- Zend Framework was updated to 1.10.1
- P4A_Data_Source::exportToCSV() method was marked as deprecated
- P4A_Data_Source::exportAsCSV() now can be called directly from an event handler
- translations were updated

Download P4A 3.4.4

- Zend Framework was updated to 1.9.5
- jQuery::form was updated to 2.36
- tooltip javascript was enhanced to make it location aware (bug #1908495)
- setTooltip() methods were moved to P4A_Widget
- tooltip support was added to P4A_Tab_Pane
- PEAR::Net_Useragent_Detect was updated to 2.5.1
- tooltips hiding methods now have a timeout to allow clicking links inside the
tooltip itself
- new_window parameter was added to P4A_Redirect_To_File() and P4A_Redirect_To_Url()
global functions
- P4A_DB_Source::_composePkString() was fixed handling multiple primary keys
(bug #2833159)
- onautocomplete event was added, it can be used to create a custom search for
fields instead of using P4A’s default one
- P4A_DB_Source::setTable() now supports a second parameter “alias”
- P4A_DB_Source::setTableAlias() and getTableAlias() methods were added
- P4A_DB_Source::addJoin*() methods now support alias on table (see code reference)
- P4A_Table elements/page user selector was added (disabled by default)
- P4A_Table::showElementsOnPageBar() and P4A_Table::hideElementsOnPageBar() were added

Download P4A 3.4.3

- a bug with backslashes stripping was solved (bug #2853694)
- a typo was fixed in P4A_DB (profiler activation)
- P4A_Tab_Pane now correctly handles disabled pages
- a bug with P4A_Table’s ordering with P4A_DB_Source having a group clause was solved
- Zend Framework was updated to 1.9.4
- P4A_Thumbnail_Generator won’t generate a thumb bigger than the original image
- P4A_Data_Source::exportAsCSV() was reworked allowing field ordering and field descriptions

Download P4A 3.4.2

• Ubuntu/Kubuntu Italian Remix
• Ubuntu Mini Remix

Also Ubuntu Customization Kit was updated to be fully compatibly with the new Ubuntu 9.10.

Be sure to check everything out :-)

1. faster login
The time that ubuntu takes to go from the gdm login prompt to an usuable desktop is too long, it will be faster.

2. better Flash experience
Intrepid will ship improved plugin finder wizard experience, better experience for sites that use the flash detection kit and improved user-experience for selection of available alternatives.

Probably we’ll also have the final Flash 10 shipped with Intrepid.

3. 3G networking
Title says it all, Intrepid will have built-in support for 3G networking with the new NetworkManager.

4. guest account
It is very common to lend someone else a laptop for a quick email check, or having one’s computer play music and be a surf station on a party.

Instead of requiring people to create guest accounts with widely known or empty passwords, Ubuntu will set up a locked down guest account with a temporary home directory by default, where an existing user must authenticate the start of a guest session. This avoids passwordless accounts, which are a security threat.

5. Clean up cruft from system, especially after upgrades
When systems are upgraded from release to release to release, and especially if they are upgraded frequently during development of next release, they gather a lot of cruft: unused packages, old kernels, etc. Intrepid will have a tool to remove cruft, based on what update-manager already does, and extending that.

6. Automatic download of printer drivers through the internet
The printer setup tool of Ubuntu 8.10 and later will automatically download LSB-packaged printer drivers from the OpenPrinting database. This way there will be no need to ship all drivers on the CDs, Intrepid will be prepared for printers being launched after our release or being supported only by closed-source drivers which we are not allowed to distribute or driver updates.

7. font selector
Fontconfig offers a variety of font related settings, which can currently only be modified by hacking a XML file together. Intrepid will have a GUI for this task, taking common settings like font ordering, antialiasing, hinting and embedded bitmaps into account, as those settings vary greatly depending on different users’ preferences.

