Software Update...

It has been about a month since I updated my Exocortex with the improvements in my development tree, so I did that tonight.

This update brought a bunch of little bug fixes and some major code refactoring, including the "final" version of the bare HTML viewer for newsfeeds and a major clean-up of the people module code which should make it much easier to AJAX-ify.)

It also included a few feature enhancements to several modules.

I'm taking it slow with the Ajax-ification of the newsfeeds module. I don't want to make the kinds of coding miss-steps I made early on this project, so I'm doing plenty of studying and research on best practices.

Ok, back to everything else on the to-do list...

More changes...

I've come to see that I really need to make some more changes to my development methods than I previously believed. I'm going to start doing all my development inside an IDE (most likely Eclipse with PHP and Javascript additions) and start keeping all my code in a version control system like Subversion or whatever.

So, yet more serious work added to the todo list but in the end it should increase my efficiency.

Rethinking...

My schedule has already more or less fallen by the wayside.

Adding the features I wanted to the People module basically required a major re-factoring of the code base for that module, which required more time than I had originally planned.

Also, I've increasingly come to the conclusion that I really need to drop the Web 1.0 style of development and adopt Web 2.0 AJAX development.

So, my revised plan is to do the following:

1. Re-write the Newsfeeds Module with an AJAX interface (Because it has one of the simplest interfaces.)


2. Finish the improvements to the People Module with AJAX (Because it has one of the most complex interfaces.)


3. Design and implement Core Knowledge


4. Re-write Calendar in a more AJAX fashion, correcting outstanding issues.


5. Design and implement Memory Browser (which has always required AJAX.)


6. Finish the improvements to search

Actually, other than finishing the improvements to newsfeeds first, the order is still mostly intact. The big thing is that I now expect this to take at least a month or two longer than I originally anticipated. Of course, the web interface will also be much better than I originally anticipated as well.

My feelings about this are mixed, of course. On the one hand, it's added delay, preventing me from moving on to bigger and better things. On the other, my web interface will be more complete and my programming skills will continue to mature.

As long as I can complete this new plan by the end of the year, I'll be happy...