Fabrizio Balliano

The are a lot of things to talk about today, let’s start.

MOST IMPORTANT: SF 2008 COMMUNITY CHOICE AWARDS
Please take 1 minute to vote P4A in the “Best Tool or Utility for Developers” category (you can nominate P4A for more categories but we think that the suggested one is the right).

THE RELEASE
This is nothing more than a bugfix release, here’s the changelog:

- a bug with P4A_Field::getAsCheckbox() method was solved
- when a P4A_Field’s value is coming from a POST, P4A::main() now checks if the field is enabled
- translations were synched

Download P4A 3.0.0-rc2

P4A WEBSITE
We took some time to work on the website and add some cools features, first of all a nice screenshot section, powered by jquery and the jcarousel and lightbox plugins.

Here you have a screenshot of the new page:

Be sure to check the new website at:
http://p4a.sourceforge.net/

In the new link bar you can find the constantly updated code reference and the link to the translation tools and everything else you will need to live in the P4A world.

P4A WIKI
The new wiki is installed and available here:
http://p4a.crealabsfoundation.org/wiki/
it’s completely empty but you can start registering and we will discuss what to publish and how to do that in the next few days.

PS: the wiki is not linked from the home page yet, we’ll wait for some contents to do that.

MISCELLANEOUS

• We’re working on the commercial license and we hope to have it ready soon
• it seems that the new jquery and jquery UI release will be out in a few days, if it will be so we’ll be happy to include it in P4A 3
• I’m sure I’m forgetting something :-)

see you soon and spread the word!!!

Just a few days after the 2.0.2 it’s time to download the new 2.0.3. It’s only a minor minor minor update release, just some documentation changes and the uck-gui icon was moved from the “utility” menu to the “system tools” menu.

Download UCK 2.0.3

PS: Sorry for the ugly post, I’m really out of time now :-)

Time to release some bugfixes and prepare for the stable release, we had to cut out jQuery UI (and P4A_DB_Navigator’s drag&drop) from our roadmap ’cause it seems that jQuery UI won’t be released soon and we can’t wait anymore.

Anyway, here is the changelog:

- saveUploads() method was moved from P4A_Mask to P4A_Data_Source
- P4A_DB::quote() method’s 2nd param “autoquote” is now false by default,
solving some problems with P4A_Data_Field::getSQLValue() and getSQLNewValue()
- when P4A_DB_Source needs a quoted value now it uses P4A_DB->quote() with
autoquote turned on
- P4A_DB::quote() method, if autoquote param is on, always encloses the value
within single quotes
- jQuery::form was updated to 2.0.8
- jQuery::iFixPNG was updated to 2.1
- P4A_Menu’s CSS were changed a bit solving a bug with IE6 (too fast hide)
- P4A_DB_Navigator movements were disabled (due to the unavailable jQuery UI release)
thus now all allowMovements methods trigger errors

We’ll let this release “rest” for some weeks, during this time we’ll work on the documentation and website, fixing the bugs that will eventually come out. If everything will go smoothly as I hope, we’ll simply have to sync translations and release it as 3.0.0 final.

Download P4A 3.0.0-rc1, please help us with translations and report us all the bugs you find! Thank you so much!

It was a long time since the last UCK release but… it actually works pretty well for its purpose, anyway we thought it was time for an update.

With 2.0.2 you’ll find that UCK is now released under GPL3, I love it :-)
This new release adds support for Ubuntu 8.04 (hardy heron).

I worked on the (small) patched working on “Ubuntu Italian ISO” and Minibuntu thus it should be tested enough.

Download UCK 2.0.2

It’s been a while since the latest update on the e-Socrates.org project. During the last week Andrea and I decided that was time to work on that and we reinstalled all the moodle platform (1.9), recreated the nice graphic theme (you can download it if you want) and changed the policy.

Now e-Socrates.org is a full and free moodle hosting with ethic, ethic because everyone can access to all the material for reading also if the course is closed for subscription.

There would be a lot more to say but I’m running out of time, please keep reading on www.e-socrates.org.

