I have contributed to various web standards-related mailing lists,
with reviews and comments to web specifications like HTML5.
Additionally, I also worked on several projects of my own.
16 October 2009, 04:17
PaintWeb is an
open-source web-based paint application usable as a component
within any other web application. From a technical perspective, the
application uses very well known technologies like JavaScript, HTML
5 Canvas and CSS.
Project contributors wanted!
If you are a student with spare time maybe you
want to work on a serious project, where you can learn new things,
where you can prove your skills. Maybe you thought many times about
"cool" projects you could do, but you do not have the resources to
just do it, then you might be interested of PaintWeb: you have the
chance to break out of routine, to quit working on boring projects
which level your skills down - you can work on a project where you
advance your skills. You will learn what it takes to start your own
project.
If you are a teacher or a professor and you have
students passionate about computer science who do not have any
practical project, then recommend joining PaintWeb to your
students. As a teacher, you can help your students apply their
skills while working in an international team, over the Internet
without any physical boundaries. Besides these benefits, your
students are given the chance to work with some of the newest web
technologies, and they will also use source code version control
tools like Subversion.
The skills your students will develop are essential in IT jobs all
over the world.
Why PaintWeb? Because PaintWeb will be integrated
into Moodle 2 - the most
popular open source virtual learning environment. Hundreds of
thousands of students and teachers use Moodle all over the world.
There is also a PaintWeb plugin for integration into TinyMCE - one of the most
popular open source HTML editor, used by thousands of web sites and
applications. Thus, your work counts and makes a difference to many
people. If you want to be part of those who make image editing and
manipulation possible inside Moodle, inside TinyMCE and many other
open source projects, then join this project!
Who can contribute to PaintWeb? You, anyone! Are
you a programmer? Then you can work on the JavaScript code, you can
implement new features, or you can fix existing bugs. You are not a
programmer? Then you can work on the project documentation,
tutorials or translations. You think you are not experienced
enough? Nothing to worry about, nobody was born expert - you just
have to want to learn and you will be guided through the process of
learning new things. Does it seem boring to work on a certain
aspect of the project? No problem, you pick what and when you work!
What can you do for PaintWeb? You can write
documentation or translations into other languages, and you can
implement new functionality into PaintWeb as a web developer. You
will learn to work in a cross-platform and cross-browser
environment, you will become very well acquainted to technologies
such as the DOM, HTML 5, Canvas and CSS among others. If you want,
you can take a look at the TODO list from
the project wiki, and also check the Issues tracker
to see what you could do for the project and what features are
already planned.
If you want to join this project then get started
by sending an email to the mailing list at
paintweb@googlegroups.com, or just contact
the project author.
Acest articol este scris în limba engleză. O traducere în limba
română este disponibilă.
Published in:
open-source,
paintweb.
6 November 2008, 12:39
Today I finally managed to upload and release my latest project:
PaintWeb. Marius helped me with designing the GUI and with other suggestions.
PaintWeb is a
client-side Web application which allows users to draw online. It
makes use of some newer Web technologies, mainly
the HTML 5 Canvas 2D
context API. Currently,
it's in its infancy, but with lots of work planned ahead.
The major decision for me was to release this project as
open-source, under GPL v3. The project is
now hosted on the Google Code
servers.
Please contribute with feedback, bug reports and even code -
volunteers are welcome!
Lots of bugs in the Web application are already known, nonetheless
that shouldn't stop you from reporting them.
The Web application works in the latest versions of Opera, Firefox, Safari and Konqueror. Obviously, it also works with
any Gecko and WebKit based Web browsers.
Nightly builds of Firefox 3.1 and SVN trunk builds of WebKit have the best support for this Web
application.
I'd like to mention that the greatest surprise to me was that the
new Konqueror 4 has its own Canvas implemention. They've done a
really great job!
I am looking forward to publish more information about the project
and to continue work on it.
Update 3 days later: Back in september we
presented PaintWeb at a local university-organised seminar. Today
we have updated the presentation and we translated it to English as
well. Go ahead and download the English or Romanian
presentation.
Published in:
canvas,
gpl,
html5,
open-source,
paintweb,
projects,
talks.
22 June 2006, 00:51
This is the Linux
and open-source article I previously wrote in english. I
translated it to Romanian, on request.
Când eşti un utilizator al Windowsului, fiecare din prietenii tăi
care folosesc Linux îţi sugerează să treci la Linux: "nu mai fi
sclavul Microsoftului" sau alte formule.
Alegerea unei distribuţii de Linux este un pas greu de sine
stătător. Acest pas este greu chiar şi pentru "experţii" Windows.
