A+media dev-Blog

Although I did not expect it at the beginning of this project, I have to admin that this idea and especially this website failed. eSteak.net will go offline in February 2011 and will never come back. Fortunately there is a better alternative that you can use to do what esteak.net was also meant for: sharing your MooTools code.

As this domain costs me money and I did not see any growth on the platform, I will longer longer keep this thing alive. I had a great time building it and dealing with Symfony. I have learned a lot and I am sure the next project will be better because of the things I’ve seen and experienced with this baby.

The last upload and also the last user registration has been quite some time in the past, so I think no one of you will really miss this website. Bye bye!

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I just don’t get it! After putting some effort in a website, which was missing in a developer community, and getting almost no feedback, a lot of people are still downloading scriptsfrom eSteak.net – 6000 hits per month. So my contribution to the MooTools-Community was nonsense? Now I had to read this. Sorry, but I am a bit pissed about that. I think, I’ll open the platform for other js frameworks instead of more work for the  MooTools community which obviously doesn’t accept this website. Hopefully the other developer communities are not that exclusive…

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I finally managed to work a little further on eSteak where some nice features found their way in. At first, I added the possibility to handle more than one MooTools version (I also uploaded the latest version 1.2) and, theoretically, even other modular JS frameworks. Then I added new compression methods for the download file, namely YUI and JSMin.

If you now upload a new plugin, you have to choose your framework version first. If you then want to add some dependencies the autocomplete only shows the right ones for the chosen framework, of course. Smart, isn’t it?! Additionally, the site , automatically prevents a download basket with different versions in it!

To prevent confusion, I renamed the “old” core plugins and added a “_1-11″ to their names. I hope these litte changes make the site even more attractive to everyone.

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You may now download the new version 1.2 from the official websie. I think it’s a pity that the download now consists of two seperate files, as the compression rate de- and and the loading time increases.

Unfortunately all the other pages are offline at the moment: the demos, docs, forum and blog. The ticket page has been added, but is currently offline as well. Half-cocked snapshot I’d say, especially because the docs are actually there, well…

Let’s hope the problems will be solved during the day and maybe they’ll think about an official offline versionof the docs to prevent such a blackout.

I will definitely work on eSteak to be able to handle scripts for the new version and I will try to integrate the packed download as well when I’m working on it anyway.

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For not being accused of laziness, I added some new features to eSteak:

• It is now possible to add a feed url to each plugin (as suggested). There will be a link in the detailview then
• You can choose the software license of your plugin from a given set now. This information (and author names) will be included in the upcoming packed download.
• Additionally, plugins which depend on the currently shown one are also shown in the detail view now:

I am looking forward to get the next features online soon. Those will be the possibility to pack the download and to give the system the ability to handle different mootools versions. So, keep at it!

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I have added some new features and fixed some bugs:

• members can now provide an email address for paypal donations. When they have already done something on the website, this link is displayed in their profile
• the filesize of the uncompressed files is now shown on the plugin detailpage and the download basket page
• there have been some bugs in the edit profile action. They are gone now.
• some SEO for the detail pages

I hope these improvements are useful

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My friend, Hermi, called my attention to the part of the upload form on eSteak, where dependencies are added to plugins. It did not recognize the implicit dependencies and thus it was possible to enter too few or too many of them. To prevent this, I added the following feature:

Weiterlesen »

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After fighting against Apache and PHP on the webserver for two days (I had to recompile it in the end), my website is now online. I hope it fits its purpose and I appreciate any comments.

http://www.esteak.net

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I haven’t written anything here for some time now. With a reason! As I already mentioned a few times, I am currently working on a small plattform and because I invested a lot of energy and time in getting it done, the moment is almost there! I think on monday (tomorrow), it’ll be online. I will not reveal the name yet, but describe its functions.

It is all about MooTools, in my opinion THE JavaScript framework. What I don’t like about it is, that you can only find plugins, that some people write for it, in the MooTools forum, because a simple internet search is not that satisfying. The forum again, is quite big and, as the users mostly talk about the linked plugins, also a bit unclear. So it may take some time until you have downloaded the piece of javascript you came for.

The website I developed, is designed to do better. Everyone can, after signing up, upload his own plugins, categorize and tag them. Additionally, you can define dependencies to other packages (also the core).

The users then can (without login) put plugins in the download basket (no shopping cart) and download them later. The website will care for the dependencies, and add them to the download automatically. You can also exclude the core packages if you already have a mootools script.

Of course, users can also rate the plugins and leave a comment. These ratings, the categories and the tags are intended to assist the user to find and download the plugin the want and to make these actions as easy and comfortable as possible.

I hope, this website will help the mootools framework to become even more successful than it is right now. I appreciate any comments, even if the website is not yet online. Of course I will write a new post when the website is finally online and then I will see whether the effort of the last days weeks was worth it. One more thing: it’ll be completely free for everyone, of course!

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