Please keep in mind, I’m not developing the editor for almost 3 years, I’m not here for technical support, the sources are at GitHub (github.com/aprilchild) and even though there’s no license specified in the code, it’s sort of like MIT. In other words – you’re hereby free to do whatever you’d like with it. Including commercial use. I don’t mind, have fun:).

P.S. – something’s cooking, something far better than this old Amy Editor. In the same field, but …

So what’s next? Well, guess what, I bought a domain for it – http://www.amyeditor.com! Awesome, I can hear you, but what’s really next? The answear is – it depends on you. I’ve opened a forum on UserVoice and welcome any suggestions, controversy or just random shouts. I have some preliminary ideas what to do with various parts of the editor, it’s quite possible to separate it into smaller chunks and create couple of services out of it. I don’t think the editor as it is now has much of a chance. Sure it looks nice in Safari on my Mac (and it’s fast as .. you name it), but looking at it on IE/Windows just doesn’t feel that appealing.

The main reason for canceling all work on the editor was a job (paid – whoa!:) of co-creating brand new amazing service, which I’ll share with you really soon. It’ll blow your mind :).

As for *.isonrails.com – there are no news, it’s abandoware at the moment :(. It’s a real shame for all those poor Heroku users fighting with wonderful service and plainly TERRIBLE user interface – imagine isonrails.com interface planted on Heroku. That would be awesome.

Fry – the underlying, ancient old JavaScript library that Amy Editor uses – no change in that department either :). But have you noticed the JavaScript Terminal demo? Pretty neat, huh? ;)

Saludos,

and merry X-mas and happy new year (and all that crap:),

Petr

P.S. – don’t forget the Amy Editor UserVoice! :)

Project in general is a collection of resources (for now documents if you will) provided by third parties (such as your company, your fellow developers website and such) that is accessible to you.

Each project has its own unique URL address, pretty much like any standard web page. If you want to open a project, all you need is such URL. Optionally the project can contain several parameters for you to adjust. Eg. FTP Editor project requires the login credentials along with ftp address itself (so do DAV and Blog editors).

There are currently four projects available to you:

• Playground
  
  
  URL: http://www.april-child.com/amy/projects/playground.php
  
  
  It’s the simpliest of projects, purposed for those who just want to play with Amy for the first time. Contents are stored on Amy server and are generally accessible.
• DAV Editor
  
  
  URL: http://www.april-child.com/amy/projects/dav.php
  
  
  Access webdav resources. If you happen to have WebDAV access (that is accessible from internet), you may access it and actually open documents in Amy.
• FTP Editor
  
  
  URL: http://www.april-child.com/amy/projects/ftp.php
  
  
  The same as DAV, except for any FTP server. Do you have a website hosted and want to be able to access its contents from anywhere using just your browser and comfortable editor? This might be the way.
• Blog
  
  
  URL: http://www.april-child.com/amy/projects/blog.php
  
  
  Use this project for accessing your blog contents. It serves as a generic blog editation tool. Currently supported is the MovableType API, works fine with any Wordpress, other systems are currently not tested (and for simplicity won’t work due lack of blogID parameter), but this will eventually change for full blog API support including those of Blogger.

The “project feature” itself is controlled by its own API, so it’s fairly easy to create your own unique project taking documents from your application and allow access (restricted, limited, …) to fellow developers/collaborators all via Amy. There is no need to let authentication slip past your fingers, you may as well do it yourself and still be able to create a project. The API will be presented soon (or you may mail me for additional info). There are libraries/plugins for Ruby on Rails and PHP5 at the moment.

Projects pane in Amy Editor Screenshot

Note, the editor has changed its URL to http://www.april-child.com/amy.

Stay tuned!

You can launch the editor right here.

Some screenshots follow:

Bundle Editor

Remote command definition

Key equivalent option when launching snippet

Typical snippet definition

Searching using Google snippet

Searching using Google snippet – results

Searching using Google ask snippet

And the results of �??ga�?�

�??ga�?� explained – see the source

What’s it about?

Fry Framework (or just Fry) is an evolution of 12 years JavaScript programming (mine of course, not in general:-). Long time has passed and the framework encapsulates many ideas being discovered on the way. I’m not going to bore you with more historical/philosophical views, let’s just start right away. Well, keep reading…

Prerequisities

You should be somehow familiar with the idea of DOM. If you’ve never used document.getElementById(), node.appendChild(el) and similar, this is probably not for you. Don’t be sorry though, there are millions of things more worthy than being a javascript weirdo:-).

