ChrisEsler.com

Krugle - Code Search Engine

chris.esler — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 16:01:43 +0000

I had signed up for the Krugle service when I first heard about it from Ajaxian. It was promising to be a search engine to find source code - of everything (php, java, perl, c, you name it). Well they got an overwhelming response, and had to back off a bit till they had the resources to handle the demand.

I just got my account code the other day, and signed up for the Beta. It looks very promising. The interface is nice and fairly intuitive. Lots of use of Ajax here to make requests and manipulate the gui. If you click on a search result, it enableds a side pane that allows you to look at the code and the repository where it is located. All in one place. Pretty impressive. Very little lag time.

There needs to be some minor cleanup of the gui, but overall its a good project, and I can’t wait to to see the final version. If you haven’t signed up for a Krugle account, I reccomend heading over to their site and sign up for the Beta.

QooxDoo Javascript UI Library

chris.esler — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 17:08:58 +0000

A while ago I discovered a pretty amazing library for UI design written entirely in javascript. What surprised me though is how little attention it was getting. No, it’s not Prototype or Dojo - they get tons of attention. The javascript library I’m talking about is called QooxDoo.

First thing you’e probably saying is ‘Cooks what??’. Heres a snippet from their website stating just how to pronounce the name.

How do you pronounce the name?
For the peace of mind of our english speaking friends: It’s like “cooks-do”, as in the sentence “Cooks do cooking for their living”.

What impresses me most about this javascript is the superb UI it generates. It has most of what you need to develop a Web 2.0 application. It is still fairly early in its development, but the strength of the community behind it has made it come a long way. It has the ability for a windowing system, ajax communication, excellent menu system, event capture, themes, and much more than I could ever write in a day. I suggest you vist their website for a demo.

I’m currently learning more about how to use this script to generate a UI. I’ve also figured out how to integrate CPAINT with it to do ajax communication with my PHP scripts that do the talking to my postgres and mysql database.

I plan on working out a simple application like a contacts list just to show the power of this open source project. And yes. It is free. Qooxdoo uses the LGPL as their license.

So check it out.

Ajax tooltip

chris.esler — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 20:07:51 +0000

I was looking for an ajax tooltip the other day, and I happened to find one that was actually pretty good. The tooltip itself is called “Bubble Tooltip“. This is very similar to the netflix tooltip.

What makes it easy is that you use basically one image for the background of the tooltip. If you want a fancy tooltip such as their example, you need to make the image a PNG to have the best transparency. You then write some basic css for the top and bottom of the tooltip.

Even though this is a pretty impressive ajax tooltip, I think I could do something similar with Prototype. I’ll try to write a new ajax tooltip script that utilizes Prototype since that is what I’ve been using mostly when I write ajax script.

http://web-graphics.com/mtarchive/001717.php