Just a day after the official Ubuntu 8.04 release I packed and uploaded the new minibuntu, go download it and start creating your own Ubuntu:

http://minibuntu.crealabs.it

Finally the time has come, it was a long time since we turned the old website off and replaced it with a (beatiful IMHO :-)) splash page.

Today we opened the new CreaLabs’ website, an italian wordpress powered blog with some nice info on what we do, be sure to check it out :-)
http://www.crealabs.it

The test phase is going on, thus some small modifications were done on many parts of the P4A codebase.

• One important things for developer is that now all P4A_DB methods can use the “binding” feature coming with Zend Framework/PDO.
• Other improvements were achived if you run P4A on Windows servers
• FCKEditor was updated the new and shining 2.6 release and other libraries were updated too

but the most wonderful improvement is the Javascript/CSS lazy loading. We’re many heavy javascripts bundled with P4A (FCKEditor, the date picker etc…) and sometimes your app won’t use them… now every component is loaded only when needed and your applications will start and run much faster!

Anyway, let’s review the changelog:

- a bug with P4A_Field::getAsRadio() was solved (labels can be clicked now)
- P4A_Rmdir_Recursive() global function was added
- P4A_Data_Field::setSequence() method does not add the “_seq” postfix anymore
- P4A_DB::nextSequenceId() method adds the “_seq” postfix depending on the db you’re using
- SQL dump for PostgreSQL was added to products_catalogue sample
- products_catalogue’ SQL dump for MySQL was renamed to db_dump_mysql.sql
- P4A_Quote_SQL_Value() global function was removed
- P4A_DB::quote() method was added (it’s a wrapper for Zend_DB quote method)
- P4A_DB::get*(), fetch*(), query*() methods now support the binding params array
- P4A_ROOT_PATH autodetection rules were changed a bit for Windows server compatibility
- P4A_Strip_Double_Backslashes() global function was added
- P4A_UPLOADS_DIR autodetection rules were changed a bit for Windows server compatibility
- P4A_Fieldset’s label’s CSS was changed for Safari 3.1 compatibility
- P4A_Label’s CSS was changes a bit for cross-browser compatibility
- P4A_Field::getasText()’s CSS now has a default width (150px)
- a bug with P4A_I18N::mergeTranslation() method was solved
- FCKEditor was updated to 2.6
- jQuery::UI::datepicker was updated to 3.4.3
- javascript/css lazy loading was implemented, all widget depending js/css area loaded
only when loosing a lot of KB on first run
- print CSS was removed
- translations were synched
- “Loading…” message can now be translated

Now you can Download P4A 2.99.9, please help us with translations and report us all the bugs you find! Thank you so much!

PS: remember to keep your eyes on the P4A TV!

PPS: spread the word :-)

Just check it out on P4A TV:
http://p4a.crealabsfoundation.org/tv/2008/04/02/multidatabase.html

Time for a weekend bugfix preview release, there’s only one more task in our roadmap, that’s the P4A_DB_Navigator drag&grop, but we’ve to wait for jQuery UI 1.5 to be released before completing it…

Changelog for this release:

- some minor changes were done after strict validation checks
- products_catalogue sample now has a “date” field to play with
- a bug with empty values in P4A_Tables (passed to formatters) was solved
- P4A_I18N::format() and normalize() methods now returns an empty string if
no value is passed
- P4A_Validate_NotEmpty::isValid() method now correctly handles the “0″ string
(which is a Zend Framework bug but we create a workaround for it)
- P4A_I18N::translate() methods returns an empty string if nothing is passed
- minor documentation updates were done on P4A_DB_Source
- Zend Framework was updated to 1.5.1
- P4A_Field::getAsMulticheckbox() and getAsRadio() methods now use
P4A_Generate_Widget_Layout_Table() global function to render labels and inputs
- P4A_Field::getAsDate()’s input is now “readonly”
- a bug with P4A_I18N::format() method managing dates was solved
(forcing format to YYYY-MM-dd)

Next week the new translations will be imported and released, now go ahead and Download P4A 2.99.8, please help us with translations (for the next preview I’ll sync all translations) and report us all the bugs you find! Thank you so much!

PS: remember to keep your eyes on the P4A TV!

PPS: spread the word :-)