După ce în sfârşit ai ales şi instalat distribuţia, urmează o etapă
pe care eu o consider amuzantă: prietenii tăi care folosesc o altă
distribuţie încep să glumească pe seama alegerii făcute. Asta se
întâmplă indiferent dacă ai avut sau nu cunoştinţele necesare să
alegi exact distribuţia de care ai nevoie (deobicei nu ai). Dacă
întâmpini probleme şi le ceri ajutor răspunsurile pot fi de genul
"ha, asta nu păţeşti cu distribuţia X".
După ce eu mi-am instalat Ubuntu, un utilizator de Gentoo mi-a spus
în glumă "ah, Ubuntu e aproape Linux, dar bine că ai trecut pe
Linux". Asta e încurajare! Alt utilizator de Fedora Core 4 mi-a
spus foarte simplu "Ubuntu merge prea bine, e prea grafic".
Interesant, deoarece lui nu-i place că unele distribuţii Linux
ajung la un nivel la care utilizatorul poate să treacă direct la
Linux, fără să întâmpine problemele foarte cunoscute: linia de
comandă şi editarea manuală a fişierelor de configurare. El a spus
acest lucru deoarece a văzut că am avut Samba funcţionând perfect
şi v4l (Video for Linux) era deja funcţional (el a avut aceste două
probleme pe FC 4). Cauza acestor probleme poate fi dată de faptul
că FC este o distribuţie ce introduce pachete de ultimă oră, fără
foarte multă testare.
Trebuie specificat că nu doresc să las impresia că distribuţia
Ubuntu este cea mai bună. Nici pe departe. Am întâmpinat şi eu tot
felul de "bucurii", dar multe din ele sunt foarte uşor de rezolvat.
Contrar părerilor unora, eu nu am trecut la Linux doar pentru a fi
în pas cu moda (aş fi putut face acest lucru ani în urmă). Trecerea
mea la Linux a fost datorată necesităţilor în domeniul programării
web: am nevoie să experimentez cu tehnologii mai noi care în mod
"natural" sunt făcute pentru Linux.
Nereuşita Linuxului de a creşte în popularitate pe desktopuri este
cauzată de lipsa acordului între membrii comunităţilor de
programatori Linux şi utilizatorii Linux, diversitatea fiind foarte
mare. Comunitatea Linux este probabil prea diversă prin definiţia
open-source-ului. Foarte bine (din punctul meu de vedere) este că
acum se mobilizează tot mai multe grupuri de utilizatori şi
dezvoltatori pentru a face Linuxul pentru desktopuri mai bun şi mai
uşor pentru începători.
După ce te obişnuieşti cu Linux, poţi ajunge să-ţi chiar place
puterea oferită de scripturile Perl/Python sau orice altceva din
consolă. Acestea-ţi oferă într-adevăr libertatea de care ai nevoie
după ce foloseşti mult timp abordarea WIMP pentru a
interacţiona cu calculatorul. Window, Icon, Menu, Pointing device
(fereastră, iconiţă, meniu, dispozitiv de indicare) sunt metaforele
cele mai bine cunoscute în interfeţele actuale ale programelor de
calculator (pe Windows, Mac OS X, Gnome şi KDE). Pe Windows aceste
capabilităţi lipsesc. Distribuţiile de Linux destinate
utilizatorilori începători nu dezactivează accesul la consolă, ci
doar adaugă capabilităţile necesare în modul grafic. Asta este
foarte bine, deoarece după un timp ţi se permite să experimentezi,
să înveţi şi altceva.
Nu ar trebui să existe "războiul distribuţiilor" Linux. Fiecare
distribuţie este bună în felul ei. Trebuie să o foloseşti cea
care-ţi place, cea care-i pe gustul tău. Nu vei ştii care-i până nu
le încerci pe fiecare. Când ai găsit una care-ţi place, nu o mai
schimba.
În legătură cu diferenţele între distribuţii: Claudio Santambrogio
a punctat foarte bine spunând că Ubuntu este doar o simplă
distribuţie, nefiind specială, şi mi-a dat o legătură spre un
articol scris de el despre laptopul de
$100, din care citez:
Pentru un începător Linux este confuz să înveţe că există mai multe
aplicaţii care fac acelaşi lucru. Răspunsul la cea mai evidentă
întrebare («care program să-l folosesc?») este de multe ori,
îndrâznesc să spun, o problemă cvasi-religioasă decât ceva raţional
ce poate fi înţeles de începători.