No more .appendChild()

Fry is based around idea of replacing the most tedious code writing. It frees you from tons of “fill the gap” code for performing trivial DOM manipulation, assigning and responsing to various events, dealing with XML, Ajax and file uploads. Your code will be much smaller, written in a fraction of time. You may use the time saved for the real problems or just go home :-).

Learn the shortcuts, keep the chain in mind

You were probably looking for the first example, here it goes:

$().a($$()).t('Hello world!').e('click', function(evt)
{
	evt.$.s('color:red').at(' This is Fry.');
});

Although a little bit cryptical at first, believe me, you will get used to it very quickly. What we just wrote is a DIV appended to BODY containing the text “Hello world!” that is clickable. After you click on it, it will change its text color to red and append the text “This is Fry.”. Maybe you will better recognize this piece of code:

var el = document.createElement('DIV');
// yes, I know we should be doing true DOM using el.appendChild(document.createTextNode('Hello world!')),
// but is the phrase "developers cycle" saying anything to you? :-)
el.innerHTML = 'Hello world!';
el = document.getElementsByTagName('BODY').item(0).appendChild(el);
// This will not work for IE, we should use attachEvent()
el.addEventListener('click', function(evt)
{
	el.style.color = 'red';
	// or var ht = el.innerHTML; ht += ' This is Fry.'; el.innerHTML = ht;
	el.appendChild(document.createTextNode(' This is Fry.'));
});

OK, this was not fun, first we have to deal with browser differences, secondly there is just too much code to be written and we only scratch the surface with a primitive task. Don’t write your code this way. You may not end up using Fry, feel free to use Prototype, Mochikit, JQuery or any of the zillions of frameworks. Let me repeat it. Do NOT, under any circumstances, try to write your code this way, that is using the primitives of DOM. Unless of course you’re a regular to S&M parties and pain is your pleasure :-).

Learn the shortcuts and commands chaining

Apart from previous chapter title, we haven’t quite talk about it yet. So what are these shortcuts and what the hell is chaining anyway? Does it do any good to me or will I be forced to rethink and shift my programming techniques? Well, the answer to the last two questions is simple. Yes and .. probably yes. First answer is just a reassurement, you will have to find the real answer to the second question by yourself. Enough of this chit-chat already…

Shortcuts are methods names shortened to absolute minimum. If you want to positionate something on your page at 400 pixels from the left and 140 from the top of your browser window, you just imagine the more natural X and Y coordinates (left for X, top for Y) and write el.x(400).y(140). It’s that simple. Chaining is what you just saw. Practically any method combination can be used to archieve something on an element/object. You just have to separate the methods by dot. So instead of writing several lines of code, you can archieve the same effect by chaining. And since you use shortcuts, the lines are not very long thus easily readable. If you don’t understand:

	el.x(314).y(159).z(26).t('hello from chain');
	// does it need a comment? positionate el 314 left, 159 top, z-index 26,
	// and let it contain the text "hello from chain"	

then again, Fry is probably not for you.

You know, Fry… Of all the friends I’ve had, you’re the first

This was just an introductory article to Fry. Stay tuned.

I really have to change Wordpress to something else… It’s ugly in the morning.

It’s not a miracle, it’s the promising new technology from Adobe called Apollo. Apollo attempts to create cross-platform environment for RIA (Rich Internet Applications) supporting common technologies used for web development – Flash, ActionScript, JavaScript, HTML, CSS – coupled with APIs for local access typical for desktop applications.

Applications are distributed as downloadable packages that are installed as common desktop applications (a little bit more smoothly though). In order to run these applications, you must have Apollo runtime installed (downloaded and installed once).

Screenshots:
Native Mac OS X, Running Amy for Windows, Complex view on both versions

In order to test collaboration in Amy Editor, simply launch editor in one browser, open a document (eg. application.js), and optionally make some changes.

Now go to the top menu and choose “File -> Collaboration -> Invite…“. Remember the number that popped up.

Launch another browser window (or tab, but then you won’t be able to see the results so effectively :-), open the editor, go to the menu “File -> Collaboration -> Accept…” and enter the number.

After a while, new document will be launched in the new editor tab and you can start “collaborating” ;-). You are encouraged to test it with others, it’s much more fun than looking at two browser windows all alone :-).

What you want to use it for is up to you… Please just note, this is a concept code, with anything but pure collaboration feature included, there’s much more to come.