A few months ago a client approached me to do a web project for them explicitly asking me to develop their web application using the Ext JS libraries. Not knowing much about it I started with some research and training and now after delivering the project in almost half of the estimated time, I am convinced that this is the way forward.
Ext JS is a set of tools to help you build rich (and I mean rich) user interface applications in conjunction with your existing PHP, Ruby or ASP.NET backend code. I used it in conjunction with PHP and a MySQL database for all my backend work.
The framework is bundled into a set of Javascript, CSS and image files that takes care of 95% of the look and feel of your application with controls such as treeviews, menus, lists and combo boxes with drag and drop support, in place editing and much more.
Here’s a link to some Ext JS Examples to demonstrate the richness of the components: http://www.extjs.com/deploy/dev/examples/samples.html
If I sound like an Ext JS evangelist: I am totally.
I am not sure Ext JS would be my choice for standard web sites, but web applications or backend functionality can be greatly improved by using this toolset.
Having completed my first official project I am looking forward to get more Ext JS projects. To hire me for your freelance web development project contact me on 083 656 4309 or erhard@ernic.co.za
Affordable Web-Based Helpdesk software is hard to find especially if you want to self-host the system and have the ability to customize the base source code to further meet your specific requirements. This is the main reason we built our own Helpdesk system. Since my initial introduction here we added new features and completed an intensive beta testing process with 8 of my live clients using the system the over the past 3 months with all their help requests.
Some of the new features include:
- Color coded priorities on tickets
- Hovering over a ticket now shows ticket descriptions without you having to log in to view them
- Print and CSV Export of tickets based on search criteria
- Work started Status with a Date Stamp and separate tab to see tickets being worked on
Our product is suited for any business with a helpdesk requirement but I can strongly recommend it for web and software companies like mine with many clients and a requirement to get a holistic view of all the open work requests.
Anyone interested please contact me on erhard@ernic.co.za for information or login to our online demo at:
http://hddemo.ernic.co.za (login with “admin” and “admin”)
Here’s a screenshot from the latest release:
One of my older ASP.NET projects required an update today and I struggled for hours trying to get VS to enter in debug mode. Everything was working fine before in the project and Debug is enabled on the project, but when VS starts it opens the site and then immediately exits the debug mode preventing any breakpoints to be reached.
After a long search I found that the problem was related to IE8 that I installed recently. I am not sure what the cause is but the fix worked so here we go:
1. Install another browser, FireFox, Google Chrome or something. Start that browser and set it to be default browser.
2. Close all IE browser windows.
3. Now start IE, and set IE as the default browser.
4. Magically, VS debugging now works again.
Don’t ask me why. I don’t really care what caused it as long as the debugging is back. Hope it helps you.
Bring it on! We need it! Google’s newest product in production is getting a lot of attention and after watching the video presentation, all I can say is…awesome!
For the lucky ones with tons of bandwidth and fast lines, watch the full video presentation on the wave site:
http://wave.google.com/
For the rest of us, here’s a short explanation of Google Wave:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDu2A3WzQpo