Exact aceeaşi problemă este reflectată şi în alegerea unei
distribuţii Linux.
Am instalat KDE pe Ubuntu doar să-l încerc. Acum am mii de pachete
care nu le folosesc niciodată şi nici nu ştiu cu ce se ocupă toate.
Am vreo 10 vizualizatoare de imagini, câteva navigatoare web,
managere de fişiere, managere de pachete, playere video/audio,
joculeţe, şi multe altele.
În general, distribuţiile foarte cunoscute (Fedora Core, Ubuntu,
Debian, SUSE, etc) sunt şi foarte bune, chiar mai bune decât
Windows. Asta se datorează stabilităţi, a vitezei şi a programelor
disponibile. Cea mai serioasă problemă este că programe importante
pentru Windows (gen Photoshop sau Flash) nu există pentru Linux şi
nici multe drivere pentru imprimante, scannere şi alte accesorii la
calculator. Parcă nu ar fi de ajuns, librăriile necesare pentru
vizionarea filmelor şi ascultarea muzicii nu sunt permise în
distribuţii Linux open-source (este ilegală integrarea acestora).
Pentru un simplu utilizator asta este ceva foarte neplăcut,
făcându-l să refuze Linuxul şi să nu mai vadă părţile bune.
Din unele puncte de vedere KDE şi Gnome sunt mai bune decât
Windows. Ceea ce afectează KDE-ul este incorecta organizare a
meniurilor, a interfeţei din fiecare pachet ce îl are. Gnome
urmează standarde mai stricte şi din acest motiv îl folosesc.
Proiectele open-source sunt exemple extraodinare de lucru voluntar
şi de organizare, fiind produse realizate de programatori
începători pasionaţi şi de experţi angajaţi la diferite firme.
Trei dintre cele mai populare proiecte open-source (OpenOffice,
Firefox şi Wikipedia), au tot felul de "probleme". Nu trece o
săptămână să nu apară un articol negativ despre Wikipedia în care
se arată proasta calitate a unor articole. Cu toate că exemplele
oferite în aceste articole "bine intenţionate" sunt reale, nu se
poate spune că Wikipedia este un proiect nereuşit. Wikipedia este,
în general, o sursă bună de informare. Însă nu trebuie să crezi tot
ce citeşti pe orice site. Avantajul pe Wikipedia este că ştii
înainte că informaţiile ce le citeşti sunt probabil greşite. Dacă e
ceva important întotdeauna trebuie verificat. La fel trebuie făcut
şi cu orice alt site. Oricine doreşte să se documenteze la modul
serios despre ceva nu trebuie să-şi bazeze cunoaşterea pe un singur
site.
OpenOffice este un pachet foarte mare care probabil are scopul să
ajungă la fel de greoi ca Microsoft Office. La ora actuală este bun
şi-l folosesc, dar ar trebui să fie mai rapid, mai bun şi mai mic.
Personal nu sunt prea mulţumit de el, deşi îl recomand în locul lui
Microsoft Office.
Firefox este un produs realizat într-un mod inteligent. Corporaţia
Mozilla este mult mai bine organizată şi se menţine pe o linie
dreaptă. Nu e bine că Gecko (motorul din Firefox) introduce
tehnologii proprietare, care nu sunt bine departajate de celelalte.
Mă refer la adăugarea de proprietăţi noi în DOM care sunt specifice
Gecko. Aceeaşi metodă este folosită de Microsoft, în Internet
Explorer. Probabil cei de la Mozilla vor să obţină un Firefox
similar cu Internet Explorer-ul actual (nu numai să domine piaţa
navigatoarelor). Să sperăm că asta nu se va întâmpla şi că Gecko nu
va rămâne în urmă la suportul standardelor web.
Pachetele Linux nu ar trebui să încerce să copieze programe
Windows. Acum este nevoie de abordări diferite, de îmbunătăţiri pe
desktop care să conecteze calculatorul la web (noua tendinţă).
Mulţi ar trece la Linux dacă ar oferi ceva cu mult mai bun, uşor de
utilizat, uşor de învăţat. La ora actuală pe Linux găseşti
aproximativ aceleaşi lucruri, dar unele nu sunt la fel de bune. De
ce să treci? Doar pentru a fi altfel? Există acele lucruri care
chiar lipsesc pe Windows, gen opţiuni pentru customizare,
stabilitate, viteză, control mai bun asupra sistemului, şi
bineînţeles manager de pachete/programe, dar nimic nu sare în ochi.
Nu e necesară revoluţia, deoarece asta sperie un utilizator fiind
vorba de schimbări prea mari. E vorba doar de evoluţie.
