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  • Sayak Sarkar 8:23 pm on September 5, 2013 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
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    GSoC – Week 12: A week full of Background Studies 

    A Sudden Break From Coding

    After quite a long time, since the start of this year’s GSoC this was a rare week with me spending most of the time researching and studying various ways of tackling XHR requests via Enyo.js in a way that’s compatible with Firefox OS. Essentially, I had to study quite a bit to understand how exactly Web Services work in Enyo and what are the various implementation options available for it.

    Using Firefox OS’s systemXHR API

    For this purpose my primary focus has been on understanding how the enyo.WebService component can be used to perform XHR requests for the Firefox OS app. Turns out, that this is quite an easy implementation for Firefox OS. All that needed to be done was to set the app’s permissions within it’s manifest file as follows:-

    “permissions”: {
    “systemXHR”: {}
    }

    Then whenever a systemXHR is to be needed, I would simply add the ‘mozSystem’ attribute to
    the XHR instance:-

    var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest({
    mozSystem: true
    })

    This pretty much handles the major requirement for such an app for Firefox OS.

    Enyo Web Services

    Basically enyo.WebService is a component that performs XHR requests; it acts as a wrapper for the Async subkinds enyo.Ajax and enyo.JsonpRequest, using these subkinds internally to manage HTTP transactions. Since the WordPress APIs are XML based, the primary focus here is on using enyo.Ajax to retrieve all published properties of the enyo.AjaxProperties object. Hence allowing direct communications to take place via the app.

    Current Work Status

    I’ve already completed a significant amount of the background research required for the implementation of the XHR requests for the app. However, due to some unexpected personal problems I expect to be a bit slow at work this week, however, looking at the amount of work left, I am pretty confident of completing a basic working version of the app running by the end of the next week.

     
  • b0unc3 7:59 pm on September 5, 2013 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
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    GSoC – week 12: Almost Done 

    During this week I finished up the function to make a blog post, also with the upload of an image. This has taken a very long time and headaches, I’ve tried a lot of combinations to make this upload correct, but sometimes I got an xml with error on it and sometimes the xml looks good but the url point to a corrupted image (e.g. nothing to show), but at last, with the help of my mentor, I found out the problem and fixed it (basically I forgot to use the tag :/).
    I’ve also fixed the multi-blogs part, now you can add more than one blog and choose the one to use on the fly, by the vertical menu that will show you a dialog with a dropdown list where you can select the blog you want to use.
    Due to the problems I had with the image upload, that’s all for this week.
    For the next week I’ll finish the comments/pages management, and I’ll do some lifting on the app.
    Since we are approaching the ‘pencil down’ deadlines the next week should be the last for making some code, and I think this is fine, I feel in time with the schedule.
    Later on today I’ll update the repo with the latest sources.

     
  • Isaac Keyet 4:53 pm on September 2, 2013 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
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    Chat log

    Agenda

    • iOS Status
    • Android Status
    • Handbook Update
    • This Week

    iOS Status

    The 3.7.1 bug fix went out and fixed the crash issues for most people, but some are still experiencing it — we’re investigating.

    We’ve wrapped up the major work needed for the iOS7/MP6-ification release, now doing some polishing and fixing and hoping to submit by early next week.

    Progress has been made towards a visual editor but we’ll wait to put it in until an upcoming release.

    The theme switching release for WordPress.com blogs is pretty much done as well, we’re looking to do some testing but if it all goes well it may make it into the next major release of WordPress for iOS.

    Android Status

    Themes + Media should be feature complete by the end of this week, should hit beta beginning of next week. NUX (welcome guide, better log in/sign up) is now 75% complete.

    Post searching and a pull to refresh (a la the new Gmail client) was added by @aagam94. Woot!

    Handbook Status

    We had a goal to wrap up the Mobile Handbook by the end of August. Unfortunately this didn’t happen, there are still 13 pages marked as drafts, but we got very close. We’ll now wrap up the remaining bits this week. We’re almost 3/4 of the way there — if you have a page that’s still a draft, please get it done ASAP.

    This Week

    • Android Themes + Media: some fixes and testing, beta next week
    • iOS 7/MP6-ification: do final polish, submit beginning of next week
    • Wrap up remaining pages in the Handbook
    • Trac purge: we’re going through and removing/cleaning up old Trac tickets across the iOS and Android projects and moving over what we can to Github Issues

    Next Chat

    Join us for the next dev chat on Sept 9, 2013 at 16:00 UTC. Mark your calendar and join us in #wordpress-mobile on Freenode.

