks to Philippe Marschall who added support for the timezone definitions in the ical generator. All day events are not dealt with yet on the web representation side. They might look very strange or even break the app It's on the todo list.

Thanks for reading,

Yann

Well I realized that the latest versions (v12 and v13 back) were broken. I did not find why, but the editor and the calendar selector didn't work together ...

I hope it's fixed now. I uploaded a new version on my seasidehosting account. As usual I invite you to play with and I appreciate all feedback and impressions.

I find my application really slow now, and I'm going to work on optimizing it, to have it work much faster ... I don't want people to see this application and say : "here you go, another proof that Smalltalk is slow ...".

If you want to take a look at the code, I created a squeaksource project. If you wish to install it, you will need a few packages: Seaside, scriptaculous, ical.

Enjoy

Yann

I added support for multiple calendars a few releases back, but you had to display all the calendars. Now you can hide/show a calendar. While editing an event, you can also change the calendar he belongs too. The hide/show is done in ajax I hope I'm not doing too much ajax stuff here.

Please check it out.

Please leave me a comment or an email, it's hard for me to see if the ergonomy is ok or not, as I work on it all day

Thanks for following this adventure.

Yann

If you check the demo on icalendar.seasidehosting.st, you might see the css aren't that precise, to place the elements on the grid. I'll work on that, and try to make the table more readable.

I want to thank all the people who tried the demo so far, and the people who sent my feedback. Please continue to test it, and I welcome feedback

I will hopefully update the running demo during the week, to add new css and new features.

EDIT If you are good at CSS and want to help on the design, you are more than welcome

I've uploaded an image on my seasidehosting account this morning, there was some problems with my previous image (it took Lukas and me quite some time to figure it out).

So far there is no login system, I hope to add it by the end of ESUG, so people can start using the icalendar a little.

I'll feed you in on my work

Yann

I am currently attending the ESUG conference in Prague. The conference is very nice, and the atmosphere is really emulating, I am getting my work done much faster than at home

I thought I'd give a few snap shots of the work done on the web interface. I'll upload an image on my seasidehosting account later today.

The web interface is ajax-enhanced, so you don't have to refresh to change the week...


or to hide ...


and show the calendar.

I arrived in Prague yesterday, after quite an amazing flight. I'm sitting in the Camp Smalltalk room. I am a student volunteer for the ESUG conference, I look forward to it. I hope to learn a lot again I'll also try to get some work done on my iCalendar. We'll see how much work I can get done in a Smalltalk week

...and the ESUG conference draws close, I realize this was the milestone I had given myself to have something usable (if only a little). I hope I will be able to present something like that by the end of the week, but I can't garantee anything. So far I've been working on online edition of events and upload ics files. You can check the current icalendar at http://icalendar.seasidehosting.st/seaside/icalendar . If you want to try the upload feature, you might want to use this file. As for event edition, you can only change the summary for now, but it's a start.

To come is expanding the modification possibilities, the classic export/import improvement, if possible RSS syndication and integration with Pier and of course creation of calendars, events and todos. I will also work on other aspects of the project, like email notification of events and other notification systems.

More to come this week...

Yann

I have been writing a short report of my advancement this morning, and I submitted it to my tutor, for final check before I publish it. This should come this week.

I have published the code produced so far on Squeak Source. I haven't filled in the project page yet. I haven't filled in the dependencies either, I still have to figure out stuff with Monticello But I hope to correct that ASAP.

Thanks for reading,

Yann