Foarte interesant e dacă va fi cândva o distribuţie Linux care
încearcă să fie "mama" tuturor. Una care poate fi recomandată
începătorilor de către toţi utilizatorii actuali Linux (indiferent
de experienţă). O singură distribuţie care să aibă baza de date de
pachete întotdeauna cu ultima versiune, unde găseşti aproape orice
doreşti, cu drivere, cu instalare semi-automată de librării pentru
ascultarea muzicii şi vizionarea filmelor, etc. Această distribuţie
trebuie să fie stabilă dar nici veche precum Debian Stable.
O asemenea distribuţie, cu interoperabilitate între KDE şi Gnome,
cu WINE preconfigurat foarte bine, ar aduce mulţi utilizatori pe
Linux. WINE este un pachet ce poate rula aplicaţii Windows pe Linux
la o viteză aproape nativă, dacă-l ştii configura. Acesta poate fi
bine integrat în sistem. Nu trebuie uitat că este necesar să poţi
să rulezi programele Windows, pentru că multe nu sunt disponibile
pe Linux, sau la multe nu se doreşte renunţarea (de exemplu, a
plătit mult pentru Adobe Photoshop).
Discuţiile generale despre Linux ar trebui să fie despre
Distribuţia Distribuţiilor.
Published in:
linux,
open-source,
romanian.
5 February 2006, 09:47
This post is about what I think in general about Linux (not
strictly about Ubuntu) and open-source.
When you are a Windows user you are bothered by friends who use
Linux, each of them suggesting you to switch to Linux: "stop being
a Microsoft slave" or whatever.
Picking a distro is a "daunting" task for a Linux newbie, even if
he's an expert or "expert" in the Windows world.
When you finally decide upon which distro to install, and you
install it, the funny part comes: your friends who are using a
different distro mock you for picking another one, no matter how
experienced you are. If you need help when you run into a problem,
answers can be along the line "ha, that doesn't happen in my
distribution!".
After I got Ubuntu, one Gentoo guy said to me "ah, Ubuntu, uhm
that's almost Linux, nonetheless good you made the switch". That's
encouraging! Some guy from Fedora Core 4 simply said: "Ubuntu works
too good, it's too graphical". Interesting, since he seems to
dislike the fact some Linux distros are reaching a level which
allows the user to simply just use Linux, without the problems most
Windows fear of: going to CLI, and manually editing configuration
files. He said that because he was a bit amazed by the fact I got
Samba perfectly working very easily and v4l was already working (he
had these two specific problems with FC 4). That's probably because
FC is a more of a "cutting-edge" distro than a working/stable
distro. :)
Worth noting Ubuntu isn't a perfect distro either. I did have some
problems with it too. However, many of the solutions were very
easy.
Contrary to what some might think... I haven't switched to Linux
just to be hip & cool (I could've done so long time ago). I
switched because there's a real need ... me being a web developer,
also requires experimenting and developing with a lot of
technologies - most of all being available only for Linux (or
working better and faster on Linux).
The failure of Linux still being a niche desktop OS is caused by
the simple fact that the entire community doesn't agree on the
purposes, being too diverse. Gladly (from my perspective), groups
of users and developers who want an easy-to-use Linux desktop are
mobilizing to build very good distros.
Once you get used to Linux, you really like the power of scripts,
the power of CLI and whatever. These really give you the kind of
freedom you need after spending all day using the WIMP approach for
computer interaction. The CLI stuff would be quite a big
improvement to Windows, if they'll ever decide to actually make it
useful. The graphical Linux distros don't "disable" access to the
CLI, they just make it unnecessary for general configuration
purposes. That's very good.
There shouldn't be this "distro war". Each distro is good in it's
own way. Use the one that suits your taste. If you haven't yet
found one, keep on trying. When you find a distro you like, don't
change it just for the sake of change.
Regarding the differences between distros: Claudio Santambrogio
made a very good point saying Ubuntu is yet another distro and
offered me a link to one of his blog posts about the $100 laptop.
It is one of the more confusing points for a Linux beginner to have
to learn that there are several applications for one and the same
job, and answering the most obvious question ("so - which one
should I use?") is often more an issue of, shall I dare saying,
quasi-religious belief than anything the new user could grasp
rationally.
It's exactly the same problem as picking a distro.
I found myself installing KDE on my Ubuntu just to give it a try.
Now I have a gazillion of packages that I never use, nor I know
what they do :). I have about 10 image viewers, several web
browsers, file managers, package managers, video/audio players, TV
applications and what-not.
