Ramseur's Rainbow Portal 2.0 Blog

Visual SVN

ramseur — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 16:32:00 GMT

The cool people over at VisualSVN ( www.visualSVN.com) have given us a free open source license of their product. I must say that its integration is solid and works well with Visual Studio 2005 and 2008. All developers can get a free copy from us provided you do work. Rahul informs me that we begin heavy work on Rainbow 2.1 next week. I have been making a list of bugs that we will begin to attack such that we can get this release out of the door.

Alexey has also committed the updated resource files that Ill be testing. Microsoft changed the framework on us so quickly in this department we had to go one by one and fix each reference. Currently the most updated 2.0 release will install and upgrade but might have issues when the resource list is requested. An example of this would be add user as the country list is asked for. We should fixed this soon and push a new package but at least you can install/sample upgrade and use the portal for a user.

Below our custom license :

Visual Studio 2008 & RainbowNext

ramseur — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 18:35:00 GMT

I havent been able to write in my blog for a very long time and I do apologize. Life it seems is hard...who knew? Hopefully 2008 will be an easier life for me. I have been mostly busy with being an Architect ( Im on my second contract where Im an Architect and its proving stressful) for the District of Columbia state gov't. Im working on Web services and have learned some easy tips with security ( mostly with WSE 3.0) and see the advantages of 3.0/3.5.

Where is Rainbow 2.1 you ask? Thats a great question. Currently, Im talking with the italians to see what they would like to do with rainbow. Manu was having mixed thoughts but I got him to come back and commit to the project by Jan 08. Miguel and I have done a lot of work behind the scenes and would hate to push that code only for the project to disband or be sold( I guess as a brand). With Manu's promise, I have promised to bring out a 2.1 version of Rainbow which will specifically target .net 2.0-3.5. Ive outlined this 2.1 version on my blog and between MGF, myself and a few developers, we have a solid version on the brink. Once manu can really commit, we can have his experience in doing releases.

Furthermore, HELLO Visual Studio 2008 came out today. Well it came out to people who MS considers cool. I got lucky and am a MSDN subscriber. I also beta tested 2002/2003 versions of Visual Studio. Ill be using Visual studio 2008 at my current gig to leverage the new framework additions ( mostly linq and updates to WCF/WF) to provide a better connected experience across our applications. Ive provided a screenshot of the install. Perhaps, Ill do a slackers overview for us bottom line developers.

Rainbow 2.0.0.1881e Migration Release

ramseur — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 14:40:00 GMT

Link to download : http://rainbow.googlecode.com/files/rainbow2.0.0.1881e.7z

Install in Detail : http://base.iocluster.com/wiki/index.php?title=How_to_Install_Rainbow

Online demo : http://www.ramseur.net/

I released this 5 days ago and am ready to release this to the public. We had about 1800 downloads before I deprecated the test version. Thanks to all who tried it. This version is officially 2.0.0.1881e and should be the version of choice for rainbow. It allows you to deploy the rainbow base production 1.6 code on the 2.0 framework to take advantage of the new 2.0 features. There are only minor bugs ( mostly in modules as the 2.0 framework has changed a lot ) which should not raise a big issue. We can start to attack these as the public reports them in the issue list. I only found one strong one in XML as 2.0 doesnt like the 1.1 way of how the module use to work. I got this module to work by hacking it and will work on a better fix before I submit it. I updated all the readme and license files. Please read these for information on install. Install can be done with the basic 1.1 way however 2.0 offers some new ways. You can now just open the solution file, set your connection string, and hit control - f5. No more setting up IIS ( unless you want to deploy into production). You can also publish the site to make a pre-compiled version which can perform installs if youd like. And lastly, you have the option of creating an mdf file in the app_data directory thereby creating a pre-installed version of rainbow. You can then customize this version to be however youd like and re-deploy as needed. Works well in a SQL Express environment as Ive found the other versions of 2005 dont like attach files.

In theory an update from 1.6.0.1880x to 2.0.0.1881e: In theory, this version could update your 1.6 databases. You would simply have to download the code, extract it, point it to our db and it "should" update your db to 2.0.0.1881 . I have done major test on fresh install and need help on the update efforts.

Special thanks goes to Jose as he helped me with some issues.

