by Stian Solberg
21. October 2009 16:00
We're moving fast towards a final release. Current code is more and more stable, but we'd like the final release to be top quality and that's why we are releasing a beta.
Work done between Alpha and Beta:
- Setup is now signed; no more warnings in Vista/Windows 7
- Even more IE6 compatible, specially in regards to modality
- Upgraded to Prototype 1.6.1
- New properties on AspectDraggable: MakeGhost, UseDocumentBody, DragCssClass and DeepCopy. AspectDraggable with Ghosting, Dashboard sample and TreeView with drag and drop are demonstrating these new features.
- More brand new samples:
- Setup now has 3.6 design
- Adaptive rendering has changed name to DRIMR: Dynamic, Removals, Insertions, Moves & Replacements
What is the DRIMR technology? Read this blog post by Jan Blomquist
- Fixed issue with Gaia controls that triggered validator controls incorrectly
- DateTimePicker and AutoCompleter now appear in ControlToValidate list in validators
- Bug fixes
Links and downloads
Changelog-Gaia-Ajax-3-6-Beta.pdf (106.52 kb)
Click here for Tar.gz binaries + source - for open source projects
Click here if you are a subscription customer (requires login)
Comments and feedback are very welcome at our forum. Enjoy the new bits!
Kind regards
The Gaiaware Team
by Stian Solberg
26. May 2009 06:30
Recently we decided to add a searching feature for the different sites we run on gaiaware.net: main site, blogs, forum, tracker, docs and API reference. We wanted to be able to search each site separately and still have all the results presented in a intuitive way. And of course, it should be built using Gaia Ajax, so it could be quickly developed (our customers say they increase the productivity by 30-50% on the ASP.NET platform when using Gaia Ajax) and give a responsive and ajaxified user experience.
We have purchased a Google Site Search subscription so we don't have to reinvent the wheel again and make our own site spider. The Google Site Search gives us the search results in XML, and we can parse and present them in any way we would like.
The challenge: multiple search sources with ASP.NET
Since we wanted to present the results from each sub site in separate sections, we needed to overcome some limitations of what Google Site Search gives us. E.g. you can return max 20 results per search. Since we wanted to separate the results in each sub domain (e.g. forum.gaiaware.net) we needed to use the useful "site:" parameter in a Google query. That meant that we needed to fire off 5-6 Google searches for each search we executed on our own page. Our immediate concern was how long time it would take to perform so many Google searches, return them, parse them and present them on our ASP.NET page.
More...
by Jan Blomquist
24. March 2009 10:58
Can you close your eyes and reel off the 12 points to better code. Do you have the Joel's test fresh in mind? The Joel Test: 12 Steps to Better Code is extremly important for all software developers. In this blog we will cover the three first rules and how we have solved this in Gaiaware.
- Do you use source control?
- Can you make a build in one step?
- Do you make daily builds?
Do you use source control?
We couldn't imagine a life without source control. In fact several studies show that firms without a good source control system cannot survive (ref; http://www.stevemcconnell.com/rd.htm ). For all software development at Gaiaware we are currently using Subversion.
Because we also truly believe in open development of our library we have decided to publish the SVN repositories for public access. That means you can just add Gaia Ajax source directly to your solution (via
externals ) and benefit from the rapid development of Gaia Ajax
Here's the urls for the repositories of Gaia AjaxTagged versions of Gaia Ajax (Released and archived) Note! Use anonymous as username when asked for credentials
Can you make a build in one step?
Yes we can. We've built a customized build system that suits Gaia Ajax just perfectly. It's written in Ruby and uses Rake and COM interop to work with Visual Studio.NET. With Ruby's duck typing it's easy to read project properties, project items and different configuration settings. The build itself is also done with VS.NET using Ruby.
Do you make daily builds?
We've been making daily/nightly builds of Gaia Ajax for quite some time now and now we've finally decided to make them public.
The opening of the source and publishing of nightly builds allow you to post a bug/issue and have it fixed that very same day. Then you will have access to the bits within the next working day (even sooner if required). It should also be easy to pickup new bits that fit the requirements of your development. We will still post release dates for official relases which you can align with your project.
Nightly builds of the commerical package is available for commercialusers. If you have an active subscription just click on the nightlybuilds link to access the nightly builds.
Update 2009-06-29: You can test our nightly build samples here
Summary
Don't cheat when it comes to Joel's 12 steps to better code. Stability and base quality is key. What good does a piece of code do if it simply doesn't work. Source control and automated builds are just some the absolute requirements to achieve higher code quality. The importance of this was also pointed out in this blog post -> (
Principles of UI architecture for libraries )
Enjoy the builds!