2010-05-25 Latest news

These days I was busy with other projects, so there is no news here. The project is still live. Latest updates include updated versions of Inc and Grid. But they will be published later. I think it is very essential to check a web engine site on real projects. So, a development of Inc and Grid is now under real, high load web sites.

2010-03-04 Styling and plans

Today I have some experiments with a design of the web site. I checked CSS shadows, rounded borders and gradients. Firefox, Chrome, Opera already support these useful CSS additions. So we will wait for IE9. I test my web site on IE7. It is looking fine.

Some things about these experiments. I have found that ⁿmini∙grid is not as usable as thought before. So, probably I will change a grid model to use only one-side margin. It allows us to insert sub-columns into any existing column.

Also some news about ⁿmini∙inc. A HTML class for ⁿmini∙inc is improved. It is testing now and will be published soon.

2010-03-02 Breadcrumb and RSS support

Today I have created breadcrumbs for simple web site navigation and a RSS-based changelogs for my downloads.

I like an idea of using a special product version file, so I will create also a PAD file. This file is used to publish software to download archives. Also many archives poll time-to-time this file changes and publish updated news. I used Robosoft to create such file, but now it will be generated automatically using changelog.txt as a source. This is a most wanted feature for my development projects.

2010-03-01 ⁿmini∙inc bugfixes

An upgrade to the PHP version 5 was unexpected for me. It turned out that different versions of PHP 5.x have different understandings of the code syntax. Also I have found that some PHP functions may not be exists even if they are marked as “exist” on PHP documentation. I. e. I have undefined function memory_get_peak_usage on my installed PHP 5.2. So I have updated the ⁿmini∙inc to the correct version. Also I going to install PHP 5.0 and 5.1 to test my code on different PHP versions.

You may have noticed that I refused to daily publications in the blog. My schedule was very busy those days. Development, testing, installation of new software, upgrade, update my other projects…

2010-02-26 ⁿmini∙inc framework is live

You can already download it! Yes it is as simple as possible. The main framework file is just 38 lines! The previous used engine is 10 times bigger.

2010-02-21 Web page framework development

I create a simple web page framework for PHP. The ideas for it include:

• One include and one function call.
• Plugins architecture similar to my previous framework IncPlugins (now project is closed and no links available).
• Compatibility with CMS concepts.
• High speed and small-possible code with minimal include files.
• Developer-oriented extensions.

Old framework mistakes:

• Useless in the era of CMS. It is better to code own ideas when you start a simple project. So I had sales problems. The new approach is the idea of using my new framework as a template for expansion.
• The complexity of debugging, because output buffering used. New code ideas do not use ob_start().
• Binding to its own plugins. Small amount of plugins. New idea includes no any plugins. Developer can code plugins if want do it.
• Speed problems using plugins, because PHP loads includes very slowly. In my new framework 99% of needed code will be available in the one PHP file.

The new framework will be free for noncommercial use.

2010-02-16 The first visitor from Google

Google already indexed the site. The first search: Database+Down+Sorry,+a+temporary+error+has+occurred.+Please+try+again

I have no another news, because today I was busy with other projects.

2010-02-15 Web site engine development

Today I had experiments in different types of a universal website engine. I plan to create as small as possible yet extensible and fast engine. My previous versions have some limitations, so the new version should be a bit better.

These days I have about 20 visitors on the website. Most of them are just my friends, other ones are from twitter. I am waiting when Google bots will be happy to eat new pages. I already have placed links from my another web sites, so just waiting first visitors here.

Between coding I am thinking about how to get money using this project. I had already small PHP code libraries and small Windows applications for sale. But they gave me only a small amount of green sheet of paper. So I am just in researching.

2010-02-14 Integration with Twitter and Facebook

Today I tested some integrations with Twitter and Facebook here and on my other web sites. It is simple, but does not work as fine as I thought. I. e. I cannot create a feedback gadget using Facebook Comments Box, because I get a strange message: “Database Down. Sorry, a temporary error has occurred. Please try again.” I have already googling about this. It seems as a total bug of Facebook, because many users get this message. Also there is a bug report in the Facebook ticket system.

2010-02-13 Second version of the website

Today and yesterday I made a lot of work to get a good look of the web site. The original version is created using my PHP and CSS code from previous website projects. I used my latest HTML frame scripts with a simple CSS file.

I created an email address redirection from this domain to my preferred personal mailbox. This was unexpected and took a long day before I was able to receive email messages. But for some reason I still do not reach messages sent with gmail.

To monitor visitors, I used Google Analytics. But it has limitations. In particular, it is difficult to track visitors in a realtime mode, and to track how they move through the site. For these purposes, I used a wonderful script Atrise Realtime Stat.

Also I created a twitter account and posted here initial messages.

During development, I discovered that I can improve the method of forming of multicolumn layouts, which I used earlier. So I sat down to design and six hours later, I have a pretty simple, concise and convenient way. The result you can see here. For pedants: Yes, it has not yet been tested in IE6.

