Draggable Boxes - Collective effort to enhance it?

[airjrdn (Restore)]

[Josh]

[peter]

[airjrdn (Restore)]

[Batalf]

[airjrdn (Restore)]

I'm fine with the three bullet points Betalf laid out, especially since he's of course done the bulk of the work so far. I also appreciate the chance to coordinate this effort until Betalf decides otherwise.

Feature wise, I'll throw my suggestions out, then, please add yours to the list, 2nd mine if you agree, etc. The ones with the most backing should probably happen first.

My suggested features would be:
Weather Module - similar to Netvibes, google's, Live.com's, etc.
Bookmarks Module - supporting tags similar to Netvibes, also potentially support digg/del.icio.us, etc.
Tabs - Allow moving of modules between tabs, unlimited tabs, etc.

Also, while not necessarily a "feature" per say, I think some effort should be put toward cleaning things up. Ideally, there should only be one place to store database name, login, etc. The table structures I put together need to be adjusted as well. I can definitely lend a hand on the SQL side of things. I'm much stronger there than in PHP/AJAX. There's also the issue of combining the module refreshes with the RSS parser refresh. It's been discussed briefly that the module level refreshes could be discarded. If you have input relating to that, please weigh in.

[Josh]

All the above, from both of you, sounds good to me.

airjrdn, I agree that a cleanup is in order. Having one config file holding the database info versus searching through several files would be a much appreciated improvement. I haven't had a chance to really test drive your work yet, so I can't comment on more than just the cursory look I gave it.

A weather module shouldn't be too terribly difficult either, many weather sites have forecasts available as RSS and also have API's to utilize.

For the bookmarks, there is an OSS project that mimics del.icio.us's method - but I can't recall the name of it right now. It may be a good place to look for some snippets. However, that could be a double edged sword as well - if the project's code is GPL'd and we use their snippets then (from my understanding) if that is included into the main application, the entire app may become GPL'd as well. That would go against the guidelines Batalf has laid out above.

Ok enough rambling from me for a bit. Oh, one last thing though, as far as coordinating development - do we want to think about somethign like a CVS repo? With only a few of us it might be overkill, but then again it could be handy.

[george]

[airjrdn (Restore)]

[Josh]

I agree with the need to seperate the content from the presentation. I had posted on this . I started working on a solution, but haven't had the time to really put much effort into it as of yet. When/if I get it completed, I'll happily share.

And yes, it can only be done for the default boxes. But even that is better than a page with no content to be indexed or one that cannot be viewed by browswers without javascript (i.e. many mobile browsers).

[george]

Default boxes is still good. I wouldn't expect it to also include feeds that other users have set up. And if I wanted to add additional boxes I would just add it to the script.

[peter]

I completely agree with the Batalf points, and congratiulate airjrdn with his new unpaid job.

Can the version we have to work on be extended with a text-file containing a list of todo's. That way the work can start, and we can avoid doing work twice (since we are working for free we have to avoid this).

kr,

Peter

[Josh]

If it would help, I can set up some sort of collaboration site for those who want to work on this or as a helpful spot to get newcomers up to speed.

Any suggestions for favorite applications or methods for doing so are very welcome. airjrdn, since you're running this, do you have any preference or ideas?

[airjrdn (Restore)]

Josh,

I sure don't. All project managing work I've done has been in house using MS Project or custom project/task tracking tools.

If you have experience with something you'd like to suggest, please do.

[airjrdn (Restore)]