RB 2.0.0.1881 Release Soon

ramseur — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 19:57:00 GMT

This is the same version that runs www.iocluster.com and source.iocluster.com. Well we have decided to give this ( thats right straight to the google svn) to the community. This is a production copy of rainbow 2.0 ( i repeat ..PRODUCTION) and has never had a major problem or gone down since I deployed it over a year ago....(read more)

FCKEditor 2.4.2 in Next Beta

ramseur — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 16:39:00 GMT

I figure Id end the FTB issues ( that DNN is also having and replaced their control also) in rainbow and add a solid version of FCK. The coolest thing is now you get all the benifits of the new version. ...(read more)

Masterpages then Skins so shall it be written

ramseur — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 21:23:00 GMT

I hope to use this info to apply to adding a menu control ( and maybe a trial telerik menu hint hint) and master pages to rainbow. My plan is simple. Support master pages AND the two current schemes ( which hopefully we can get rid of in the future due to this upgrade) of design in Rainbow ( classic and Zen). Im starting with a copy of the default folder in DesktopLayouts. ...(read more)

A Quiet Release...

ramseur — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 20:20:00 GMT

Man you rainbow users are fast. Google gave us more space so I uploaded the novell release of the .NET 1.1 ( 1.0.6.1880F ) Rainbow 2006 to google code organizing us more on only one svn. Before I knew it, it had already been downloaded over 1000 times....(read more)

Our Google Wiki is up!

ramseur — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 19:24:00 GMT

I have now followed suit and started to make wiki pages for the common questions I get by email ( dont hesistate to email me) and in the forums. This wiki will always be up seeing how its hosted on Google and will be a lot more friendly to read/up to date then the old wiki system. ...(read more)

Telerik Html Editor

ramseur — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 23:05:00 GMT

Ive started my first implementation of Telerik inside of rainbow. I have easily added the Telerik RadEditor as an editor for Rainbow. This means that any module that uses an editor can use the Telerik Rad Editor instead....(read more)

ASP.NET Ajax Final issue with Rainbow Beta 1

ramseur — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 21:23:00 GMT

This issue actually affects anyone using validators in their applications that went from RC to the final. With rainbow, thats exactly what we did and a user left a message in the forum that he would get errors trying to install rainbow....(read more)

ASP.NET 2.0 URL Rewrite

ramseur — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 15:07:00 GMT

Now that we finally have some breathing room on a release, Rainbow admins/developers are discussing ways to improve Beta 2. Beta 2 is another blog discussion so Ill focus on Rewrite....(read more)

Uh is this thing on? Rainbow Portal 2.0 Beta 1 Release

ramseur — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 19:35:00 GMT

Download the release from Google code: http://code.google.com/p/rainbow/

You can click on the featured download from the main page or click to the download page by the Downloads tab.

Hello my fellow Rainbow community users. Last night I put the final touches on a beta 1 release that I was working on with QA. I finally believe that I’ve reached a point where the code is in a position to at least function like a beta. The Beta was released under the Apache 2.0 license to ease license info with other third party components and because it plain rocks.

This release owes a great debt to the MGF team. Jose did a great job and went out of his way to fix things and fine tune some of the most important parts of rainbow. ASPNETDB is now fully integrated. There are still some open issues that are documented in the README file along with a list of changes.

I invite you to test this release and report issues to: http://community.rainbowportal.net/forums/thread/13720.aspx

If you have a Google account, you can report issues directly to us on Google. However, I ask that you use this with caution and make sure your issue is not already listed. I don’t even have to tell you how easy it is to search issues on Google. You can test this out here: http://code.google.com/p/rainbow/issues/list

Cheers,

Ramseur

Google Inline Video/Bar w/Ajax - List your fav videos in Rainbow

ramseur — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 18:51:00 GMT

I saw this being done with wordpress so I decided to test a sample with rainbow. I copy/pasted the sample code [ according to the videos I liked] in Rainbow component modules and produced the Google Ajax functionality in Rainbow. Instead of installing an addon [ like you must do for wordpress], rainbow usres may just copy/paste their code into Component modules to product a video bar of their favorite videos.

Link to my samples.

Microsoft Enthusiast Developer Council

ramseur — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 04:12:00 GMT

While checking my email today, I got :

</snip>

Hello,

A Hobbyist Renaissance is occurring within Microsoft and you are a major part of the reason why. Because so many of you downloaded and installed Microsoft Visual Studio Express Editions, product groups within Microsoft now realize the power of this Renaissance and they want your feedback on new products, content and services.

To collect your feedback we have created the Enthusiast Developer Council, a fun and casual group made up of enthusiast developers like yourself who are willing to provide direct input to Microsoft product teams. As a member of the Council, you will help mold and shape new Microsoft offerings, gain first-hand exclusive access to unreleased technology, and ensure that we are creating the right products and services for you.

</snip>

Im all for it. I hope they select me... wish me luck.

Google Checkout & Rainbow .NET 2.0 & Telerik

ramseur — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 03:31:00 GMT

Now for the good stuff. This component was developed in about 2 weeks. It uses Ajax and Telerik Controls to provide some pretty cool functionality. I created my first autocomplete combobox which uses Ajax to find the top 20 results....(read more)