• Dec 9, 2007

    Rails 2.0 - a feature a day

    Now that Rails 2.0 has been baked to near-perfection, I'm sure all you Rubyists with Rails applications are considering updating or have already updated your applications to be Rails 2.0-compatible. And you've probably already pored through the massive list of new features and changes in Rails 2.0 or seen it on Ryan Daigle's Scraps. Ryan also wrote a Rails2 mini eBook that's been getting good reviews.

    I've been keeping track of the Rails Trac timeline myself since my 1st committed Rails patch mostly to keep track of Rails development (we run several apps on edge) and to monitor any comments on my submitted patches. Turns out keeping an eye on the timeline and the rubyonrails-core mailing list gives you a pretty decent "on the ground" view of new features and changes to the Rails trunk.

    So I'm gonna try something and see if helps anyone: I'll be running a near-daily series of blog posts about new Rails features or changes. I'll try not to repeat anything that's already been mentioned, and instead focus more on lesser-known changes. I think it's also a great opportunity to raise the profile of the core committers and contributors to the Rails community so look out for an "About the contributor" section in each post.

    Hop on over to the 1st post - Time#advance now uses :weeks, :hours, :minutes, :seconds options.

  • Dec 8, 2007

    Rails 2.0 released

    Just go to the release announcement and major features blog post by DHH already!

    If you're having trouble installing the Rails 2.0.1 gem, do a gem install rails -y --source http://gems.rubyonrails.org

    Now that the obligatory link to the Rails 2.0 release announcement is done, I'd like to urge anyone with any interest in improving Rails or seeing new features or fixes in Rails to try and contribute to Rails. I'm sure everyone of us Rails users have had "what if Rails could do this" or "why is Rails doing this, that's just wrong" moments. Well, roll up your sleeves and help by contributing instead of complaining about how "they" won't/haven't/are too stupid to fix it..

    A good starting point is to read the Rails Trac wiki, and after that be sure to check out John Susser's excellent guide to contributing to Rails (read the presentation slides, it won't take long). You should have enough information to start. I recommend just opening the base.rb classes for ActiveRecord, ActionController and peeking around the ActiveSupport classes just to get a feel of things. After that crack open the relevant test for your issue and write your test-driven patch!

    It's really easy, since Rails is written purely in Ruby - if I can do it I'm sure you can too :) Your contribution doesn't even have to be a bona fide patch file with tests, documentation and bits of Ruby code - if you notice a bug and report it not knowing how to fix it, that's good enough! Or even something as trivial as a new style (CSS and layout) for the Rails error pages (there isn't such a patch yet but I'd love to see prettier default exception pages instead of the current rather plain-looking ones).

    Anyway, that's enough of the sermon from me - enjoy your Rails 2.0! Congrats to the Rails Core team and contributors on another solid release!

  • Dec 7, 2007

    Rails 2.0 - it's landed

    Update: Looks like it's going to be released as Rails 2.0.1 instead due to a bugfix post-2.0 tagging.

    Just a quick one - seems like Rails 2.0 has been tagged for release. Rails 2.0 milestone has just been completed.

    Expect a post on weblog.rubyonrails.com soon.

  • Nov 29, 2007

    Time.now.obsession = PSP Slim

    My PSP Slim


    Jeanne d'Arc is a great little SRPG I'm enjoying right now - I don't even want to start Final Fantasy Tactics until after I've completed Jeanne d'Arc.

    I have a Nintendo DS Lite as well and I have to say that I'm more of a PSP gamer where portable consoles are concerned. There just weren't that many involved games in the DS (except Puzzle Quest) and coming from a big fantasy CRPG background kinda made the DS a poor companion on train and bus rides. Being able to play videos on a large screen (relative to the iPod video I carry around all the time) is awesome. It's not an iPhone but it's good enough for watching videos!

  • Nov 20, 2007

    Try the new Mac OS X UI for Firefox 3

    The Firefox 3 developers have been working on a visual refresh that integrates more tightly into the OS, and the Mac OS X version is looking pretty sweet. Well, public opinion varies greatly - from people who feel that it's a rip off of Safari to those who really like the Brushed Metal look (myself included).


    Well, if you wanna check out the proposed Mac OS X Firefox 3 UI for yourself, grab yourself a copy of Firefox 3 Beta 1 and go get the Proto theme.

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