tag: Development

WebUI refresher

3 Dec, 2005 - 1 minutes

I just released a refresher for OpenWrt WebUI alpha package. It fixes a bug, which was reported by several people.

Some users had problems with Net configurator applet, if wl0_country_code was unset in NVRAM. While it is extremely easy to set, I suggest reinstalling webui. Please read the original post on how to do it.

Thank you guys for your great feedback! Working together we will make webui even better.

Different people, different opinions

30 Nov, 2005 - 2 minutes

It is practically impossible to travel to Muslim countries without hearing some anecdotes about Nasreddin Hodja . Here is one (the source ):

Hodja was once a judge. One day a man came to his house to complain about his neighbor. Hodja listened carefully and then said to him,

— My good man, you are right.

The man went away happily. In a little while the first man’s neighbor came to see Hodja. He complained about the first man. Hodja listened carefully to him, too, and then said,

OpenWrt GUI: alpha released!

27 Nov, 2005 - 2 minutes

Finally I released WebUI 0.1 (Homunculus) alpha — AJAX-based web interface for OpenWrt made with Dojo ! Highlights of this release: 5 more applets including firewall configurator and more network settings. Now proceed to install the package and to read release notes.

The package is here: webui-0.1-alpha.ipk . You can install it using following command in OpenWrt shell:

ipkg install http://lazutkin.com/download/webui-0.1-alpha.ipk

Release notes:

  • WebUI can be installed side-by side with webif (comes standard with OpenWrt White Russian RC4). To access it use following URL: http://your_router/webui.html.
  • Five more applets are added to this release:
    • System: provides a menu for existing applets.
    • Firewall configurator: simple management of DMZ and port forwarding.
    • Hosts configurator: manages a list of static hosts (used by DNS and by Firewall configurator).
    • Ethers configurator: manages a list of static assignment of IP by MACs.
    • WDS configurator: manages WDS connection settings.
  • General clean up of user interface:
    • More information is moved to tooltips.
    • Help is provided by tooltips.
    • Context-specific references to OpenWrt documentation.
  • Tested on following browsers:
    • Firefox: works.
    • IE6: works.
    • Opera 8.50: doesn’t work.
    • Konqueror: doesn’t work.
  • I decided to proceed with release in spite of Konqueror and Opera problems. I hope it will be solved later. For now use Firefox.
  • As always I appreciate your feedback: openwrt [@] lazutkin [.] com.

London presentation

20 Nov, 2005 - 1 minutes

I found a blog post describing London Web Frameworks Night , which took place on 11/17/2005 at the University of Westminster. Jabbering Giraffe reports on presentation of three web frameworks: Catalyst , Django , And Ruby on Rails .

It is an interesting read. Author remarks that Django’s Admin ("with lots of Ajax and JavaScript goodness") was the main object of envy of other frameworks. Another interesting remark was how good Rails people are at marketing.

OpenWrt GUI: alpha is coming

19 Nov, 2005 - 1 minutes

I was able to work more on OpenWrt GUI. Alpha release seems inevitable now. I’ll try to publish it during this weekend.

I added back the main applet, which serves as a menu for all other applets. More network configuration-related applets are added. Status applet is cleaned up considerably: all less important information was moved to tooltips. New screenshot is available for your viewing pleasure.

Stay tuned for upcoming alpha release!

New RSS framework

12 Nov, 2005 - 1 minutes

As you all know Django has new shiny RSS framework . This change breaks my simple RSS tutorial and I am glad that it happened! To tell you the whole truth, it breaks only "The Simple Way" to do RSS in Django replacing it with even simpler one. "The Smart Way" RSS still works as you can see on my web site. Like I predicted the feedgenerator is still around and it learned some new tricks: it can produce Atom feed now! I am going to update the tutorial recreating old examples with new RSS framework. It will be fun!

Looking at stats

10 Nov, 2005 - 3 minutes

Recently I looked at the stats of my web site. DreamHost provides Analog 6.0 . I supplemented it with awstats . Plus there are some other means to analyze the traffic. Let’s put it this way: I know my average reader. I thought I did. Anyway I found a few surprises.

The country list includes 77 countries. Out of 193. Not bad for a personal blog. Practically all Eurasian countries, and countries of both Americas are in the list. Australia, New Zealand, and many island countries are there as well. Only 2 countries from Africa: South Africa and Senegal. Pity.

Django goes international

4 Nov, 2005 - 2 minutes

As of today i18n branch of Django is merged back to trunk. What is i18n? It is an abbreviation of the big word "internationalization". l10n ("localization") is a sibling of i18n. In practice it means that now you and I can do truly international multi-language web sites without much hassle. While this is more important for big corporations and international organizations, it is a big step for Django’s truly international community. Let’s thank Hugo (the engine behind this effort), all participating developers, and all translators for their monumental effort to make it a reality.

OpenWrt GUI: hosts editor

30 Oct, 2005 - 1 minutes

I didn’t have a lot of time this weekend. So I decided to implement the simplest part of upcoming OpenWrt GUI (webui) — hosts editor. It is a perfect candidate to write something in 15 minutes or less — it has almost no "business" logic in it: read/edit/verify/write cycle. The hardest part was to learn how to upload dynamically generated files without writing them to disk first.

It turned out to be very simple. Right now it is implemented using Dojo ’s versatile dojo.io.bind() facility and some external code.

OpenWrt GUI: preview is released

26 Oct, 2005 - 2 minutes

Update: this document is officially obsolete — alpha is released !

Finally I released a preview: /webui-0.1-pre-alpha.ipk!

I included two information applets and a simple network configuration applet. I think it would be enough for a proof of concept. I borrowed heavily from nbd’s webif . So if it works for you, it is due to his OpenWrt expertise. If it doesn’t, it is my fault.

Both webif and webui can be installed side by side:

OpenWrt GUI: preview is ready, packaging

24 Oct, 2005 - 1 minutes

Finally I found time to finish it up. It is pre-alpha quality now, but shows the direction.

The only problem is a packaging. I didn’t mean OpenWrt ’s IPKG. I am talking about creating a custom build of Dojo to reduce the foot print. Dojo has a special provision for that but so far I was not able to do it getting some strange errors. I hope I’ll get some help from developers.

Migration to new Django admin

19 Oct, 2005 - 1 minutes

I’ve migrated my sites to new Django admin. It is easy to do but make sure that you followed instructions closely. Small mistakes can cost you a lot of head-scratching time. You can find the instructions at the bottom of Backwards-incompatible changes .

New refactoring has totally made sense. Meanwhile Robert Wittams & Co is working on new-admin (note the hyphen). Django’s admin is a very nice app (now it is an app!). I hope I could reuse some pieces of upcoming new-admin in my apps. If I remember correctly it was the main driving force behind branching.