While learning OpenPlug|Studio and diving into the code, my third Android application is here. Its a simple drawing board, kind of slate. As an user one has option to select different color and pen thickness for drawing on it. Again a simple but usable application, which can be downloaded from this link.
The source code is availbale at Github too.
Category Archives: opensource
Using List component in OpenPlug
OpenPlug|Studio ships with its own SDK and though it seem like FlexSDK dependent, there are native components to work with for mobile devices. The major or the most used native component is List and one can access it as
mob:List id="allSDCardFiles"
x="0" y="0"
height="100%" width="100%"
rowHeight="45"
While it is expected to work fine and it does work fine in the simulator, but when tested on device (I have used an Android phone to test), the application simply crashed. Well the problem here is a bug in the baseSDK of OpenPlug. So till the bug is fixed the simple solution is to use a default itemRenderer. The fixed code will look as
mob:List id="allSDCardFiles"
x="0" y="0"
height="100%" width="100%"
rowHeight="45"
itemRenderer="ListItemRenderer"
That simply works every where from simulator to the device.
Hope that helps someone out there.
My first workable Android application, AFinder.
On my quest with different tools/languages, I started on OpenPlug|Studio for developing in Android. Though this is a tool for developing for multiple devices, I specifically tried this for Android for the time being.
This IDE is based on Eclipse and there are two flavors of installations. One installs it directly as a standalone IDE and you have option to install it over FlashBuilder. The development is also based upon the same component style development as in Flex SDK. There is a different name-space for mobile specific UIs. they start with “mob” rather than “mx”. From compiling to publishing as an .apk file for android device installations are quite straight forward. The best part about the IDE is its completely free. Well then it has potential as to one codebase and publish to multiple platforms. The community at OpenPlug|Studio forum seems active too and one can feel there are a lot going behind as to fix up bugs and add new features to the tool set. Though there are bugs and features to be added, but as I said, once you involve in forum, you got to know they are already working on it and new releases are happening almost in 2-3 months.
Here is my basic Android application to move around your file system on the device. Would love to listen the feedback.
Aptana Studio, free IDE for web design.
This may be apparent by now that web design is not graphics in a page or the colour of the background of the webpage. It has gone well beyond that and for the same reason web designers are attracted towards an IDE (Integrated development environment) that would be best suited for this need. Previously the WYSIWYG kind of IDEs were a thing to look for. But currently it is the web standards, clean code and ease of use is what everyone looks for. Fortunately we are not limited to Notepad in windows or TextEdit on MAC.
One such IDE is APTANA Studio. This is based on the opensource Eclipse IDE. Current version of the IDE is much better than its previous versions and now it comes with project templates for HTML5 applications. There are project templates which are already installed with the IDE itself. There is an option to choose the template to use in your project, and if you are connected to internet then there are options for a template to be downloaded from the source control systems like github. This makes a perfect case for people who are just beginning to use Git or not used to it. That means whenever you create a project with these kind of templates, you are bound to get the latest one form the repository. So you will get the benefit of the awesome developer and designer community, who is constantly contributing to the original source code. And one does not need to know the inside working of the system. Thats a huge plus point.
Well, by this time you must have sensed that Git support is inbuilt with the IDE. So one can always see if the changes are committed or not. That way it will make your code constantly tracked by version control systems. There is a built in terminal(command prompt) inside the IDE. So one dose not need to open it separately to work in a command prompt.
Next is its look and feel and working in different operating systems and this IDE simply the same IDE in Windows and Mac operating systems (I have not tried the Linux version yet).
This supports a lot of languages starting from HTML, Javascript, CSS, PHP, Ruby and Rails. While writing my own CSS and javascript the code hinting and responsiveness of the IDE just blown me away. Its just those simple features, which, if one gets used to, then there would be no coming back to a bare-bone IDE like Notepad or TextEdit. While editing CSS, and adding a colour value, there is a little display as to which colour this value is representing! Thats just too good. There is a web previewer inside the IDE itself, if one needs to test the design one need not leave the IDE too.
Overall in my opinion this is one of the IDEs to get used to if one is doing web design in current age.
Removing the tracking of files, already tracked by Git
If you work on Git then you must be knowing once we fork(or initialise a repository) a repository, all the files inside that folder get tracked automatically by Git. Well, thats not a problem if we really want all of them to be tracked all the time. But the problem starts when there are some files we need not track. And the worse happens when all of the files are being tracked and now we decide to remove some files from being tracked. The handy command is
$ git rm --cached readme.txt
And for folders
$ git rm --cached docs/
There is an option to set a rule for Git to ignore all the files, one need Git to ignore from tracking. This rule is set in a file named .gitignore. Remember there is a dot (.) before gitignore word name. All those files which need to be ignored must be mentioned in this .gitignore file. The tricky part is .gitignore will not remove files from tracking by Git if those files are already being tracked by Git. In those case the above “git rm –cached” trick will help.
The way I do it regularly is add the .gitignore file in the beginning inside the folder I am going to initialise Git repository. That only works if I know which files I need to ignore in the beginning only.
There is a set of .gitignore templates for different languages at Github, That is a great help in the beginning of configuring the .gitignore for different languages.
WordPress 3.2 is released
Finally with the release of wordpress engine 3.2, the blog is updated to the latest version of the engine.
A big thank you to the wordpress team as this version of the engine the fun to work with in the admin pannel too 
A lot of subtle but note worthy improvements. Finally I think everyone is moving to User Experience rather than features.
Git Svn
While the dialogue can go on as to what to use for version control system, central or distributed, the truth is the whole developer community is inclined towards Git.
If you are a Git user, chances are you come across teams, who still uses Svn. Never to worry though, since Git has native support for Svn. So basically, while all of the team will be using Svn, you can still use Git and work on the same repository as the team, with the added power of Git.
My often used commands to work with Svn through Git are below,
git svn init https://svn.repo.org/dev/trunk/
git svn rebase (or git svn fetch)
git svn dcommit
Basically, once you have your repository locally, everything else is plain Git.
git branch myLocalDev
git checkout myLocalDev
git add .
git commit -m 'my comment'
git checkout master
git merge myLocalDev
git svn dcommit
Below is a description taken from here, which makes it clear as to what to do when Svn is updated and you need to update the local repository before pushing your update to the central repository.
Put aside your changes using the command :
git-stashUpdate your working copy using :
git svn rebaseTake back your changes typing :
git-stash applyClear “the stash” typing :
git-stash clear
Hope that helps someone out there.
Posted from WordPress for Android through my “HTC Wildfire”.
WordPress engine 3.2 RC1 is released.
With the release of new WordPress Engine (WordPress 3.2-RC1), I am tempted to make the update to this blog and so we go I have again updated the engine to the latest version of the engine.
The installation is simple and hassel free. All the themes and plugins just run as it is.
So, nice work again by the wordpress team.
Architectural visualisation with Blender
The complete project details are here.
Some more details about the project.
The 3D software used is Blender.
Some more community news about the project.
Sparrow V1.2 is released
This is one of the most stable releases of Sparrow framework, as it is said from its creators. This is very exciting news as there are some very subtle but significant changes happened. One of the features, which I like most is, the position of the pivot point of a texture. Previously one need to put it inside a container, now its just a property setting.
The complete list of updates could be found in its officials blog here.
Posted from WordPress for Android through my “HTC Wildfire”.