A good Dreamweaver extension

What makes a Dreamweaver extension and in a general way any application to be considered good. There are more "parameters" that can be accounted to determine that a certain application is a good one. Some of this parameters can be quantified, most of them can't.

Performance

The performance is one of the easiest  parameter that can be determined. It is a quantifiable one and there are tools and ways to determine an application performance. For a Dreamweaver extension there are not tools to determine the performance but some programming techniques can be implemented.

A Dreamweaver extension is inherently slow due to the fact that they are written in JavaScript. Because of this the developer must take good care of the code he's writing as small mistakes can have a huge impact on the extension performance.

There are three performance steps to be addressed when creating a Dreamweaver extension:

1. Loading time
2. Handling speed
3. Code generation speed

All this may not be seen as important factors as Dreamweaver extensions are relatively small in size but let's consider the following one:



This is the ImpAKT's Insert Record Wizard. This is a big one. There are a lot of fields to be initialized at startup. There is also a grid control that must be filled with values generated based on the values of another fields. All this must be done at startup. And doing this fast in JavaScript is not an easy task.

After the initialize part comes the handling. An interface responsiveness is a big issue. Users do not like interfaces that behave like from another era (of computing). So all the events between UI's components must be handled with care, not to clutter the system with communication.

The user has set up the parameters, click's OK and the code is generated. This wizard (set up like in the image) generates 140 lines of code in 312ms. And trust me this is a good time. Remember: all the extensions are written in JavaScript and the Dreamweaver extensibility layer is also written in JavaScript.

We just had a "work" lunch with Randy from Macromedia. The discussions were so insightful as after an hour or so we found ourselves alone in the dining room.

I think the conference was a great success. A lot of people visit our booth (we will carry no promotional materials back home) and we made a lot of connections. We meet with customers and they were all satisfied with our products.

I meet here Kai Konig. He was a real help to me and to all of us as he give us some useful informations on how to become a Premier Partner (his company is one). First step will be to get some Macromedia certifications, so Lucian and I will start learning to get those certifications. Kai show us two very good books that help him in his study and with his recommendations we bought them.

Yesterday the conference started late in the evening. We loose all our day preparing the booth, the folders and flayers and the product boxes. When the conference finally started a lot of people come to our booth. For the user groups managers we have prepared the boxed MX Kollection and wen the word got out a lot of them came to our booth an we almost finish all the boxes.

Other people came to our asking about the products. They were very interested in MX Kollection and a special atention was captured by KTML. We are all pleased the way first day presented. Now we are looking forward at the current day that is due to start in a short time.

The day started a little bit on the left foot as we found ourselves outside an empty Conference Centre. It seams that the CF Underground is not here. So we rush back to the hotel and connected to the Internet to find out that the CF Underground is held at Pan American Conference Centre :D.

We arrive at Pan Am CC in time to the first session: a discussion about Flex. The speaker Kai Konig is very prepared about the subject and the arguments in favour to use Flex are good. What I really like is that is not aggressive about this subject, he does not want to impose his point of view about Flex, more to this he is even recommending Flesh remoteing for some types of projects.

The second session is about Extreme Programming. It is presented by Michael Smith and Shlomy Gantz. The session is very dynamic and all the participants get involved in the discussion. At the end of a debate about pear programming in XP the common point of view is that is efficient but with some limitations as is unpractical to put two programmers to waste there time on common tasks. Other limitations refers to the nature of the involved programmers (as in their skills, ego, ...).

I missed the following 2 hours of the conference but I got in time for Bogdan's presentation about securing shop sites. After a slow start (due to the fact that probably everybody thought their own work was secure enough) the discussion picks up some speed as the auditorium get more scared as Bogdan goes deeper into the subject. Phrases like: "Can you do that? I didn't know somebody can do that to a site." are common and the session ends with a promise from Bogdan that will write a more detailed article about this subject.

After that Simon Horwith comes and entertain us with his session about design patterns and his unique presentation stile. He's got humour, knowledge and we are all ears.

The day ends again on Bourbon Street. This time we are tired and after just a beer we return to the hotel.

This time is even wilder then last time. More people on the street are making this outdoor party a big event. At any restaurant or bar there is a guy or girl in front of it luring you inside. We took the chances and enter one and have some (expensive) beers.

The party goes on on the street and the beads are thrown up and down in an almost continuous flow.

Me and Lucian part the team and we go to eat something. After that we return to the hotel being to tired to stay up any more.

The Bourbon Street

At one crossroad somebody approaches and ask us for directions to the Bourbon Street. That reminds us that this street is an interested thing to visit so we decide to go.

The Bourbon Street its quite a view. It hits us just as we pass the corner. The street is closed for car traffic and a colourful gathering of tourists and locals is filling it. People dancing at balconies are throwing with plastic necklaceses to the people from the street and those from the street are throwing back others.

After we wander around for a half hour or so we decided to stop to a bar where a band is playing Jazz. And the Jazz was really good. So we join the crowd in applauding the band and let the beer to flow.

The Hotel

After the Jazz therapy we finally head back to the hotel to catch some sleep. It was long day.

We start this journey in Bucharest today at 7:00 AM. The first part of our trip took as CDG Paris. This was a short flight of only 3 hours. After 2 hours spent in Paris we took the flight to Cincinnati. This was a really long flight, 9 hours. This is the part of flying that I hate. It is quite uncomfortable and beside watching some movies there is no fun. After another hour and a half on the Cincinnati airport we embark on our last 2 hour flight to New Orleans. Arrived on Louis Armstrong airport on local time 5:30 PM.

The clock indicated a time difference of 10 hours but in fact the whole trip to New Orleans took 18 hours. We were all very tired when we reached the Riverside Hilton Hotel but with no intent on going to sleep.

To be continued..