Akbar Goodbye Firefox November 14th, 2007
I have been Firefox user for a long time. Maybe four years. Maybe I have used it since 0.8 version. Why did I choose Firefox as my main browser? Maybe I was opensource supporter. Maybe I liked the logo. Firefox is tremendous platform. You can install many extensions and themes. There are many useful extensions like Firebug, Web Developer, Swift Tab, Flashgot.
But right now I have to say goodbye to Firefox. The main reason is its sluggishness. It often lags. Sometimes it freeze. Sometimes you can not close the tab. Most of the time, it is not responsive. I can not tolerate this anymore.
So good bye Firefox. So what browser do I use? Internet Explorer is out of competition. It is Opera. The performance is superb.
What do I miss from Firefox in Opera?
Flashgot? Opera built in download manager is superb. It can resume very well not like Firefox. Sometimes after stopping download, resuming is not an option anymore. You must restart the download. If I have to download the big files, I just use download manager directly.
Firebug and Web Developer? Okay, these are the tough one. Opera has Developer Console. The function is similar with Firebug. But it is still in alpha phase.
Foxmark? Nah, I failed to use Osync. I got many errors. But Opera 9.5 supposed to have this feature built-in. Okay, I wait it.
No doubt. Firefox is more popular than Opera. It means there are some websites which display perfectly in Firefox but not in Opera. Okay, I tolerate this. Just like I tolerate website which display perfectly in Internet Explorer but not in Firefox when using Firefox.
Rafaq Is Released August 13th, 2007
I know about Rails from the last year. I have bought the book (Agile Web Development With Rails first edition). Did the exercises. I also have read many articles about Rails. But I did not have a single complete Rails project. Back at the time when I was doing my thesis, I must write a program. So I used Rails. But the project was doomed because of the factory for the thesis had a very unclear requirements. The project was never finish. But my Rails skill was upgraded however.
But I still didn’t have a single complete Rails project. So in June or July, I started to write Rafaq so I can have a single complete Rails project. Yesterday the Rafaq is finished with its website. I host the project in RubyForge.
Read the rest of this entryExzoost Is Opensource Now August 9th, 2007
I started to make this software 3 years ago (November 2004). You can check about Exzoost in its project website. I always want to try Berlios opensource hosting. So I decided Exzoost is a good candidate. This is the first commercial software I developed. You know, everything first is always special.
From technical perspective, Exzoost is a java swing gui software. I developed it with Netbeans. Back in November 2004, the stable version of Netbeans was 3.6. But Netbeans version 3.6 was so ugly. So I used Netbeans 4.0 beta (I forgot the beta version). Every time Netbeans is released with new version, I upgraded Exzoost project to use new version of Netbeans.
Read the rest of this entryCakephp as PHP Framework June 15th, 2007
A year ago, I had a job to create company profile website for PT. Usaha Saudara Mandiri. At that time, I was Rails fans. So why not create the website with Ruby on Rails? Because the hosting does not support Ruby on Rails. So bye-bye, Rails. It means I need to use PHP. The version of supported PHP at that time was 4. I already knew that it is more convenient if you use framework than not. So I searched PHP4 framework which was similar with Ruby on Rails. I found it. Cakephp
The documentation is good but not so polished. It is similar with Ruby on Rails. So I don’t have any difficulties jumping to the Cakephp world. What annoying me is Cakephp supports MySQL only. I failed to use sqlite. What make more fun with Cakephp is they do not use any other library as dependencies. So installing and deployment Cakephp is easy.
So if you likes MySQL and Ruby on Rails but forced to use PHP (especially PHP4), CakePHP would be a good choice. The website which developed by me with CakePHP is here. Mirror is here.
Refactoring Java Code Because Of SQL Dumb December 16th, 2006
Two years ago, I developed Java application that talked to database. It is for store owner. So you have item_data table. In item_data table, you have sale_price and buying_price column. Off course there is transaction table that record item sales and purchasing. You can change the price of item but you need to keep the transaction price at related time. What do you do in that situation? Off course, you put the sale price and buying price data in transaction table. What did I do? I made dumb mistake. Here’s what I did: Every time you change the price, I make new item that clone the other attributes (the name, the size, etc). With this I can track how many item “Haloha” with sale price Rp 2,000 and how many item “Haloha” too but with sale price Rp 2,500. So you have many duplicate data. It’s bloody stupid.
Then my customer need to put expired date in item data. This is easy if I didn’t make that mistake. But whatever has gone, let it be. I learned from mistake. Design schema very very carefully. Reread. Rethink. Because change schema after writing application is expensive.