In general the most popular Linux distributions (Ubuntu, Fedora
Core, SUSE, Debian, etc.) are very good, even better than Windows.
This is because they are stable, fast, and provide good packages. A
big "downer" for a new Linux user are missing hardware support
(drivers), missing capabilities for audio/video playback
(patents...) and missing Windows-only software (like Photoshop,
Flash, etc.). These are problems which are not caused directly by
any distro, yet they make new comers forget about the good things
in the Linux world.
In some way KDE and Gnome are better desktoper environments than
Windows is. The organization of the menus, of the GUI in each
package from KDE is problematic. The reason I am using Gnome is
it's better organized, following stricter guidelines.
Open source projects are both an amazing example of volunteer work
and organization, products built by begginers with passion and
experts working for big companies, and an example of diversity.
Three of the best open-source projects (OpenOffice, Firefox and
Wikipedia) have varying levels of "problems". Wikipedia is having
quite a big
share of articles
dedicated
to show readers the bad quality of some articles from Wikipedia
(bad/vandalised articles full of lies). While the examples provided
by these well-intended writers from very well-intended news
agencies are right, it's still not entirely true. Wikipedia is
quite a very good source information. It's affected by the "too
open-source" factor. I am not saying Wikipedia is perfect and
everything you read there shall be trusted. Yet, the same fact
applies to any other site. The good thing on Wikipedia is you know
before there might be trouble ahead. Anybody who's serious about
documenting him/herself about something won't base all his/her
opinions and knowledge on just one site or two. He/she must do some
research and make-up his/her own impressions and opinions on the
matter.
OpenOffice is a huge package which probably has the purpose of
becoming as bloated as Microsoft Office 11. It's currently in a
good state, I use it myself, but it should be better.
Firefox is intelligently made. Mozilla Corporation heads seem to be
better organized and focused on what they want. It's not good they
add proprietary extensions (no, not those extensions). I mean DOM
extensions that have no vendor specific prefix like non-standard
CSS properties have. There are some DOM
stuff in Gecko which are available only on
Gecko, yet there's no indication they are proprietary. That's the
same problem IE has. Maybe Mozilla Corp. wants Firefox to be the
next IE (in every aspect, not just market share domination). Or
shall I say the next Netscape 4? From one perspective, this might
be very unlikely, because (I hope) Gecko won't fall behind on
implementing cutting-edge web standards.
Linux packages shouldn't try to just copy Windows counter-parts.
This goes specially to KDE, Gnome and OpenOffice. Microsoft Office
12 might be quite good because it changed the user interface quite
a lot (or so
they say, we'll have to see when it's released). There's the
need of new and better approaches. If desktop environments on Linux
would really bring users something amazingly good with a great
usability factor, ease-of-use, ease-of-learning, I am sure many
users would try Linux and make the switch. Why? Because currently
they see on Linux only the same old stuff they got used to on
Windows, but worse in some ways (not professional, a bit bloated,
lost compatibility with Windows executables, etc). Why really
switch to Linux? Just to be hip? What do Linux distros provide
users truely amazing the instant they boot the CD? Yes, I know
there are many cool stuff (package management, stability, speed,
better control over the system, etc), but nothing truely amazing.
I am not talking about something revolutionary, because that's not
what users want, even if it might be better. They won't want to
learn anything too different. I am only talking about evolution.
I am interested if there will ever be a distro that actually tries
to be the "mother" of all of them. One that any Linux user can
suggest to any Windows user (be it an expert or a newbie). A single
distro supported by all distros, where the repository is always
up-to-date, where you can find almost all packages you'll ever
need. A distro that offers the almost perfect balance between
cutting-edge and stability (this is what Ubuntu comes close to,
IMHO).
One such distro, with a very good interoperability between KDE
applications and Gnome applications (yes, they should unite their
forces), with a very well configured WINE could be a big booster to
Linux. WINE is quite good if you have the knowledge of properly
configuring it. It can also be seamlessly integrated into the
desktop environment. Any Windows user wants to be able to run its
own Windows applications for which s/he doesn't have counter-parts
(like Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia Flash, etc). Sometimes users want
to run their Windows applications (like Microsoft Office) just
because they like them more or they got used to them, or simply put
they paid a truck-load of money for them and ... switching to Linux
would make those payments worthless :). WINE is
the package for this (quite a good one too).
General talk about Linux should actually be about
the distro.
Article updated on 2006-06-22, making it similar to the
newly published Romanian
translation.
Published in:
linux,
open-source.