8. faster installation from desktop DVD
Modifications to ubiquity and apt as well as triggerisation of packages in order to minimize the extra time needed by the installer when dealing with the larger set of packages found on the desktop DVD image.

9. installation from USB stick
An application will be developed to convert and write Ubuntu CD images to USB disks. In addition, Ubuntu’s existing tools will be modified to better handle installing from a removable disk.

10. new graphic for the installer
The visual design of Ubuntu’s installer has remained largely unchanged since its creation, however there are a number of areas where graphical aids will be beneficial.

and maybe (low priority):

• 10 + 1. Identity management and network authentication
• 10 + 2. PackageKit

What about the new graphic theme?
Intrepid alpha releases come with a new graphic theme for the GNOME environment but I couldn’t find a blueprint about that thus it’s not in the list.

UPDATE 1: I’d like to add a task to the wishlist: SOUND!!! In hardy sound it’s a big mess because some softwares (Flash) do not integrate with PulseAudio (this workaround does seem to be stable to me) and I constantly have to close applications to make sound work again :-(

UPDATE 2: A user told me that I forgot to write an important new feature: support for dmraid from the livecd, he’s completely right, I thought it was not so important to average users but probably I was wrong.

After a long time freeze, we decided to change the approach to YourWay service, not just leaving the customer alone with his choices but making it a face to face service.

Why this change?
When our customers ask us to create a Linux distribution they want to have control of every small part of the process and of the result, thus we understood that a standardized approach would not work for YourWay.

So what do we have now?
A general description page of the service and a “get a free estimate” button. Clicking it will lead you to a cost-estimate request form, with some question that will help us understand your needs. After this step we’ll work face to face with the customers to take care of every little part of the project.

And what if I just need some easy tweaks?
What if a customer just needs “a standard Ubuntu plus support for his language plus a couple of applications”? This will be absolutely easy, quick and cheap, I swear :-)

And what if I’m an hardware reseller?
This is the most interesting part, we can build auto-installation Ubuntu based DVD to deploy your hardware quickly and easily!

Conclusions
Visit CreaLabs YourWay website and start building your own Ubuntu based Linux distribution!

You go to the supermarket and buy a new PC, you’ll find that the installed copy of Windows is perfectly localized in your language by default.

Situation 2:

You go to the Apple store and buy a new MAC, you’ll find that the installed copy of MAC OS is perfectly localized in your language by default.

Situation 3:

You download a copy of Ubuntu, burn it and boot it, select your language and… find that half of the system is in English and only a few things are in your language (this happens for Italian, maybe things can be worst with other languages).

What I want to say it’s quite obvious, if Linux vendors want to penetrate the newbies market, they must provide fully localized ISO images, there are no excuses. This is my point of view.

A lot of time ago, when I entered the UCK team, I wanted to build an ISO localization team, to build and deliver a full set of Ubuntu localized images. That part of the UCK project never came to life because of some problems but I still believe in its importance. Ubuntu team seemed to be quite regardless of this problem and our solution.

We (CreaLabs) continue to build and deliver the Ubuntu Italian ISO and I know there are a few other similar projects around the world but the point is that these kind of initiatives should become more officially endorsed by Ubuntu (or any other distro, problem is the same).

I talked a few time with the Ubuntu Italian Community but in all these years no page of the site links to our ISO image. Well… I’ve to say I’m a bit sad about that ’cause this seems to mean something like “we don’t care about that”.

Now, critics apart what can/should we do? If you agree with my point of view contact your distro (many of them have localized communities) and make them read this post, we just need to talk about the problem and we’ll find how to solve it. Having a fully localized Linux delivering infrastructure can only bring more users to our beloved OS.

In the P4A 3 roadmap post, I told you about a new widget rendering system… I didn’t post more technical info intentionally, I wanted to create a bit of suspense :) but I also wanted to do some tests before publishing news.

