Working on mahshelf, barisma, recepist, sf-resource projects sure brought me lots of experiences in web developement. I can list below a few of them and I intend to choose one of them as the topic for my thesis

1. I learned to upgrade a web app from symfony 1.0 to symfony 1.2 (mahshelf.com), that may sound simple but it was a pain in the ass due to the incompatibility between those versions. Manual changes have been made in controllers, routings and even the templates.
2. I learned to optimize a web app, both in the frontend with compressing css, js files, moving the static files to the cdn; and backend (PHP, MySQL optimization). I really had fun when doing those tasks
3. I developed a brand new web app (recepist.fi) with symfony 1.2. If I choose this topic, it will be a complete tutorial on how I have created things around this web app. However, I have not finished developing this app which means I will have to do the research and write documents at the same time. The case is not suitable since I am quite hurry and just want to write things I have been clearly aware of.
4. I am a jQuery fan. Spending time writing jQuery portfolios makes me realize that I have written several useful jQuery plugins and I should  write my thesis about it

So far there are 4 to choose from. I myself find 1) really interesting to write about since there are tweaks, hacks and lots of scripts just to get things done. However, it will be boring for the teachers who give reviews since I am pretty sure that they do not know what I am writing about. And 1) is not truly practical since hardly any web company need this topic.

2) was fun when I did the tasks. Not only they mention a lot about high performance website and web optimization on books and blogs, there are also several FF plugins and open source tools for me to finish the benchmark.  I am likely to choose this because (to be continued)

Hi folks.

I am recently very fond of the term “code in a tweet” which means that a very useful piece of source code can even fit a Twitter post.  Below here is the shortest javascript that can detect IE browser by Andrea (yeah, IE sucks and we have to detect it to eliminate its problems)

IE='\v'=='v'

Moreover, Gareth Heyes has come up with other browser detections and gather them together

//Firefox detector 2/3 by DoctorDan
FF=/a/[-1]=='a'

//Firefox 3
FF3=(function x(){})[-5]=='x'

//Firefox 2
FF2=(function x(){})[-6]=='x'

//IE detector I posted previously
IE='\v'=='v'

//Safari detector
Saf=/a/.__proto__=='//'

//Chrome
Chr=/source/.test((/a/.toString+''))

//Opera
Op=/^function \(/.test([].sort)

Usage: The variable assignment is the abbreviation of the browser e.g. FF, IE, Op, Saf, Chr which return true or false.

And this is the most interesting part: one-liner to rule them all

B=(function x(){})[-5]=='x'?'FF3':(function x(){})[-6]=='x'?'FF2':/a/[-1]=='a'?'FF':'\v'=='v'?'IE':/a/.__proto__=='//'?'Saf':/s/.test(/a/.toString)?'Chr':/^function \(/.test([].sort)?'Op':'Unknown'

Usage: B will return a string of the abbreviation of the browser
Tell me what do you think? And if you find any cool stuff like that let me know.

[Updated] Sorry to be arrogant and simple minded but I always think jQuery rocks and try to inspire as many people as possible to use or move to jQuery because of  one simple reason: the more users and developers use jQuery the better it is and the more plugins will be created.

[Updated] jQuery 1.3 is out and it is super fast ! Read more

I have once used Mootools for one of my projects and it turned out to be running well. The performance was fast and I had no problem implementing its animation effects and plugins. However, I found several complaints about mootools on the Internet that will affect my choice of JS library in the future.

1. Mootools does not have any well organized or responsive forum.
2. It does not even have all of the many useful threads that were written for 1.1 available. What it does have – a Google group – is so undermonitered that John Resig’s profile shows up on the home page (now what does that say about JQuery responsiveness)! I have never, never! gotten a response to any of the requests I have made on the Google group page, despite my not being a noob.
3. No plugins are available unless you already know where to find them, or you write them yourselves. As oppossed to J which makes it easy to get plugins. Yes I know they posted something on the blog.
4. SVN was dumped for GIT. Maybe not bad from a technical standpoint, but I don’t know how to use GIT, and am not about to start learning.
5. I rarely see the core developers on IRC, probably because we have different hours. But it is very difficult to get answers there, and thread is downright insulting to noobs – no matter how much he wants to learn. Worse though, the channel is not be stored. All of the questions and answers that are served are only to individuals – they cannot be accessed by someone who is searching for an answer. And lets face it – IRC is not good for most users. Is it so hard to have a chat box on the screen that allows for normal people to communicate, or at least to be able to see the thread?! I know a good framework that can be used to write such a tool!

