V2.14 for jQuery 1.4

A minor revision is here for the newly released jQuery 1.4, with some minor tweaks and lots comments added.

Also the Gritter library has been updated to the latest V1.6.

Give a little tryout if you’re considering moving to jQuery 1.4, or stay with V2 otherwise.

Inspirational Stuff on JPolite3

While JPolite V1 is an initial attempt to ease portal development, V2 goes even further into code structure improvement for better development support. But the question has been haunting me for some time, that what about V3, even more developer oriented enhancement? Or something else?

Checking through designers’ portfolios, I came across this Nike Bauer site design, sorta old news but still inspiring to me.

And then this conceptual video about a collaborative research project initiated by Bonnier R&D on future magazine reading experiences.

http://www.bonnier.com/en/content/digital-magazines-bonnier-mag-prototype

Plus this Tablet experience demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntyXvLnxyXk

…

Now that my mind is made up that JPolite V3 will focus on user experience innovation, to mimic or incorporate above conceptual ideas and more, with just HTML, CSS & JavaScript.

Also struck me is an old saying “… the future is already here. It’s just not very evenly distributed” by William Gibson from 1999

Dieter Rams “Less and More”

Dieter Rams “Less and More” Exhibition @ Design Museum

 

Dieter Rams’ ten principles to “good design”

• Good design is innovative
• Good design makes a product useful
• Good design is aesthetic
• Good design helps us to understand a product
• Good design is unobtrusive
• Good design is honest
• Good design is long-lasting
• Good design is consequent to the last detail
• Good design is concerned with the environment
• Good design is as little design as possible

I deem myself mostly a developer and hardly a designer, but I find myself constantly getting hints and inspirations from design communities which more or less influenced my technical design and implementation. And I believe most of Dieter’s principles can be applied to software domains without problem.

There’ve been lots debates around “less is more”, or “more is more”. My take is that, take such ideas seriously, not literally. Just like what Einstein said, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but NOT SIMPLER”.

OpenVoice Interview

Actually this one is a bit late, since the interview took place almost a week ago. Anyway you can get a lot more background info regarding JPolite.

http://openvoice.ossreleasefeed.com/2009/11/wayne-lee-on-jpolite-lightweight-jquery-based-portal-framework/

Thanks a lot to Schalk Neethling!

Recovering from a bad cold — luckily not H1N1 Flu :)

Weeks of headache, cough, sneeze finallycoming to an end, luckily no signs of fever at all.

Will resume normal working next week.

Poup and Dropdown menu

Now a popup menu module and dropdown navigation menu support has been added with simple markup syntax and style settings.

 

Try out the updated online demo as well as the code :)

JPolite2 – Close to Launch :)

beta

Check it out!

• Play around: http://www.trilancer.com/jpolite2/
• Source code: http://code.google.com/p/jpolite2/ => jpolite2-beta2.zip

Features Done:

• Integration of BlueTrip CSS framework, with Grid System applied on column layout
• Intregration of Gritter as an utility function to notify users
• Integration with jQuery UI controls plus themes, as well as module drag-n-drop
• Complete rewritten of code structure, a smaller core with a strong customization system
• Module Types – various types of modules can be included and applied on modules easily
• Theme Support – three sample themes with a switcher,  ”Modern”, “Sliver” and “Classic“
• Comprehensive Customization guides
• Layout Persistence – cookie based layout persistence sample, can be customized to save remote store
• XDO – A RESTful resource presentation layer powered by Chain.js, with messaging and event handling
• Documentation online

On-going:

• A generic Theme Builder based on LESS CSS is being developed

JPolite 2 Beta is out!

 beta

Check it out!

• Play around: http://www.trilancer.com/jpolite2/
• Source code: http://code.google.com/p/jpolite2/ => jpolite2-beta.zip

Features Done:

• Integration of BlueTrip CSS framework, with Grid System applied on column layout
• Intregration of Gritter as an utility function to notify users
• Integration with jQuery UI controls plus themes, as well as module drag-n-drop
• Complete rewritten of code structure, a smaller core with a strong customization system
• Module Types – various types of modules can be included and applied on modules easily
• Theme Support – two sample themes are given, “Sliver” and “Classical” 
• Comprehensive Customization guides
• Online documentation

On-going:

• A generic Theme Builder based on LESS CSS is being developed
• XDO – A RESTful resource presentation layer with message processing and event handling, powered by Chain.js
• Layout Persistence - sample code will be provided on how to save and retrieve module layout data

JPolite2 alpha preview release

A preview finally!

• Play around: http://www.trilancer.com/jpolite2/
• Source code: http://code.google.com/p/jpolite2/ => jpolite2-alpha.zip

Features Done:

• Integration of BlueTrip CSS framework, with Grid System applied on column layout
• Intregration of Gritter as an utility function to notify users
• Integration with jQuery UI controls plus themes
• Complete rewritten of code structure, a smaller core with a strong customization system

Ongoing:

• XDO – A restful resource presentation layer with message processing and event handling, powered by Chain.js
• Layout Persistence - sample code will be provided on how to save and retrieve module layout data
• Theme Support – two sample themes are given, “Grayscale” and “Classical” which can be switched from Firefox View menu
• Module Types – various types of modules can be included and applied on different modules easily
• Comprehensive Customization samples
• Documentation …

Notable feature: when you first open the page, you will be prompted to pick a navigation tab style, Kwicks, LavaLamp or “Traditional”. That is, you can pick your favorite look and feel for the main navigation tabs. Which also means you can easily include jQuery UI plugins and customize JPolite2 without touching the core!

The content of the modules are now just for testing purpose, please note not to be misled

Gritter, jqModal, Chain, BlueTrip to be integrated into JPolite 2

After some investigation and tryout, I’ve decided to include cool iQuery plugins like Gritter, jqModal as well as Chain into JPolite 2, and some initial integration work have gone smoothly. And these libraries are actually jQuery plugins, that I think it good to build a mechanism for smooth integration of various plugins in a manageable manner.

BlueTrip CSS framework has been chosen as the foundation of CSS where I’ll leave the original framework code untouched and provide only JPolite native customizations. Although JPolite was originally designed without a grid system in mind, I’ll try to align with the grid system to provide better control over the layout.