For P4A 3 we’d like to have a killer graphic with killer features (resizable widgets, border layouts, beautiful and powerful menu and so on) thus we looked to the biggest javascript frameworks out there: extjs and dojo. Both have great features and both have issues.

Extjs as really a killer graphic layout, and it’s released under LGPL3 (developers wrote some licensing notes that I can’t really understand… actually I think that those notes could conflict with LGPL3 itself) but it has not an open SVN and development is quite closed. Another note: only community support is for free.

Dojo is more polite with licensing and it’s released under BSD, but I don’t like the graphic layout too much and the way you’ve to code your applications writing a non-standard HTML with dojo-only attributes. It has some accessibility features.

Some considerations:

• In my tests I found bugs in both frameworks
• porting P4A to one of these tools is a “1 way road”
• relying the rendering layer to a 3rd party project means we’ve to 1000% trust this project
• these tools do not have a good print CSS support

We would have a 3rd option: continue on our road with quite standard HTML but rewrite our CSS from scratch with a CSS reset and a modular design which will give us better control.

I wrote extjs developers to know if they’re interested in a collaboration with P4A, I’m waiting for an answer but I’m looking for your considerations too, community it’s important to me, please let me know what you think and what are your experiences with those tools (or suggest others).

All articles are written in Italian

• article about CreaLabs
• article about Ufficio Zero
• article about UCK

Thank you very much e-pillole.com, it’s nice to see someone understanding your intents.

We (CreaLabs) are Ubuntu affiliate because of:

1. some Ubuntu promotion/spreading activities
2. 2 ubuntu derivative distros: ubuntu italian iso, ufficio zero
3. Ubuntu Customization Kit

We constantly and actively support open source and free software with many projects (check crealabs.it for the list).

All of these projects were created and are maintained for free.

The new condition

Ubuntu affiliate program changed, actually some points of the new programs are not clear to me but I read

The other tracks have distinct revenue requirements for progression through them. These numbers are not being made public, but will help you understand the reasons for the tiers.

[cut]

The figures are the revenue that flows to Canonical from sales that you make. These sales can be made up from the range of Canonical services and future product offerings.
These may look initially high, but we have set the bar for the highest level quite high intentionally. Any partner that reaches gold tier has really earned it.

We have based the tiers on revenue to alleviate any potential entry fee to the programme.

I can’t really understand if we’ll have to pay to remain affiliate or not… anyway I hope more info will be given us.

The idea

We said “hey, if we’ll have to pay, let’s try building some real business on Ubuntu, so we can remain affiliate”.
Working on UCK the idea was easy, build a website where people can customize their Ubuntu adding software, language support and many other things and get their brand new shining DVD at home for a price.

I wanted to call that buildyourubuntu.com. It seem to us that’s really a good name, you can understand what the service do and that’s what we want.

A good business must have a good name, a good business would bring us revenue and we would give part of them to Canonical (we haven’t decided prices and revenues yet) for the affiliate program and would keep alive our free projects and maybe build other new free services.

The problem

Ubuntu is a trademark, we can’t use that name without a license.
We write to Canonical trademarks team.

The answer

After 3 weeks we get a “NO, you can’t use that name for your business, you could for a free service but not for a business one”.
Why? Because it could seem too “official” meaning “related to Canonical”.

Our delusion

How would you call a service that build a custom Ubuntu for you? Oh I don’t want to hear flickr/scriptaculous clones please.

The point is, I think I can say we do fair play with free software, it’s not right to avoid us the possibility to create a new original service that would also bring money to Ubuntu itself.

Sure we can call that service “BuildYourOs.com” or “BuildYourDistro.com” or “BuildYourLinux.com” but:

1. it’s not clear: you can’t understand we’re ONLY talking about Ubuntu
2. it’s simply ugly, if you work in marketing tell me if I’m wrong
3. Linux is a trademark too thus you must gain a license to use the Linux name

Is my love for Ubuntu ruined?

Actually I don’t know, I’m feeling really sad right now.