I love developing usable and rich web applications using the latest techniques available.

Some guys at RIA made some fun about AJAX vs FLASH few weeks ago, conserning streaming videos. Well here’s a proof of concept guys.

After 2 days of research how to use and implement ACL I’m feeling totally wasted, last night I couldn’t even fall asleep because of all the ARO’s and ACO’s flying in my head (I’m such a nerd :p). I’ve read all the documentation and blog posts about ACL with CakePHP I could find, but they all didn’t include what I was looking for.

For example the section in the CakePHP Manual learned me the basic principle of how ACL works but it doesn’t include a concreet example of how to use ACL with controllers and models. Another example is the ACL Admin Demo by Andy Dawson, it gave me a little clearer view how to use ACL but for the rest it’s 100% user unfriendly.

Both pages gave me some usefull information and while laying on my bed with all the ARO’s and ACO’s in my head, everything became much clearer. I’ll update you on this in the next days because I first need to get all my thoughts on paper. Hopefully I won’t break my head on this :P

In my daily search on the net I found a really really, really! interesting Flash/javascript library, called SWFUpload, for uploading files.

It combines the file upload power of flash with javascript and valid XHTML.

• Only display chosen filetypes in dialog
• Upload multiple files at once by ctrl/shift-selecting in dialog
• Trigger javascript functions on start, cancel, progress and complete
• Get file information/size before upload starts
• Style upload buttons any way you want
• Do progress-bars/information using valid XHTML and CSS
• No page reloads, display uploaded files as they are finished
• Works on all platforms/browsers pthat has Flash support.
• Degrades gracefully to a normal html upload form if Flash or javascript isn’t available

This will be the first thing to test when I get to school tomorrow.

This week we finaly we started building Clipbox.
The graphical design was done so Geoffrie coded the xhtml template with a little help of my expertise ;)
Meanwhile I was programming the authentication system and user registration. Because we’re all new to CakePHP I spent 2 days finding the best way to make a good and safe user authentication system with cake. There where some components out there and tutorials but they all didn’t satisfy me, so i started building our own (with a little help of the docs and tutorials). The base of the system was done and working in just one day.
After that I started extending the basis and improving security. CakePHP has a build-in ACL system (Access Control List), which I want to use with my user authentication, ACL is new for me and i’m still working on understanding the principle and how I should implement this in our user auth. I’ll keep you updated on this and release the Auth system on the cake bakery when it’s done.

I also started including some AJAX action in the user registration process. Example: when you type your username in the username field, it will check (realtime, while typing) if the username is allready taken/valid or not. This was pretty easy to realize but I’m planning to write a more reusable code, like a helper class, in the near future.

Last but not least, as a reminder for me, because I allways get exited and putting to much effort in small details too early: “we need to get the basis of Clipbox working before finetuning and putting our eyes on little details”.

Well, the assesments went pretty good. I earned 9 EC’s of the 11 EC’s I had chosen, so i’m happy ;).
The major thing that I need to improve is my posting behavior on my blog. I need to get used to posting my own progress more often and updating the blog on a regular base. So that’s what I will be trying to accomplish the next 10 weeks.

This week we’ll finally start building Clipbox. I’m planning to post all problems and solutions where I run into with building every 2 days, so that I can share them with you and the rest of the world.