Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Sons of DHTMLX and Spring #5

Episode 5: Call of Duty
The last episode announced the availability of the DHTMLX Spring Link as an open source project. Now it is time to get involved and make the project grow.

How to get involved
As an open source project contributions will keep the project alive and updated. There are many ways to get involved in the DHTMLX Spring Link project.

Word of Mouth
The easiest way to support the project is by sharing the information with others. Feel free to create links on your website, blog or social media.

Become a Contributor
A Contributor supports the project by participating in forum discussions, testing, proving feedback for updates, bug fixing, documentation and suggestion.

Become a Committer
Committers get the write access to the code repository and participate actively to the project development. In order to become a committer a license agreement is required.

Make Donation
Individuals who do not have the time to get involved and found the project valuable can consider making a donation.The funds received will be allocated to keep the project live.
You can make a donation here.

Sponsorship
Individuals or Companies that want to provide monetary contribution the sponsorship is the most direct method.Official acknowledgement and thanks for the donation including your logo and link, will be published on this web site.

Contact
If you are interested in participating feel free to contact us at:



Thursday, February 16, 2012

Sons of DHTMLX and Spring #4

Episode 4: Fruit for the Crows
Apologies for the long wait from the last post as I've been involved in a three weeks wild goose chase.
Every company has a character who presents themselves as an expert while at the same time there are clear signals that they do not know very much on a subject.  
A customer made an agreement with one of this experts which was nicknamed Nyohkee.
I don't know very much about this guy, he can be the Greatest American Hero for all I know.  After attending his presentation which was full of colorful slides and catchy phrases such as "You have to spend money to make money" he came to my desk with a song and dance that there was the opportunity to attract new customers.
My first thought was to blow this Popsicle stand as I had a feeling that the discussion was not going to go anywhere but the customer recommended to support any request even if the solution does not meet the potential client needs. End of discussion.
In the next three weeks, including Sundays, I proceeded on the wild goose chase constantly feeling the pressure from Nyohkee. The morning before the presentation an announcement was made that the client meeting was cancelled.

Now it is time to introduce the next episode.
This post introduce another feature of the DHTMLX Spring Adapter which provides  a server side programming model using one of the nicest feature of the DHTMLX library: the ability to create the components using an XML representation. This feature gives the ability to package your  components in JAR files and reused simply including them in your web application library folder.
For example to include a DHTMLX form in a web page, you can use the code below: 
  1. <div id="bookForm" style="height:500px;"></div>

  2. <script>
  3. var bookForm;
  4. function initialize() {
  5.     myForm = new dhtmlXForm("bookForm");
  6.     myForm.loadStruct("/app/book/server");
  7. }
  8. </script>

The project has been formally renamed to DHTMLX Spring Link and it is available on Google Code at: https://code.google.com/p/dhtmlx-spring-link.

Cheers!