Hi All. Crawled out of the dark coding dungeon for some fresh air over the next couple days. Then back into web site touch-ups, alotta photoshop, and some rounding out the rough edges, then deployment. Last night uploaded a milestone version of the web version of WorkPapers to the repository. This version pretty much does all of the base functions – tying together workstep and results editors to the tree view, attachments, project tracking, and the first step of Google Apps integration.
Okay, okay, I know you all have no idea on what I am describing… thinking out loud. But when you see the application in a couple weeks, you’ll know. I’ve taken legacy versions of WorkPapers and kept those functions, while adding optional GTD, social media, and application sharing features.
For those of you who have not figured out the hosting web site yet, I will be disclosing that information with an open invite in the next couple days… or weeks, depending on how quick I get things done. For most reasonable purposes, announcements for the invitationware release (with adverts) will go out by the weekend. Paid release announcements will go out in mid-June. Previous purchasers of WorkPapers software will get a one year subscription to the service free of charge and an invitationware invite to become an early adopter.
I must say, web application programming is much more tedious with many more variables than desktop programming. This iteration of the software will ultimately be both – the web application and the application desktop tool. I wanted to stay completely away from a desktop version initially, but after spending a couple months of development, realize a couple things:
1) I want to give users a way to work offline and synch with online contents – added value for higher paying customers.
2) No matter how ‘rich’ and ‘sexy’ you create a web application, depending on the widgets used and target functionality, one web browser is always better than something else.
The solution to both of these challenges is to roll my own web browser that links with some desktop services like email, calendar, and contacts, while presenting the WorkPapers web application in the most visually pleasing, high performance environment possible.
Stay tuned…. will be blogging a lot more in the near future.