     
  • b0unc3 6:24 pm on August 29, 2013 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
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    GSoC – week 11 : Something real 

    This has been an intensive week. I’ve merged other pieces of code…and that’s what I got:


    What currently works, as you may understand from the screen shot above, is the view of posts/pages/comments, they are all displayed in a same-style listview, for the comments I coloured the status to get an hint at a first look.
    The app is also capable of making a new post (no media yet, but I’m working on this).
    I’ve created three menus, one contains the links to see the lists, another (on the right) contains the common actions to add a post/page/comment or refresh the page.
    There is also another menu, that will appear once you long-press an item that would let you edit or delete it. There a problem raise up, it looks like this menu isn’t capable to access the other (already declared) available resources. I hope to found a solution/workaround quickly.
    So, what is missed, and what I’ve to implement yet is: a better managment for multi-blogs (my mentor gave me a simple and huge advice on how to do that, so it would be done in a few days), the media upload stuff and complete the comments/pages managment.
    That would be basically all, the app is ready now, you can test it if you want, the code is on the official repo.

     
  • Sayak Sarkar 12:51 pm on August 28, 2013 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
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    GSoC – Week 11: Rounding up the final fittings 

    Here’s a rather brief report of things that I’ve completed so far [in a very brief words] and things that I’ll be working on in the upcoming weeks:-

    How the Car Assembly is taking Shape

    I spent the most of last week, polishing, restructuring and moving huge chunks of code to complete the offline framework for the WordPress for Firefox OS app. Comparing the complete app to a car development analogy, what this means is that I have successfully completed most of the body work including the hood, trunk and body. Now the only things left are mounting the engine [i.e. the XML RPC API to handle XML RPC requests and responses] and getting all the tricky pieces of wiring connected to the body work. This basically boils down to writing an enyo.WebService code to handle and format all incoming and outgoing XHR requests and responses.

    Upcoming work to get things connected

    I expect to spend most of the time this week studying the WordPress XML-RPC APIs and implementing them on the app via Enyo code. The one thing that I’m sure about is that I’m sure hit quite a few stumbling walls this week as I’ll be again chartering into personal unexplored territories. However, I expect to pick up things quite quickly, once I grab hold of how the XHR APIs and enyo can be brought together to work as one unit and get the app working with live data.

     
  • Eric 4:48 pm on August 26, 2013 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
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    Dev chat summary for Aug 26, 2013 

    Chat log.

    Agenda

    • iOS Status
    • Android Status
    • Handbook Update
    • What’s Next

    iOS Status

    Version 3.7.1 has been submitted to Apple. This is a bug fix release to address a crash some users are experiencing when upgrading to version 3.7.

    iOS 7: Progress continues on updating the app for iOS 7. This is a three step process: Step 1 is to do the minimum needed to have the app working well on iOS 7. This should be ready by September 1st. Step 2 will be adding some of the nicer iOS 7 bells and whistles. Step 3 is a more radical rethinking of some of the app features.

    Refactor: The Xtreme Labs refactor is on hold temporarily while we wrap up Step 1 of the iOS 7 changes. We’ll merge branches once this is complete and the refactor will resume.

    Themes: Xtreme Labs has started working on incorporating the themes feature they are building for WPAndroid into the iOS app.

    Rich Text Editor: @astralbodies has begun laying the foundation for a new rich text editor.

    Native Reader: Reader improvements are waiting on some API improvements to finish.

    Android Status

    Themes and Media: We’re wrapping up the themes and media features. Themes is mostly ready but the media feature still needs a some work before its ready for release. We’re looking to have this ready in a couple of weeks.

    NUX: Progress continues on the NUX improvements and we’re looking at having this ready by the end of next week.

    Native Stats: Xtreme labs has started work on a native version of the stats feature.

    Native Reader: Progress continues on the Android native reader.

    Handbook Update

    Its crunch time. This is our last week before we hit our self appointed deadline. There’s still lots to do. Block of time this week to focus on the handbook and let’s get it done.

    What’s Next

    iOS: Release 3.7.1 and continue with iOS 7 improvements, rich text editor and prep for native reader improvements.

    Android: Continue to work on NUX and the media feature.

    Next Chat

    Join us for the next dev chat on Sept 2, 2013 at 16:00 UTC. Mark your calendar and join us in #wordpress-mobile on Freenode.

     
  • b0unc3 7:56 pm on August 22, 2013 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
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    GSoC – week 10 : Stumbling upon 

    In this week I had to face off with an hiccup (that really drives me nuts) due to a strange behavior during the XML parsing. Since I’m parsing the XML in Qt, I’ll put all the elements in a QvariantMap, but, it looks like, that some times the pairs key:value goes overwritten and return an unexpected value. I think I found out the reason and I made a quick workaround to fix this issue, I’ll dig more on it to find a stable solution.
    Due to this hiccup I haven’t finished yet the UI part to make a post, I’ll hope, in order to get back on schedule, to have it done until the end of this week.
    As suggested by my mentor, from the comment of the last week’s post, I’ve created another UI for the posts/pages/comments page using a vertical menu (sx) that contains the links to go to the Posts/Pages/Comments pages, and another vertical menu (dx), that would be a contextual menu, currently it only contains the actions of add/edit/delete (post/page/comment), not yet fully implemented.
    There another little problem raise up, since I’m using a NavigationPane to go forward and back through the pages, and, for this new UI, I have to use a TabbedPane; well, a NavigationPane cannot call a page that contains a TabbedPane. I have to find a solution, I’ve already talked on #blackberrydev on IRC, they suggested some workaround, but nothing that has convinced me. I’ll dig more on this as well.
    In the next days I’ll update the code on the repo.

