Richard Cowin

Rico Library Going Forward

The new javascript library from yahoo seems to be getting a lot of great press.  It has already been slashdotted and it looks like it will have over 2000 del.icio.us links within one day.  Wow!  Not too shabby for the first day.  Congrats!

As we evolve Rico, we will also be looking at the Yahoo library to decide whether it makes sense to take advantage of some of their work.

So, this seems like a good time to provide a quick status update of Rico:

• There will be a 1.1.1 bug fix around the weekend.
• There will also be some site updates around the weekend as well.
• There are improvements to current behaviors as well as new behaviors in the works.
• We are currently getting more than 3,000 downloads a week.

Update:
I should be cautious about throwing out timeframes when life gets in the way.
The updates (that I mentioned would be out around the weekend) are still coming - though a bit late.
I will post a reference to them as soon as they are available.

Yahoo's javascript library released

Yahoo open sourced part of a comprehensive javascript and pattern library .  It is definitely worth checking out.  They have also start an interface blog for the group. 

It is a good start and I know they have more coming out soon.  Making it available in the open source (under a BSD license) is just icing on the cake.  With Bill heading up the library team, I expect to see some great things from them.

Goals for frameworks, languages, libraries, and tools (Goal 2)

The obvious second goal for a library has got to be that a 'library has to be simple'.

This is so important in any thing that it should almost go without saying.  However,  in the area of javascript libraries it is worth restating.  It implies both keeping a small size (for performance) and being simple to use in preexisting web pages.  Also, a library should work well with current simple technologies (that obviously have a long life span).  Lastly, you should either not have to rewrite your application to use a technology or the technology should make your application disposable (more on this later).

Being 'simple' is so important in any area of technology that I  question the longevity and disruptive capability of any technology or product that is not simple at its core.

So, goal 2 is:
A library has to be Simple

Goals for frameworks, languages, libraries, and tools (Goal 1)

As I was thinking of the key goals I want to achieve as Rico moves to 1.2, I came across a new post by Andy Hunt on Why Ruby.  He talks about  how one of the two main reasons he likes ruby is that it "stays out of your way".  I agree that Ruby does a great job in this area by  allowing itself to be molded to the problem at hand without getting in the way. 

This is probably one of the hardest and yet most important goals of any framework, language, library, application, or tool.  I think a good framework/library should allow itself to be shaped to easily work with required technologies and processes that are in place.  Being opinionated is great, but only in the areas that the user does not want to worry about. 

One of the tricks is to understand what are the required technologies 'it' must work with.  In the area of javascript libraries that clearly means existing HTML and CSS content.

So number 1 goal is to "stay out of your way".

openrico site updates (moving off of tigris)

I am working on some updates to the openrico.org site - I am trying to get off of tigris for the Rico forum and issue tracking.  Will also add a wiki and a Rico Blog (there has got to be a clever name there somewhere).

One of the things I am looking at is how to map tigris forum postings and copy them to another forum app.
I will be using rforum for the new forum.  Looks pretty simple and I do enjoy tweaking rails apps.

Seems like tigris has a pretty poor service interface, so I guess I will be doing some screen scraping - yuck.
I am starting to look at Rubyful Soup for the screen scraping part.

I will post the resulting code.  Hope to be done before weekend.

Touch Screen of the Future

Ran across this video from projectionist guys blog.

Truly awesome! Appears to be work done by Jeff Han

Watch it and think about the future.
I am salivating.  Suddenly, my current systems seem very limiting.  And, makes me want to go back to school again.