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Closed 10 years ago.
We # medicware.com.br are thinking about making our web application offline-capable with Gears. Our main goal is to keep basic functionality running when the internet connection goes down.
So, I'd like to hear success stories, tips and resources about yours real experiences in that field (related to Gears or not).
Remember the Milk has done a nice job of using Gears -- you might see what you can find out about their implementation. I'd start at http://code.google.com/apis/gears/articles/take_app_offline.html.
Do you have to use Gears? I've used their AdWords API extensively, as well as Google Data, and the experiences left me lacking. Sure, things are reasonably well documented, but when it comes to support, there's no one you can call and real Google developer postings in forums are rare. They also are known for announcing cataclysmic changes with little notices, and, this is on paid products like AdWords.
I'd seriously look at Adobe Air. Adobe has worked with 3rd parties for years and they're pouring tons of money into doing Air right.
I've had good experiences with Adobe Air. It's not gears and it was nothing more than a look to see how it worked, but it was so simple that i'd think it would be easy to port any large scale application over.
There is a couple of video resources available:
Dion Almaers 50 minute presentation goes from overview/businesscase down into the actual code: quite helpful for understanding concepts and getting examples for actual implementation code.
Offline web apps with Google Gears
I recently saw "Google I/O 2008 - Taking Large-Scale Applications Offline". Good for grasping the concept but also very complex -- Googles problems are most likely not typical scaling problems. And there was no concrete code. Only some architectural strategies.
Also, if you need code examples, try "offline dojo" as well. Even though it's a screencast of Dojos offline wrapper, I think it's pretty helpful (and only 8 minutes short)
Dojo offline screencast, (overview on dojo offline homepage)
In my eager to answer your question, I just stumbled upon Google I/O 2009 - HTML5 Databases/Gears & Offline Web Apps, which i will see during lunch. Feedback on this yet, anyone?
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Closed 10 years ago.
Where can I find learning resources for django 1.2? I'm new to django and web-programming.
I have started to learn django a couple of months ago so, I'll try to point out what helped me.
I started watching the series of screencasts on how to build a wiki
http://showmedo.com/videotutorials/video?name=1100000
which is pretty easy. If you like watching screencasts they're not bad.
The official tutorial as pointed out before is also good.
I then progressed reading the online book on django. While it is certainly a good reference, I wouldn't recommend it as a starting point though.
I think a better thing to do is to read the practical django projects book by James Benett, the django release manager. It shows you a bunch of best practices which you might overlook (I did) otherwise. It uses django 1.1 but I think most of the code works (sometimes critized in reviews on amazon).
One thing that escaped me for a while is the wealth of third-party django apps which really make your life a lot easier but are not official so they are usually not in official supporting documentation (all of the above).
I recommend you start using
South (for database changes)
immediately. Also consider start using
virtualenv and
pip (both for python package management)
right away. These facilitate package-management a lot and I think using these is considered best practices (I just had to clean up a easy_install-foobar'ed system and it's no fun). If you are interested in the best third-party apps for solving common problems in django check out the blog surfing in Kansas by django developer Eric Holscher. There is also a video from the recent djangocon.
Finally, if you are like me and wondering about the magic that django does, you might want to check out this blog post or this video (3hrs) (and slides) by James Bennett explaining the internals of django very well (I like the blog post better, but take your pick).
Also: I was unaware of the django-users mailing list, this is very helpful and - as far as django is concerned - much more active than stackoverflow.
Django is awesome! I really hope you like it ;)
What about the official tutorial?
http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.2/intro/tutorial01/
The online documentation is pretty good. And there's a tutorial for beginners.
http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.2/
This resource http://www.udemy.com/full-django-tutorial/ at Udemy can be good starting point.
There's also the djangobook covering the 1.x.x versions. http://www.djangobook.com/en/2.0/ That can be a good start.
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Closed 9 years ago.
There are many, many, many options out there, but I still couldn't settle with one. Ones that looks nice to me so far include wordpress getshopped, opencart and magento. But they all need to install and configure and try out for many different features, which I still don't even know if I'm going to need or not. That is the "solution" part of my question, since I'll also need a host able to handle it and, preferably, supporting the platform updates.
Features I do need are:
a ticket system (which opencart sure doesn't have built in), so I can customize a custom made product for instance, and;
a customizable user interface, as easy and as much as possible. In here I like to take squarespace as an example. Really easy to customize. In fact, it would be great if the shopping cart would offer similar drag n' drop features.