     
  • Isaac Keyet 2:26 pm on August 22, 2013 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
    Tags: contribution, , , issues   

    Looking to get started contributing? There are a number of smaller bugs and enhancements listed for the iOS app on Github currently.

    Here are some that are perfect for beginners or someone just looking for a quick turnaround:

    See all outstanding Issues for iOS on Github

     
  • Sayak Sarkar 9:12 pm on August 21, 2013 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
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    GSoc – Week 10: Smoothening the Edges – Introducing Drawers 

    Progress this Week

    Until last week, my primary focus was on building newer components to make sure that all the primary blocks of the app are in place. However, starting with this week I started putting all the different pieces in their respective places.

    My primary objectives for this week were:

    1. Convert the Primary app menu from being just another page component to a sliding drawer component
    2. Modularize the Composer UI to get rid of the current Scroller layout and allow for more focus on the textarea.

    Enter onyx.Drawer!

    Onyx.Drawer is quite simply nothing but a simple Onyx control that appears or disappears with a sliding animation, based on a Boolean property.

    This solved my primary problem of implementing a sliding drawer menu component for the app. All that I had to do was to change the menu component to a ‘onyx.drawer’ kind, along with few minor changes here and there and a bit of code refactoring, and we now have a sliding menu bar!

    The fun part of this came next, when I realized that the same Drawer kind can be introduced within the Composer as well to help me with my second objective of this week. For this purpose, I went back to an earlier version of the Composer with the Settings button in it, and using the button itself as a boolean trigger to open a vertical drawer containing the post settings such as Status, Tags, Categories etc. However, after a bit of messing around with the Composer code, I finally had a much cleaner looking Composer UI with a more aesthetically pleasing looks to it.

    Next Steps

    This week I plan to work on the last remaining piece of the puzzle: the Login screen! Once it’s done I plan to move on to the backend apis/queries to replace the current hardcoded demo datasets to more real world datasets, sometime next week. Also, there’s a minor bug with the preview module that I’ve been meaning to get fixed for sometime now, that I want to work upon this week.

     
  • Isaac Keyet 6:25 am on August 21, 2013 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
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    Dev chat summary for Aug 19, 2013 

    Delayed summary of what went down yesterday for the record. Chat log.

    Agenda

    • iOS Status
    • Android Status
    • Handbook Update
    • Team Reps
    • What’s Next

    iOS Status

    3.7 with the new WordPress.com Reader and a new account system launched (woo!) but had some serious bugs, including a launch on startup for some due to migration issues (boo!) so we’ve been hard at work trying to fix the issues. A .1 will be pushed asap. Next up is a .2 with some minor enhancements.

    Android Status

    2.4.4 was just pushed to Google Play and includes some enhancements like Picasa/Google+ image uploading/adding and post excerpts — props @aagam94!

    Later this week we’ll launch a beta with theme selection and media library enhancements. We’re also starting the new user experience iteration back up (better log in/sign up and welcome guide).

    Handbook Update

    @sendhil has worked on the iOS section and @hugobaeta has taken a look at the design parts of the handbook. Everyone was urged to mark things as done in the todo.

    Team Reps

    We talked about electing new team reps. Since our group is very small we decided to keep it simple and elect new reps in the chat itself. @irbrad was up for a term but not this time around, so for now @aerych and @isaackeyet will continue being team reps without specific primary/secondary roles (we’ve switched from week to week up until now and it has worked well). Worth noting is that the new cycle is 3 months for a handoff between primary/secondary team reps but since it’s worked so well I think we can continue on as we have and fill in for each other when necessary.

    What’s Next

    iOS: fix the bug in 3.7 asap and issue 3.7.1, then start working on 3.7.2. iOS7-ification is also under way, as is the code clean up and partial refactor, both in separate branches for now.

    Android: Media/Themes beta and NUX (welcome guide, improved log in/sign up) is next, along with the Android WordPress.com Native Reader project.

    Other

    We discussed bug tracking briefly and decided to track issues with the iOS app directly on Github using Issues — this will be adopted by the Android app shortly as well.

    We also talked about using Hockey app for Android beta distribution. We concluded that we should explore more to see how feasible it would be and maybe start a post on this p2 about it.

    Next Chat

    Join us for the next dev chat on Aug 26, 2013 at 16:00 UTC. Mark your calendar and join us in #wordpress-mobile on Freenode.

     
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