Blog from July, 2006

Wiki Going Live!

We're taking the new wiki live! We intend that this eventually replace our current webpage completely. Feel free to help us convert pages to Confluence.

I do want to fix the URL so it will be a WebSurveyToolbox URL, but that may have to come later, because the server we're using is shared with other projects.

NetBeans GUI Builder

A few months ago, I found NetBeans GUI Builder. (originally code-named Matisse).

This is a great WYSIWIG GUI builder on par with Apple's Interface Builder. You can easily create flexible-sized layouts with this tool. It seems to make all the other Java GUI layout tools obsolete -- nothing even comes close. So now I'm developing in both Eclipse and NetBeans all the time.

Any new dialogs and windows will be designed using NetBeans.

For that matter, if you don't like the layout of a dialog now, you can help even if you don't have programming skills -- just draw out the panel and we can integrate it straight into the program.

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Manager Look and Feel

The manager has a new look and feel, thanks to last fall's intro to HCI Team, John (Cole) Jitkoff, Laura Treichler, Kayre Hylton, and Michele Clarke, and Saagar Patel (who implemented it). Take a look and let me know if you have any comments. I hope to get a new version up that uses this very soon -- it's just about stable.

  

Blikis

I've discovered Blikis. And, Confluence, a comparatively good wiki. I've seen a bunch of them for other servers, but I've tended to prefer JSP since this project is already a JSP/J2EE project, so it's easier to maintain only one server technology.

We now have several test wikis up. See Confluence for more information.

I hope to expand this site and reduce the documentation on the previous website and make this the dominant one, so that we will more easily be able to have Developers edit the documentation pages and comment on them.

For one, the comments are a helpful area just like they are on the MySQL pages. And second, I believe that our user base as a whole will be better for fixing and improving documentation than an individual maintainer.

Testing Wikis

It's time to make our documentation editable, and easier to fix by the whole community. We'd like your help identifying areas we need documentation, and your help writing it.
(Developers aren't always the best at writing explanations about their own software, so don't leave this to us!)
So, welcome to the Web Survey Toolbox wiki.

First, we're trying to compare several different tools. See more about that here. You can compare this to the SnipSnap test wiki.

So, feel free to help out and add documentation! We want to know what your frequently asked questions are, what the outstanding issues are, and the answers to them. Write them here -- feel free.

Post your comments about Confluence vs. SnipSnap here.