I don't care if it's .net, php, gae or python. Actually, that's about my reversed order of preference language-wise, python being preferred. I care a lot more if it's easy to support, modify and migrate if needed (of host, platform, database, whatever). Also I do want a way to try it out hassle free. Open source is always better but not necessarily best.
TLDR: What's the best shopping cart out there that can be used to sell services rather than products?
I just went through the process of installing and trying several carts for a project that I was working on. As Pierre says above, "There is no best shopping cart, however there is one best for your specific need" That is a very truthful statement.
My project was for an on line soap company that has 5 different categories with 5 or so variations each. Not a big store and not one that changes inventory often.
I tried the following carts: PrestaShop, Zen Cart, Magento, getshopped and phpurchase.
My findings were that for a small store, PrestaShop, Zen Cart and Magento are a bit overkill. For a small shop, getshopped and phpurchase are better fits.
Out of the 3 big shop solutions, I felt that Zen Cart is really hard to make look nice. It has a 90's vibe about the template that it comes with and takes a lot of work to get around that. Magento and PrestaShop were really cool. PrestaShop seems very UK specific. It did not take Authorize.net and I think that there may be a plugin that you can get. Magento seems like a great solution for a larger store and I liked the backend admin interface.
I purchased getshopped plugin and integrated it into my Wordpress site (I purchased the Authroize.net integration gold cart level) I had such trouble dealing with the multiple bugs that I found riddled through the code base. I looked at their forum and many people who had similar issues were not responded to. Alot of people were as frustrated as me. I tried customer support - no response. I asked for a refund, no response. Basically, Get Shopped was a complete waste of time and money.
I then found Phpurchase. The customer support person, Lee Blue was really nice - Lee answered my emails morning, noon and night. Lee is literally the nicest customer support person I've ever worked with! - so helpful. The code worked just as specced - no troubles and no complaints. I'm a very happy customer with phpurchase. If I need a small ecommerce site in the future, I will use that solution again, for sure.
Note, I'm not an affiliate of Phpurchase or have any type of financial gain by recommending them, I just had such a rough time with getShopped and such a wonderful experience with Phpurchase!
There is no one best pizza, best soda, best father, best website,...
There is no best shopping cart.
However, there is one best for your specific need.
To find it, testing them all is the only effective solution I know.
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Closed 10 years ago.
Is there some flowchart diagram tool that would (or could be made to) integrate with a self-hosted wiki?
Requirements:
basic functionality (e.g., drawing some boxes and some arrows)
would strongly prefer it to be visual (i.e., not written out in text that then gets converted)
allows for dynamic editing
it is important that the tool can be integrated into the wiki (e.g., as an extra panel somewhere)
can be run from a personal server
free
I've looked around at other threads here concerning a diagram tool, but they are either desktop applications, online ones which reside on third-party servers, or cost money.
[Edit] Thanks for the responses, but I would like them to be dynamically editable (I've added this to the requirements). What I mean is that I would like to integrate (or run it from a private server) some online collaborative diagramming tool. While I could create a JPG of something made in Graphviz and upload it, this is not easily editable. I would have to upload the source file somewhere, which someone would have to download and edit, then upload the new JPG.
Graphviz dot diagrams can be embedded in some wikis. Unfortunately for your requirements, it's text that gets converted. It's fairly simple to learn and use though.
http://www.graphviz.org/
EDIT: It's free / open source.
I've been looking for something similar - collaborative flowcharts in a wiki. The most interesting so far is this Mediawiki extension: http://www.flowchartwiki.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
Balsamiq Mockups for XWiki is the closest thing I've seen. It's more of a previsualization tool however for application mockups, though I'm not sure if this is the kind of tool you're looking for.
It is free if you qualify under their licensing.
Another option would be using Mediawiki with the Dia extension.
I like using the svgedit plugin in dokuwiki for quick diagramming on the run. It produces standard SVG text files and has an always up to the date javascript wysiwyg editor. And, I submitted a bug/feature request on github and the requested functionality was added post haste.
Edit: FOSS!
i understand this question is old enough. but you could try Origramy. it's a Flash-based visual tool. and XML as the result can be get from the component. alas integration to wiki must be made separately
Not sure of the technology you have on your server, but Open Diagram can create a jpg image file on the server which can then be referenced as a normal image in your wiki. Its open source.
I've enjoyed the simplicity of UMLet for a while as a desktop app. Don't let the name fool you! There is more than just UML - it has a lot of basic charting elements in it. It's not pretty, and it can be awkward sometimes, but it works. Has basic visual items in a template/toolbox that you double-click on to reproduce on your canvas. You can then move it about, resize it, or edit the item and modify it via text.