Perfect job! It took only a few hours, and this is the first thing that is already available for visitors! This is my the first startup, which I made results to the public in two days!

On the framework page I have added a comments gadget from Google Friend Connect. It took just half an hour at all. And in the end I was able to get a small community around this simple library. Of course, I may add something similar to my blog, but let us not hurry.

I have to think through the blog structure. What I'll do tomorrow. It's late and I'm tired. See you later!

2010-02-12 Basic website engine and marketing concepts

I have an experience in creating software development projects. But this project is fundamentally different from them. It is fully social-oriented now. I prefer to be open to my customers and colleagues to tell me how things are going and what I do. Moreover, any person from outside can join the process. Also, I'm not going to write useless programs and conduct my life in a programming. Life is short and does not want her to spend on making money in sweat. Therefore, the principles of marketing will be quite different than before. So the foundation will serve as a web site and a communication.

I need a simple and good website engine for the project. Of course, I can install here WordPress or a similar CMS. But I'm going to implement it manually, using ⁿmini principles and third party services, based on Google Friend Connect and similar technologies from another services. It seemed to me that these technologies hold great promise to date.

The first time website requirements:

• A simple and reliable source code for rapid change in a changing environment. In the experience of similar development the main problem was the complexity of individual features. A number of code grew and grew and the number of bugs. Then change something it was very difficult. So now I choose the simplicity.
• Social-oriented features: comments, feedbacks, article tracking. Google Friend Connect, Twitter suit me and very easy to install and use.
• Articles with fragments of code with syntax highlighting. It is too hard to code it manually. I don't use visual tools to create HTML and I'm not going to use CMS.
• Support service and ecommerce scripts for sales. It is not difficult, because I already have more than ten years experience in a shareware business. The only thing my old approaches have to adjust to the social orientation.
• Product information pages with a software description, download links, version history. As experience has shown, the support of all this is the basic boring routine, because that does not want to release updates on the site. My new approach will also be focused on super-fast and frequent changes.
• Very tight integration web site with the development. As a basis I see the use of automation scripts and plain text files, on the basis of which an entire online infrastructure will be generated.
• PAD and RSS support, marketing texts and resources. I no longer want to use Robosoft and submit routines. This is time consuming process, and ultimately obtained a miserable result. Let my users are themselves engaged in the promotion of my products. Just notice them and provide all the convenience to do so.

The first thing to do for this—a minimum set of PHP scripts, primarily to support the blog. Starting a project, I see that written texts have often and much. This will form a necessary response to me on the internet and attract the attention of many people to the project. But with this approach, users will see my new program is not soon. So at first I was oriented to resources for programmers, and will publish the code samples from my design.

2010-02-12 Hardware and software used for the development

Most of time I use my ultra-portable notebook Asus s6fm. It's very small, but powerful. It has very good display and beautiful leather upholstery.

My core software for development:

• Windows 7 Home Premium x64 and tweaked Vista Business x64 with disabled unused services.
• Git version system with qgit as a GUI.
• A simple but powerful freeware file manager Commander from MeeSoft.
• Notepad++ to edit PHP/JS/CSS code and to view and create text files.
• Apache with PHP package, named XAMPP Lite as a development web server.
• Microsoft Visual C++ Express 2008 with Windows SDK and DirectX SDK.
• I often use *.bat scripts for automation of routine tasks.
• 7zip to create zip archives and backups.
• My preferred web browser is Firefox. I use Gmail, Google, MSDN, Google Translate and other.
• Very powerful image editor PhotoLine and a vector editor Inkscape.
• A design software Atrise Golden Section and Atrise Lutcurve.
• Beautiful screenshot software, called PicPic.

I use a 2-megabit Internet connection over D-Link DIR-320 with a tweaked firmware.

2010-02-12 Startup

Today, 2010-02-12, I'm starting this project, to create fast, high quality, modern and useful software with a minimum of errors and maximal usability.

For many years I have professionally develop computer programs. But I was not happy with the way it is done and what happens in the end. I hope that I will search out the best way. The secret, as I hope, is connected with the simplicity.

Most time I will use PHP, CSS, JS, HTML and C++ programming languages. The software will be used for web, Windows and Mac OS. I expect that the results of my work will be useful and popular among developers and ordinary users. Here you will download the code snippets, ideas, specifications and documents for software development. Later, I will begin to upload here also end user programs.

This is not a charity project. I'm going to earn a lot of money. But, of course, there will be a lot of free stuff, as well as useful experience.

The project is named “ⁿmini∙research”. A word “nmini” is simple and also beautiful. I like it.

I'll work on this project in a full-time mode. Updates will be available every day. You can also monitor the state of affairs, using my blog. Now this blog is a simple PHP file. But do not hurry, this is only the beginning...

Andrew Revvo, the ⁿmini∙research developer.