FINALLY got round to publishing this thing: it lets you generate a custom zipfile containing whatever Form Tools components you want – modules, themes, API and Core. Right now it’s pretty basic and doesn’t track dependencies between the various components, but I’ll be adding that soon. Mostly I’ve been using it just to cut down on installation time – having to manually download component after component. This solution is much more elegant!
http://ft2.formtools.org/build/

- Ben

At long, long last, the Form Tools 2 Public Beta is available for download and use. We’ve given the new beta its own subdomain:
http://ft2.formtools.org. Once we’re out of the Beta phase, we’ll make that site the main formtools.org domain and move Form Tools 1 to ft1.formtools.org.

Most of the new site is complete; the majority of the user documentation is written, there’s an online demo, bug tracker and forums. So please let me know of any problems you encounter through the forums!

Enjoy! :-)

Whoo-hoo!

It’s just a private Beta right now – only a dozen people. When all the really egregious bugs have been resolved I’ll open it up to a wider audience. Then some more. Then some more. Then the world…

Exciting day! It’s the culmination of almost TWO BLOODY YEARS of planning and development, so it’s wonderful to see it finally out the door.

Nice way to start the new year. :-)

I thought I’d make a quick post about what I’ve been up to. It dawned on me that I’d been neglecting my own site and I should probably write something to let people know I haven’t just been playing World of Warcraft 24/7.

Work

I’ve been doing a number of contracts for clients including Boston Pizza (or “Boston’s”, in the States), Klondike Contracting, Royal Pacific Realty, 1-800-GOT-JUNK, AVW-TELAV and Skookum Clothing. All the work was programming-related; it seems like I’m no longer doing any design work at all (which, let’s face it, is probably a good thing!). But most of my time has been spent on…

Form Tools 2

The Form Tools core is complete, as are about 7 or 8 modules (2 or 3 of which will be included in the standard build), 3 themes and the API. The base CMS for the documentation is written, as is a fair chunk of the documentation itself. The new Subversion repository has been designed, and I’ve automated a number of common tasks like generating Beta branches and tags from within a simple UI (so I don’t screw anything up!).

Short-sightedly, I made some posts on the Form Tools site saying the Beta will be released shortly – not taking into account all the other work on the site that needs to be completed first. Right now I’m focusing on the upgrade mechanism. Unlike Form Tools 1.x, from a technical standpoint, upgrading is now a far more complicated process: I couldn’t just allow people to overwrite all old files like before. Now it has to take into account versions and compatibilities of the various components of the script, specifically:

• Form Tools Core
• Module versions
• Theme versions
• API version
• Language Pack versions

But here’s the cool part. Upgrading is actually JUST as simple as before – if not simpler! In the Form Tools script, there’s an “upgrade” button. That submits all relevant information about core, module, theme and API version to the upgrade script hosted on formtools.org. That then does the dirty work of figuring out which components have new versions available and if they’re compatible.

From the backend point of view, it’s all governed with Subversion and a custom CMS. Once SVN has been updated with the latest files, the new versions are logged in the database and marked as ready for download. What’s especially nice is that written to support other developers and designers to allow them to submit their modules and themes.

Anyway, it’s a big job. I’m still shooting for getting the first Beta out the door before Dec 31, but I won’t feel too bad if it gets pushed to the New Year.

I just posted a few more screenshots of the upcoming Form Tools 2 release on the Form Tools site. This batch of images are of the new Submission Account module. Basically it just allows users to edit their own form submissions through a new, simple user account type. Unlike the other modules I’ve posted about, this one won’t be bundled with the main build. It’s a useful feature, but only for a significant subset of users. Downloading and installing it will be a cinch, though.

Submission Accounts module screenshots

This is positively the un-sexiest release of Form Tools yet (assuming that software releases can be considered “sexy”…). It’s primarily a security fix – the first one, actually. There was a small hole introduced in the previous release which some nimble would-be hacker tried to exploit on a user’s site. Judging from the fellows logs he didn’t succeed, but the gap needed to be plugged… so here’s the changelog:

• Security fix. Issue on servers with register globals enabled. This bug was introduced in 1.5.0.
• Problem deleting files from client account [089]
• Email template bug fix for “omit empty fields”. There was a bug in the previous templates causing some emails to get missed. [085]
• Closing ?> removed for main code files (including library.php). This is a common cause for the “Step 2 Blank Page bug”

Learn more about Form Tools here.

I just posted a few screenshots of some Form Tools 2 pages. Check it out!

I’ve been meaning to make a personal post for some time but inevitably work gets in the way. Damn you work, damn you! So okay, here’s how I’ve been filling my days.

