Dojo Toolkit on Nokia n800

I tried running few examples of the Dojo Toolkit on my Nokia n800's default browser. Most things worked well except for the 'Fisheye' widget, which kept on giving error. Drag and drop example worked flawlessly on the device.

Tcl\Tk on Nokia n800

Ever since I have owned a n800 I was impatient to try some coding for it. I tried to setup Ubuntu on VM and install the Maemo SDK , but I was greeted with hundreds of errors.

Then I tried the VMWare images of Maemo SDK, but again faced problems. Had trouble changing targets and using ESBox. Also to add to the frustration the desktop manager (which I believe is Xfce) behaves weirdly, especially after restarts.

So, I was looking for some option that was easier to setup and fast. Then I came across Tcl/Tk for Maemo. Tcl is a fairly old scripting language and Tk is GUI toolkit that comes with Tcl. One can create nice GUIs with very few lines of code. Give below is a sample script and the output:

font create myfont -family Helvetica -size 20
image create photo myimg -file "img.gif" -format gif
label .i -image myimg -background white -borderwidth 3
label .l -text "Hello Maemo" -font myfont
pack .i .l -padx 10 -pady 10

Once can do some pretty serious scripting with Tcl too ! Here is another screen shot of widgets demo script that comes with standard Tcl\Tk distribution running on my n800:















But for some reasons when I click on any of the hyperlinks , I get error ! Also I was unable to install Gnocl package on my N800 (OS 2008) . Even then I think I have quite a bit to explore with this scripting language and this amazing gadget !

My Nokia n800

Last month I got myself a Nokia n800 Internet Tablet. The first thing I end up telling people about it is, it is not a 'mobile phone'. Apart from that it can do almost anything that you may expect from a PDA/Smartphone/PMP. For around USD 250 its one of the best gadgets I have ever purchased. Also, it runs on open source Linux based operating system (Maemo). Here are some images:

Using my IFRAME tooltip with ASP.NET

Just posted an article on using my IFRAME tooltip to show webforms. The article discusses how it can be used to show a 'details page' for every row of a datagrid/datagridview inside a tooltip.

http://ashishware.com/WebfrmTooltip.shtml

Sometimes it might just not be convenient to show dynamic content using 'innerHTML' property of a floating container. This may be useful in scenarios for incorporating tooltip feature for already designed grid/details pages.

My Photo in MS Originals Gallery !

I am famous ! Just found my photo in Microsoft's Originals Gallery.

Check out yourself !

I hope you are able to locate me in the gallery* .
[*Hint: Enter my yahoo email id in the search.]

Uploaded another tooltip script !

Last week, I uploaded yet another tooltip javascript. This time it was the ' IFRAME based Javascript Tooltip'. It can be very useful to show full webpages inside a tooltip. This also solves the problem of DIV hovering a SELECT(drop down) in older versions of Internet Explorer.

This tooltip support all features of my previous DIV based tooltip, with only exception that it accepts a URL instead of 'innerHTML' string for showing content.

Check out the script in action and notes on using it here:
http://ashishware.com/IfrmToolTip.shtml

Buy a gadget and do some charity !

XO Laptop (One laptop for a child project) would be sale for two weeks in US. It comes for around USD 400. The deal is when you buy one for USD 400 , you spend 200 on your laptop and another 200 for laptop which would be donated to a child in poor country.

These laptops have been specifically made for children and for extreme conditions in poor countries. Though they are not as powerful as the commercial once, still they do have some nice functionality like Wifi, mesh networking, Linux, 6 hour battery ..etc .

Here is a nice video review about the same .

Now think of this, you could at least use it as a e-book reader or a cool PDA. Considering cost of such devices is around USD 200-300 in market, it’s a nice thing to buy. Also you can claim a tax-deduction on USD 200 you spent for charity.

This is their website:
http://www.xogiving.org/
http://www.laptop.org/en/vision/index.shtml (Philosophy behind the project)

Ok, if you are thinking that this could help children in India, the answer unfortunately is 'no'. India has said 'NO' to such laptops (as it happens with many good things in India…no points for guessing 'why?' ). But still not a bad deal.

I am definitely curious to know how it fares as a PDA and/or ebook reader !

Writing my first Rails Application

Started work on writing my first RoR (Ruby on Rails) application a week back. Its a simple multiuser bug logging system.

Rails as a framework looks great. It does save lot of development time, only if you know how exactly to do things. Scaffolding generated views are also very cool, but to me it doesn't look very useful in practical scenario, since you will invariably find yourself rearranging fields or design of the view. But I am definitely impressed with ORM feature included with Rails. This is the first time I am using ORM, and I think the time it saves can be invaluable for certain types of projects. There are also some goodies like AJAX, DojoToolkit can be combined with Rails.
It took me some time to figure out how things work in rails. Also since I am new to Ruby, I had to go online many a times to get help.

I am very excited with prospects of being able to create very useful and robust applications in no time once I master Ruby and Rails. Right now this little application that I am making is a great learning experience for me.

Screenshot of 'Create new bug' screen.

Google Gears ! ... Looks Interesting

Google Gears assists you to create web applications that can work in offline mode. Gears is one of the first such tool to make this happen. With amount of javascript code being written increasing every day, one day web apps will be made on top of web services with javascript front end. You need to be as good with javascript as you are with ASP.NET, PHP or Ruby ! One more language to learn.

Cool ASP.NET Validators !

Uploaded an article on enhancing ASP.NET client side validators using AJAX Control Toolkit. The example discussed in the article shows how to add validation callouts to every control and show list of errors in a modal dialog box with translucent background.

Read the article here : http://ashishware.com/ASPValid.shtml