Wanna be the next Google? Do I hear a “Yes” elsewhere ? I have loads of thoughts on this since I love doing web startup. So let’s do this checklist to realize…

1. Do you know absolutely everything about your business? Do you eat your own dog food? Those “Well, I will use my product later when it is fully developed/established” or “Ehr, I will use my service later, got things to do now…” will definitely fail, more here

2. Are you ambitious/motivated enough? Doing startup is not doing your everday work, if you work only 8 hours a day and spend the rest of the day relaxing then you better quit it. Most IT staff work 8 hours per day under excellent management and what will make your company the next Google since there is no difference between you and other normal IT staff.

3. Do you have a successful team? From Taneli

Startup teams should be about things like attitude, values, goals, objectives, motivation, trust, learning, courage, energy, intensity, competence, superior judgement and good communication (emphasis on feedback).

They should not be about: micro-management, processes, business plans, formal matters, profit and loss statements, reports, politics, non-action, vague visions and missions, long hours and exhausted managers, strict roles and responsibilities.

Success Teams are often full of leaders. There isn’t just one central person responsible of leadership: everybody leads, and they lead to every possible direction: their own teams, colleagues, their bosses, partners etc.

And in the end, let’s discuss a quote from Kristoffer Lawson:

New startups are fantastic because they still think it’s easy so they’ll go for it and only later realise the deep hole they got themselves into

Now you decide: do you give up or go forwards with the lessons learnt. If you decide to continue, chances are you’ll have now learnt stuff the hard way and will be much better tomorrow. You need to be hammered to eventually become world-beaters!

As you may know Flash 10 came out a week ago and due to its change in security policy we had to change the uploader as well as fix our flash player. It was fun doing pair programming with Kelvin. I myself was coding a brand new navigation, a forum and its feed. Thanks to MVC architecture, those things only cost me a week and it was a piece of cake. Meanwhile, Kelvin has completed tailoring the feed system and the flash player. Nice, MahShelf is running with its full speed.

Hi, long time to see in this blog. And that was because I have been in my summer holidays in Espoo, Finland. It is such a nice city though there was not many interesting activities there. For me, hanging out with friends is enough fun.

Here is the list of things happened while I am away:

• Tasks, tasks, more tasks are coming and I have no choice but to finish it in order to keep up with the schedule.
• A brand new forum for Vietnamese students in Finland. It was created with the passion to replace the old one which is not quite well-organized and supported. Take a look and enjoy yourself there.

Updated: Looks like the old admin board did not accept to migrate to the new one. I agree that the old one has been the playground for the early students for a while and it has a great impact on them. But why did not they realize that the old fun time just passed away, the playground is rotten because of the way they administrated it: full of irrelevant posts in some important forums, no connection with other Vietnamese students in other cities and absolutely no help to the newcomers.

I heard that the only (functional) admin shares no access to the control panel to the other admin. Therefore he is the one who responsible to upgrade, react on emergency and have total control on the backend. If that was true then I do not have anything to say more, a communist forum, ehr ?

Hmm, feel free to post comments here

Dear users, enjoy the weekend with out new flash reader. Hopefully it will bring the easiness of reading and page navigating.

Beyond the basic features, there are some new features that worths mentioning:

Auto-hide menubar: not satisfy with the reading area why dont you increase it by hiding the menu bar?

In fullscreen mode, you can use mouse scroll to navigate to either the next page or previous page. It rocks!

