It's on it's way! Vincent Massol sent a message to the cactus-user mailing list today asking for ideas and help. If you're an Eclipse plug-in developer, or use Cactus and want to "get involved" - see Vincent's initial thoughts. Personally, I love Cactus, StrutsTestCase, and JUnit. They've all made my development life a lot easier (when they work). I'm constantly on the bleeding edge of Struts development, and StrutsTestCase seems to always break when I download a nightly build. Now if I could only convince myself to write more HttpUnit tests (or maybe use Solex), so I don't spend so much time trying to get my UI to load and look right. Anyone know of a CSS and Layout Testing framework that tells you that your colors need tweeking or your layout won't work in IE5/Mac? I could use that framework!
Lance solved one of my Roller enhancement requests. Boy was that fast!
I got a tip today from Olivier, a developer of Solex, to disable my ad blocking tools (I use Norton Internet Security) and I would be able to download XMLBuddy. Sure 'nough, it worked!
Olivier had contacted me after reading my blog (wow, people ARE reading this) to let me know about Solex, which is:
A Web application testing tool built as a plug-in for the Eclipse IDE. Based on a built-in Web proxy and a concept of extraction, replacement, and assertion rules (including regular expressions), Solex provides functions to record a client session, adjust it according to various parameters and replay it. This is typically done in order to ensure the non-regression of a Web application's behavior.
At first glance, it looks like a recorder of your browser interactions, so you don't have to repeat "click, click, click" over and over again to test some functionality. HttpUnit probably can accomplish the same thing, but you have to physically write code to test everything. Solex looks like it'll just record the test case. Looks cool to me, if I can find an hour to install and tinker with, I might even use it.
To answer Dave's questions:
1) What do you want Roller to be?
I want it to be my personal portal, my weblogger, and my corporate website. I'm also interested in adding a wiki to my website for new projects. But I don't expect or need wiki functionality in roller. I'm planning on adding a new roller page with an iframe to a wiki such as Very Quick Wiki. The iframe gives me the ability to view another site/app with the current skin being used.
2) What are you interested in working on?
- Converting the editor UI to use Tiles instead of including header/footer JSP pages.
- Making the editor UI XHTML-compliant, while maintaining some backwards compatibility with Netscape 4.x.
- Adding the ability to collapse/expand folders for bookmarks.
- Adding search capability to weblog entries and entire site pages, either using Lucene or just 'like' SQL statements.
- Investigating XDoclet and Castor and how it's being used so I can use them on my next project.
- Adding an option for drop-down menus for editor UI (alternative to tabbed menu). I know there is a "Struts Menu" that has been converted to use CoolMenus, so maybe use this.
3) What features would you like to see added to Roller?
- The ability to search weblog entries.
- Ability to include an anchor name for each weblog entry, i.e. <a name="entryId..." id="entryId..."></a>. This would be convenient for other webloggers who are referencing your posts.
- Ability to use other blogging client-side software to post to roller, besides just w:blogger.
- Ability to edit (x)HTML via a web interface - in both Mozilla and IE.
I keep myself motivated by using Roller everyday as the engine behind this site. Thanks Dave, Roller has made the re-design of my website much easier, and it's opened my eyes to the world of weblogging. Good Stuff!
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