What I've done this week:
1) fixed the memory leak in piggybank (trunk, which is now aiming for
2.1.0)
2) continous cleanup and a number of small changes toward faster speed
*and* responsivity (no they are not the same!), lower memory
consumption, better startup and installation behavior.
3) found a way to redirect the javascript console to standard output
(which on macosx, is picked up by the system console)
4) patched the Java Plugin to redirect the java console to standard
output too (so now I have a unified view of what's going on, all timed,
in my system console and I can do debugging, tracing and a minimal
profiling at the same time in a single look! yay!) [this only works on
macosx, thanks to the java mac plugin interface being open source!]
5) cleaned up the tag-bar xul and half a way thru the option pane.
What I'll do this week:
1) finish cleanup the options panel, make sure all options work and
xul for the debug configurations (so that you don't have to mess around
with the about:config anymore)
2) change the PiggyBank icon when in debug mode (a hard hat on?) [so
that you know it's slow for a reason and you don't forget to leave your
huge tracing on without noticing... yes, been there done that]
3) try to initialize the piggybank java subsystem *after* both the
chrome and the first page has finished loading. The goal is to avoid PB
impacting the *perceived* firefox startup time. I think I can do this
without much code. This will also avoid people to kill their firefox
when it takes forever to start and corrupt their profile!
4) the tag-bar behaves incorrectly if you try to remove tags and you
do it several times in a row, I need to investigate that.
5) write an 'welcome to piggy-bank' intro page that shows up the very
first time you run a piggybank on your system and explains in better and
clearer details why we need your email and what we do with it. I could
also ask you to acquire a google key for your maps.
6) the data icon in the page should turn into an animated icon after
you click on it, to indicate that some processing is going on.
7) somehow, the folder that contains the temporary resources are left
behind, make sure to clean that up.
I have more stuff in my TODO list but it's unlikely I'll be able to
manage it for next week, this should give me enough stuff to work on.
--
Stefano Mazzocchi
Research Scientist Digital Libraries Research Group
Massachusetts Institute of Technology location: E25-131C
77 Massachusetts Ave telephone: +1 (617) 253-1096
Cambridge, MA 02139-4307 email: stefanom at mit . edu
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Received on Mon Aug 22 2005 - 16:46:05 EDT