Link Archive

Malcolm Tredinnick's fantastic work on the Queryset Refactor Branch in Django is coming to a close.

This mammoth change alters the way Django interacts with the underlying databases to improve the queries that are built and make future additions easier. Malcolm (and, I assume, many others) have spent over half a year getting this re-factoring done. Well done to all involved!

Django Dash, which I linked to the other day, have just announced two sponsors: Apress, publishers of the Django Book, and WebFaction, web hosting favourite of Djangonauts everywhere.

Congratulations to the DjangoDash team for managing to get these two great names involved, and top points to Apress and WebFaction for generously supporting the open source community.

After listening to This Week in Django Episodes 19 and 20 which discussed Internationalisation and Localisation, I've realised how important it is to make applications work in languages other than English. I've begun implementing i18n hooks in some applications, and started the somewhat laborious process of testing. This Firefox addon lets you easily switch locales in FireFox, allowing for easier testing of Django's i18n/l10n functionality.

The Django Dash competition has opened registration - you've got to get in before May 24th to be able to partake in the event which will run over the weekend of May 31st to June 1st.

I've registered, hoping that I will have nothing on that weekend!

It also looks like they've done a great job getting a few big-name sponsors - this should be some good fun.

A fantastic project by Bryan from Revyer, showcasing Django applications. These applications can all be easily downloaded and installed into existing Django projects, very simply and easily.

The site is beautiful with a no-bullshit approach, and includes very useful information such as the developers involved and source-code repository activity.

My only concern is that I know of at least two other application directories being developed right now, including one of my own. Since I've done the least work of the three I won't pursue it any further, as the two other options (being Djangoapps, by the django-hotclub guys at Google Groups, and djangopluggables) are both much more comprehensive and will have more momentum behind them.

Nice work to Bryan, and I look forward to seeing the 'hotclub' version when it launches.

This up and coming Django application provides a new user-authentication interface built on top of the Django 'auth' module and Simon Willison's Django OpenID Consumer application.

It allows users to sign up with either OpenID or a traditional username/password, and use them interchangeably. I've started integrating it with DjangoSites to allow users to get away without having yet another username & password to remember. Whilst I haven't made it live yet, it's basically been a case of install & tweak templates. Very easy, and it works on top of the existing userbase which is a win-win situation.

This code certainly trumps my early OpenID integration - much more stable and it's simpler to piece together.

Beautiful work by Benoit Chesneau.

Wilson Miner has written a fantastic article for A List Apart discussing how he built the text and CSS-based charts for the fantastic data representation on EveryBlock. Whilst it's simple and really only going to be useful for barchart variants, it seems to me to be a great way to visualise data using basic technologies.

I've just put this post up on the Jutda blog, discussing the choice of technology when it comes to building a new product within a startup company. My main point: Use tools you know well rather than trying to learn as you go - your final product will be better for it.

A very nifty tool to edit Outlook's e-mail address AutoComplete entries. I cannot believe this isn't a feature within outlook itself - until today I've had 7 different e-mail addresses listed for my wife with no way to force Outlook to use only the current one.

This is a great idea that should see Django developers from all over the world compete to produce a fantastic Django application in only 48 hours.

This puts real emphasis on Django's origins as a framework for perfectionists with deadlines. The aim is for small teams to build applications, from scratch, in a tight timeframe.

No word on whether there is a particular focus yet, and no details on sponsors and judges just yet, but this looks like it'll be great fun for those who are into this sort of thing (and, of course, those able to compete at the exact point in time when the competition is open!)

Free Photoshop Tutorials, Brushes, Custom Shapes And More!

Easy way to stop the restart nag after your Windows XP machine does a windows update.

User Interface Design Pattern Library. UI patterns for web designers. See examples and read rationale, solutions, and implementations for each pattern.

Two month ago we’ve presented the 50 favorite jQuery plugins many developers use and we promised that the second version will be coming soon. Today, we are going to introduce 45+ more jquery plugins that were recently created, so you don’t have to do the search as we did it and will continue to do it to build a useful library of jquery plugins and solution

A great list of articles by Ken Rockwell