Work!

Since the start of the year my “day job” has been working for Encore Web Studios and through them, Blue Lime Media. On the whole I quite enjoy working from home, but keeping cabin fever at bay can be hard. Once I get back to Vancouver I’m going to try out Workspace for a month or two. It looks promising, but a little costly.
Here’s a few of the bigger projects I’m currently working on or have completed.

• UBC Library (complete)
• Techcouver “Web 2.0 Map” (complete)
• BC Film – backend database and UI for collecting tax information for film companies shooting in BC (complete)
• Royal Pacific Realty – creating an “intranet” for realtors and administrators (ongoing)
• Elections BC – revamping their existing site to use the Expression Engine content management system (ongoing)
• CTN Reports – a full, Ajax-driven site for cardiologists and radiologists to let them quickly generate patient reports (ongoing)

Personal Stuff

• I’m still planning on living in Saskatoon until April / May until my girlfriend finishes her degree. [Not to gloat, but she scored 99.5% on her Veterinary board exams. Not half bad!] Can’t WAIT to come home to Vancouver – this weather’s killing me. I miss being able to walk outside without fear of death from frostbite. Say what you like about Vancouver but that’s seldom a concern…
• I’m very much looking forward to the Open Web Conference in Vancouver, April 14th-15th. Some interesting talks being presented.
• In a feeble attempt to fend off the cold I’ve been staying in, reading a zillion books on Ajax and web development (and Patrick O’Brien’s Aubrey-Maturin series – they’re bloody brilliant). “Enterprise Ajax”, a book by the Vancouver company Nitobi was well worth the read. Lots of practical advice.
• I’ve been following the US presidential primaries very closely. At this point it’s actually beginning to look like it’ll be between Obama and McCain. Very surprising – a couple of months ago I’d have banked on Hillary fo’ sho’. Not sure if you followed the debate last night, but Hillary’s closing remarks did sound awfully concession-like, despite her insistence to the contrary. Texas and Ohio on the 4th will tell all…

Form Tools 2

Slowly plodding along, and looking cooler by the day.

1. Smarty templates. Ever since the script’s inception I disliked the strong coupling of HTML and PHP (though let’s face it, this is largely a problem with PHP as a whole). Last year I improved things by adding “code pages” for each display page, which contained the bulk of the PHP – but it still wasn’t that great. Solution? Smarty! The Smarty template engine completely separates the PHP and HTML layers making the pages a hell of a lot simpler to work with. The Smarty syntax is very simple and can be picked up by non-developers in very little time.Simply “smartifying” the pages wasn’t hard (they’re actually all done now) but the whole point is to make them easy to understand so that people who need to edit the pages can do so with very little difficulty. So now I’m going through each page with a fine tooth comb (what an odd expression) removing as much extraneous logic and code as I can. Tedious, to say the least – but worth it.
2. Modules. I’ve now come up with 6 modules I want to include by default, and the list keeps growing… erk. This will be an invaluable addition to the script. Ideally I’d like to devote myself to working on modules after this release – they’re fun!
3. Menus. I got rather fed up with working on the Smarty whatnot and decided to take a break by adding an unscheduled feature: customizable menus. Now you can customize the links of the navigation menu within Form Tools, letting them link to whatever page you with – internally within Form Tools or custom links (like on your site). This is always something I do manually when integrating Form Tools into a website. Now you can do it without editing any HTML!I’ll be posting some screenshots in the next week so you can get an idea of how this looks and functions.
4. Emails. MAN I hate the existing email functionality. It’s kludgy and the UI sucks. But no more! The new system is about 509862% better and allows to optional handling of the emails by separate SMTP scripts (either PHP Mailer of Swift Mailer – or both – I haven’t decided).

I think that’s pretty much it. Check back here for screenshots of Form Tools 2!

Very cool. Tara Gibbs from over at ActiveState made a few nice mods to my Form Tools app, including the option of storing sessions in a database. They were planning on running the script on a database cluster, so using standard PHP sessions wasn’t an option.

Apparently they’ll be using the script internally for sales and marketing purposes.

Thanks for sending me the mods, Tara! I’ll be including them in Form Tools 2.

The first draft of my company site is finished, so check it out! It’s all Ajax-driven right now, without any non-JS fallback, but in time I’ll add the static HTML option.

Right now the site is nothing much more than a catalog of my main scripts, but in time I’ll expand it to include my other scripts – as well as a location for future releases. I’ve been working on a invoice generation script which I will be releasing there in the next couple of months.

Next, I’ll be re-branding my other scripts under the company name.

Visit the Black Sheep Web Software website.