SE401:33:Iteration 1
Plan
- Create the general framework
- Implement User Stories:
1 User wants to use all the normal html functions (text, images, headers, tables etc). MUST
- Estimated Duration: 20 hours
Progress
Week 1
- Searched Internet for an open source HTML editor in .NET or similar
- Not many results
- Mostly web based editors
- Source forge did not find anything useful
- Didn't find anything we could build off
- Decided to try start a new application using Visual Studio 2005
- Application to be called "Orangeberry" during construction
- Need to learn Visual C++ and Visual Studio interface design
- Created basic menu items and icon
- Played around with dialog boxes
- Found we had created wrong type of project
- Created a 'Win32 Project'
- But a 'Windows Form Application' provides more native windows tools
- Decided to remake project of this type
- Not too much work because other project was barely started
- 'Experimenting' with Windows Forms
- Easy enough to create the menus etc.
- Followed a tutorial to make an application with an exit button (amazing....)
- After a few hours we had an application with an 'Open File' dialog that did nothing.
- - Used code from the tutorial to do this, but it kept causing errors, VS would not tell us the specific problem and we could not resolve.
- A lot of time wasted on basic things that should not have taken a long time to implement (if we were using Java).
- - We would still rather use Visual C++ as it is easier to deploy/install than a Java application.
- - Might need to do some more Visual C++ tutorials before we begin implementation as it is taking a lot longer than expected, we will probably need to increase iteration 1 time frame.
Week 2
- Searched for more open source HTML editors
- After experimenting with VS we decided it would be too time consuming to implement an application from scratch
- - basic functions like open, save, copy, paste etc
- - could leave these functions out for the prototype but they seem too important to ignore (we have no stories for user to open/save).
- Nvu (pronounced N-view) is an excellent editor, however source code is very complicated
- - would take ages to understand it
- - Nvu seems based around Mozilla somehow, should look further into the Mozilla license to see if that gives some insight into code/folder structure
- - Nvu is based on Mozilla Composer (Mozilla Composer has been aborted) Reference
- - Nvu latest version was released in 2004(5?), no bug fixes etc since then by the original creators.
- - Nvu does not support php files
- KompoZer is an unoffical bug fix release of Nvu and may provide a better starting point and is meant to support php.
- Amaya is an average editor, the source is slightly easier to understand than Nvu
- - Lacks basic features like resizing (or they were harder to find than Nvu).
- - Probably not the best starting point, would need to add a lot of the basic functions Nvu has.
- Saw a thread where a user suggested OpenOffice as an html editor. Seems kind of bloated for what we need and source is probably as confusing as Nvu.
- Wikipedia has a list of WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) html editors.
- - Comparison of WYSIWYG HTML editors
- - We checked the other open source editors and found they were not that useful.
- - Nvu is definitely the best choice to start working from but will take awhile to fully understand the source and where we can begin editing.
- Also another list of free html editors:
- html Editors
- - Not all of them are open source.
Week 3
- After discussion with Gill decided to make prototype using Java
- - Easier for us to work with
- - Previous experience will help us code faster
- - Restarting prototype in Java
- Choose to use Kafenio for base
- Kafenio has the most functionality and the file structure is easy to understand.
- Imported into Eclipse, but it require a few modifications before we can begin implementing mashup functions
- - Mashup functions are not part of this iteration, will give us time to understand code base and make modifications
Results
- Obtained an open source application for our general framework
- User Stories Completed:
1 User wants to use all the normal html functions (text, images, headers, tables etc). MUST Completed
- Actual Duration: 29 hours
Testing
- Testing performed manually
- - We tested the open source base manually
- - All the functions were working correctly as expected
- - Edited icon images for "Bold" and "Italics" buttons as program did not use standard buttons