There isn't an existing online integration method (that I've seen), but being that it's good old fashioned java, you might be able to make it happen.
It's free and distributed under the GNU General Public Licence.
honestly i think you are going to have to use Java and code an applet. there are wondrous advancements in javascript libraries (AJAX, JQuery) that also might assist in this...
cheers my friend.
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Closed 10 years ago.
Can anyone suggest a good open source django project to learn django development.
A great resource is www.djangopackages.com, which lists a lot of the notable Django apps out there, including links to their respective repos, popularity ratings, etc..
Another way to find popular projects is directly on GitHub: https://github.com/search?q=django
Finally:
Awesome Django # https://github.com/wsvincent/awesome-django
Awesome Python # https://github.com/vinta/awesome-python
django-basic-apps is also a very good start to learn django and reusable apps. These apps are simple enough and code is well written.
If you're looking to learn the popular reusable app feature of Django I would suggest Pinax, and you also may want to look at Django-Mingus. I'm the author behind Mingus and I recently posted a list of the apps included in Mingus along with a description of how and why they are used. It maybe helpful in finding some projects you may want to use yourself. Here's a link: "The apps that power Django-Mingus"
There's also a ton of Django projects on Google Code, GitHub, and BitBucket. Just search for "django".
Django-CMS, mentioned above, and Fein-CMS are both good CMS projects to dive into, and the screencasts by Eric are terrific - I absolutely suggest any noob to Django watch all 13 of those screencasts.
I asked Malcolm Tredinnick a few weeks ago if there was a project he admired and he suggested Django Packages. They keep their source on Github .
I wouldn't say that it should be used as a Django tutorial but they have an admirable style of programming and I have picked up more than a few tips and tricks by reading their source. It is definitely a good example to learn from.
One of the best for newbie: 13 screencasts "Django From the Ground Up" at This Week In Django#
edit:
#the website is closed. view archived page.
I recommend Waka Waka. Its a very well written wiki, that should give you a good idea of how to develop in django. It is an application used by Pinax, which by itself should be huge, to learn.
You can also of course go through some of ubernostrum's code like Registration, profiles and Contact Form, which are a standard in the django world. But as some of them involve dynamic forms, it may be best to get to it, after a little actual coding.
If you're interested in running Django in App Engine, checkout out this project. Here's a demo.
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Closed 10 years ago.
What kind of software do you use to draw diagram for your presentation and report?
Suppose you want to draw a diagram to illustrate the TCP hand shake.
I use visio, but the outcome is too plain.
Is there any free software out there can draw diagrams better? Which can also have some 3D shapes or shadows?
Dia for Windows
gadwin
Gliffy
DiaCze
SmartDraw
All the best man.
Inkscape is a free vector drawing program that will make drawings as elaborate as you want them to be. And while it's probably not what you're looking for, I can't recommend TiKZ (www.texample.net) highly enough. It's what I use for everything nowadays.
If you want beautiful diagrams, be prepared to work for them. Recently, I've been using Illustrator, but that isn't exactly free. I have used Inkscape in the past and it can work very well.
I've filched the company tablet PC for this single reason - so that I can hand-draw diagrams directly in my (OneNote) documents. All the advantages of quick sketches which can be rapidly changed/printed and still have typed text (written text is not a legible option in my case)
A whiteboard and a digital camera (maybe in your phone) works really great!
It's PowerPoint 2007, but you have to using basic shapes (with 3D and shadow) to create diagrams. It's possible, but it's hard work, if you want nice looking.
And same nice background for slides. Different for section head and for other slides.
I think you should save yourself a lot of time and look for images on the web, rather than drawing them yourself. Try searching http://images.google.com for what you need (shapes or whatever) and piece them together with a simple paint program or The GIMP.
If you are not publishing the document, and only attempting to explain information to coworkers, you can find (steal) plenty of well-designed images intended to explain networking concepts.
Otherwise your presentation should probably be in PowerPoint or OpenOffice Impress, or some such presentation tool.
Good old Microsoft Paint. Or, Paintbrush on my Mac.
Keeping it simple works for me. As many colors and shapes as I want, with easy canvas features, and nothing over the top like shadows etc.
I've found the best of the "free" apps to be Paint.NET. Does everything I've ever need an image creation and editing app to do, well supported by the developers and the community and has a huge userbase that has created a bunch of plugins to expand it's features. As a Photoshop/Illustrator lite, it's as good as they come.
You can use Creatly. It's a web based tool simular to Visio. They have a free trial, so you can just check it out.