A new brand new look and feel of the reader, no more I have to look at the old ugly reader.

There are much more hidden features in the flash reader and I let you figure out yourself.

Posting comments is more interesting with emoticons. Here is a list of all available emoticons (including hidden ones)

‘:)’=>’happy.png’,
‘:-)’=>’happy.png’,
‘:))’=>’smile.png’,
‘:-))’=>’smile.png’,
‘:D’=>’biggrin.png’,
‘:-D’=>’biggrin.png’,
‘:-O’=>’suprised.png’,
‘:O’=>’suprised.png’,
‘:S’=>’confused.png’,
‘:-S’=>’confused.png’,
‘:s’=>’confused.png’,
‘:-s’=>’confused.png’,
“;(“=>’cry.png’,
‘;-(‘=>’cry.png’,
‘:(‘=>’sad.png’,
‘:-(‘=>’sad.png’,
‘:p’=>’tongue.png’,
‘:-p’=>’tongue.png’,
‘:P’=>’tongue.png’,
‘:-P’=>’tongue.png’,
‘;)’=>’wink.png’,
‘;-)’=>’wink.png’,
‘X(‘=>’angry.png’,
‘X-(‘=>’angry.png’,
‘8-)’=>’cool.png’,
‘8)’=>’cool.png’,
‘:idea:’=>’idea.png’,
‘:fav:’=>’favorite.png’,

This is a collected article from GigaOM,  so please remember the copyright belongs to them:

In my years covering technology, I’ve gotten more than my fair share of pitches related to the latest consumer Internet startup. Thanks to this I’ve been able to witness what amounts to be a near-familiar life cycle for these companies. Not every company hits every step, but most of these will be familiar to those of you in the Silicon Valley Social Media/Web 2.0-Something trenches.

IN THE BEGINNING 

One day an entrepreneur is chatting with his friends, gets an idea, writes about the idea on his or her blog, and then starts coding. A few weeks or possibly days, a beta — increasingly a euphemism for a not-fully-thought-out-product — emerges.

THE LAUNCH 

Then the buzz builds and the company opens up the beta far and wide. Maybe TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb, WebWorkerDaily or WebWare write about the product. Either way, this is the first traffic spike and the entrepreneur rejoices. The VCs come calling. If they don’t, the angels will certainly do a fly-by.

But eight weeks later reality sets in. The traffic stops growing or — worse yet– dives. The VCs stop calling and blogs start posting Alexa charts that look like ski slopes or tabletops. But as an ever-optimistic entrepreneur it’s time to regroup, gather your programmers, toss back some Red Bull and…

LAUNCH A SOCIAL NETWORK WIDGET 

If the user adoption press releases, the widget and subsequent coverage can’t get your site growing again, it’s time for the big guns...the open API. Now you’re a platform! The startup gets a fresh round of publicity, maybe more exposure to new users, and the founder rejoices again. This time the money men get serious because you have shown them you can survive the Silicon Valley jungle and you have a Facebook strategy.

12 MONTHS LATER 

Maybe the media is getting too insistent with their questions about how this service is supposed to make money. Maybe the bills from Amazon Web Services are getting too high, or the VCs are getting impatient. The blogs are back to posting unflattering Alexa numbers. Compete data backs those charts up! So it’s time for advertising.

If the startup is well-funded or has a famous founder, the ad unit might be something novel like awidget, pre-roll voice ads on a mobile phone, or Beacon. Otherwise it’s generally based on banners and Google AdWords with promises of more to come.

THE END IS NEAR 

But selling online advertising is hard. If Google, Yahoo, AOL or Microsoft haven’t stopped by with a buyout, it’s time to consider reality. You could always try your hand as an ad network or merge with a competitor, but more than likely it’s time to sell that domain name and user base on eBay or quietly shut your doors. Better luck next time.

Done:

• Refactor the code and delete image preview feature
• Study for exams
• Synchronize my calendar and todo list between google calendar and Rainlendar
• Make some hotfixes in the server
• Start reading the book: The Art of Agile Development