rb's blog

MyOwnDB Promo activities

rb — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:05:01 +0000

It's a busy week for MyOwnDB promo, as I was yesterday as the Web Startup Day where I talked about MyOwnDB to various participants, and got very interesting feedback and reactions.

And tomorrow, I'll present MyOwnDB at Boostcamp, an initiative by the Microsoft Innovation Center. We'll see what they think of it as it's not using any Microsoft product, but it'll be a good exercise in any case!

Fault tolerant loading remote javascript with YUI

rb — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 13:49:59 +0000

The registration form of the MyOwnDB app was simplified this week, but an information I wanted to keep is the country where registered people are located, notably to know which translation of the UI to provide next (currently, it looks like it will be spanish).

I decided to use the Geoplugin.com service, but it appears it's unreachable at this time, making for a less than engaging experience when loading the sign-up page.

Upgrade to YUI3.1

rb — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 13:35:26 +0000

I just deployed a new version of the application, based on YUI3.1 that was released this week.

Although no change should be visible at this time, YUI 3.1 will help bring the public entry forms to the next stage. Watch this space for updates!

Improved CSV import

rb — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 13:06:54 +0000

A new improved version of the CSV import feature has been deployed. You can now specifiy which field separator should be used, and empty records are now reported along the number of invalid reacord and created records.

Check it out, and get in touch if you encounter any problem!

Using rails' escape_javascript outside of views

rb — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:22:45 +0000

Rails provides a handy function to escape string to be used in your javascript code. Unfortunately, it is only available in your views. It is very easy though to make it available outside of views, eg in your helpers, as it suffices to require and include one module:

require 'action_view/helpers/javascript_helper'
include ActionView::Helpers::JavaScriptHelper

# escape_javascript is available here.

New website launched

rb — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:21:07 +0000

Here it is, a brand new website for MyOwnDB. It was really time to abandon the old one, which was based on a custom developed solution...
This new website is based on Drupal and uses its multilingual capabilities to power the websites in different languages, currently:

english at http://www.myowndb.com
french at http://www.myowndb.com

The dutch translation should be coming very soon.

I expect the design to evolve, but I'm happy with this transitional design based on Drupify.

New table listing deployed

rb — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 11:24:38 +0000

With this deployment, the first step of a transition to using YUI datatable is completed.

Layout based on YUI Grids bring better browser support

rb — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:34:31 +0000

A new version of the application has just now been deployed, which brings the page layout managed with YUI Grids. This should correct some problems with IE rendering. Let me know if you encounter any trouble, eg by filling the form below. I have notifications enabled on the form, so you should get fast response.

New forms code deployed

rb — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 09:59:12 +0000

Although you shouldn't see any difference, the entry forms in MyOwnDB are now generated by a totally different code, and are actually full javascript forms. This change offers a lot of opportunities for the future, especially for integrating the public forms in websites, and is the first step in the large-scale code update that is currently occuring.

South America's Games using Myowndb

rb — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 07:20:02 +0000

The 2010 edition of South America's Games (Juegos Suramericanos) will take place in Medellin from 19 to 30 march. They are using MyOwnDB to collect volunteers applications.