Ok, so there hasn’t been as much activity on here in recent months as I would like, but finding time to do all the things I want (and need) to do is the problem. With a bit of luck I will be able to recapture some time to work on projects in the next month or so. I am now inside my final month of University (finally), with a handful of fairly large assignments to complete, but no end of year exams to worry about. However also over the next month I also need to find somewhere to live which will no doubt consume a fair amount of time. But then, hopefully, I should be able to get back to work on my side projects. Lets have a quick look at those projects.
Redoable
I have received so many requests for me to update Redoable, initially for Wordpress 2.2 (which only introduced a couple of small issues) and more recently for Wordpress 2.3 compatibility. This one is a bigger issue since the way that categories are handled has changed completely. Then there are all the little bits and pieces that were never really “just right”, most probably due to Redoable being my first Wordpress theme, or in this case theme modification (Redoable is based on the code of K2). Mind you these ‘issues’ haven’t stopped over 30,000 downloads.but with the last update way back in April it really is time for some progress to be made.
So where do I begin. Well, it just so happens that Michael Heilemann and co are into the ‘release candidate’ stages of K2 1.0. K2 has become even greater over the last 10 months, and it is already Wordpress 2.3 compatible. Tyler Longren (creator of Unwakeable, another K2-based theme) recently announced that he planned on basing the next version of Unwakeable on K2 1.0 when it was released. A couple of months ago I had planned to do Redoable 1.3 and fix some of the main issues that had come up since the release of 1.2, but I simply couldn’t find the time that I wanted to spend on it. I can now say that there will be no Redoable 1.3.
Nope, I will be jumping straight to Redoable 2.0. Again I’ll be using K2 as the base, and although I have started some initially work, the main body of work on 2.0 won’t begin until the final stable release of K2 1.0 is available. While its not going to be exactly the same as 1.x, it will keep a lot of the ‘flavour’ of it since that seems to be what people want. I’m still thinking through about which additional plugin support, and other features I’ll add to the K2 base, but hopefully before Christmas there will be a new version of Redoable for you all the play with.
Wordpress Plugins
I am well aware that just about all of my plugins need to be updated to work with the latest Wordpress 2.3. In particular Ultimate Category Cloud, which no longer works due to the previously mentioned category changes in WP2.3. Other plugins just need a tidy up, and general bug fixing. I will hopefully get at least some of the plugins updated to go along with the release of Redoable 2.0
More Wordpress themes
I didn’t take long for people to start requesting a download of the ‘Pipedream’ theme that I am currently using. The thing is that Pipedream was designed for my site and my site only, its not really ready for a public release (yet). It doesn’t really work like a normal theme, due to the number of customisations that are built in. Beside the idea was that I wanted my site to be unique, which I had lost while I was still using Redoable. However I have begun thinking about a ‘Public’ version of Pipedream, but as far as a release date it probably won’t be until the new year.
A couple of weeks ago, I was sick of doing uni work one night and just started playing around with a magazine style layout which has kind of progressed into the beginnings of another new Wordpress theme. Unlike Redoable and Pipedream this new theme is going to be much lighter and brighter, with a slightly different approach to the way that posts are arranged and displayed. More about this new theme in the coming months.
Hahlo
Although I’ve only just rolled out the new version of Hahlo I’ve still got a list of things “to-do” which just didn’t make it into 2.0. Most of them are minor behind the scenes things, but there are also several things that have been requested by users. Things such as an quicker way to refresh the current timeline, currently it takes two ‘taps’, one would be ideal. Another thing I would like to try and get working is some form of user options to allow people to customise their Hahlo experience. For example some people would like to login and be taken straight to their friends timeline, other would like to be taken to their favourites list, I would love to be able to implement this.
I also have plans to release a very simple Hahlo desktop application, still using the webapp but in a standalone webkit-based application. I had considered turning Hahlo into an Adobe AIR application, they seem to be all the rage at the moment, but since just about everything in Hahlo relies pretty heavily on php and the functions within, and AIR doesn’t support php that pretty much canned that idea. In the meantime if you really want a Twitter app running on AIR, I suggest trying out Snitter.
Others…
And on top of all that I’ve got a couple of other things that I’m working on, one of which I’m working on at the moment as part of a University assignment. Plus no doubt I’ll run off on a tangent and end up working on things that aren’t on the list above as well.
