I’ve been rather quiet here for the last few weeks. Aside from the fact that I started a new job as I mentioned previously, I’ve been working probably 2/3s of my evenings for the last few weeks on MooTools More, which at this point is essentially code complete. I feel bad about not posting here – there certainly have been plenty of things I wanted to write about, but all I can manage to do is tweet them on @mootools.

So since I haven’t been here posting like I usually do, I thought I’d give you a glimpse into my MooTools to-do list which doesn’t include my day job (where I’ve been writing gobs of cool JavaScript, some of which I’ll release, I promise). This list is feeling quite oppressive right now – I feel very behind – so hopefully sharing it will be both cathartic for me and also will explain my lack of posting to those of you who have missed my super awesome posts lately.

MooTools More: Download Page

The new MooTools More has a lot of functionality. I want a download builder similar to the one here on Clientcide. This will become especially important as the official plugins are broken up into separate libraries. For instance, all the language translations are in their own repository. So I have to rewrite the More Builder for mootools.net, which isn’t a small task.

MooTools More: Review Lighthouse Bugs

Before we release the new MooTools More I want to review the 60+ bugs in Lighthouse thoroughly and identify any that are especially ugly, any that are invalid or duplicates, and then the others that are perhaps just annoying. My objective is once the new -more is out there to have a weekly or bi-weekly release with a bug fix or two and a new feature or two. Constant, iterative development.

MooTools More: Hand Off MooTools Lang

I launched the MooTools Lang Google Group where people who want to help translate things in -more can contribute and discuss that aspect of the work in detail. I don’t want to manage this stuff. I split all the language files off into mootools-lang on github and now I just need to find a poor sucker enterprising soul to own it.

MooTools More: Testing!

We now have tests for every plugin in the library (over 40 now and that will grow quickly). Now we just have to churn through them all in every browser we want to support and fix any issues that crop up. I can see IE6 out of the corner of my eye like it’s stalking me.

MooTools More: RC1

Actually pushing out a release candidate is a big milestone and we’re basically ready for it. This just means things like the docs pages, download page, and a nice long blog post are prerequisites.

MooTools More: Wikitorials

After RC1 is out, I need to go through all the wikitorials here on Clientcide and move the pages for the plugins that are moving to -more over to the MooTorial.

MooTools More: Compatibility

There are only one or two changes to existing MooTools More plugins that will require compatibility files, but there are numerous changes to the scripts coming from Clientcide (one or two are minor breaking changes that can be fixed with a simple search and replace). I need to author all these and then test them so that people using the versions here on Clientcide can migrate easily.

MooTools More: Demos

We’ll need to author demos for MooTools.net that show off all this great new stuff.

MooTools Book

Did I mention I’m working on the second edition of the MooTools book? This version will cover MooTools 1.3 as well as a lot more detail of how to use MooTools. All the inner workings of the library and how you can use them most effectively – a best practices for MooTools kind of thing. This is all the stuff I didn’t have time for in the first book (the last three chapters were all I could get in there before the deadline). It’s shaping up to be about twice the size of the original (you’ll be relieved to know that the font size will not be ginormous like the first book – I still don’t know why Apress did that). Given that the book has been out since August and I still have no clue how it sold and have not received any payment for it, it seems like thankless work. Not to mention the fact that I’m trying to rewrite the book to be about MooTools 1.3 which is still very much in development. Every day I turn around and Valerio has something completely different checked in. Every time he makes a change I think to myself, well, I’m gonna have to rewrite the mootorial pages about that, these two chapters of the book, these plugins in MooTools More, and these plugins on Clientcide. Yay!

As it is I’m on the hook to deliver a chapter every four days (!!!) in order to stay on schedule, and that’s assuming 1.3 doesn’t change much as I go and that it’s on schedule, which I have no control over. In case I’ve never given you this advice, I’ll give it to you now, for free: never write a technical book. If only I had taken my own advice and left it at the first edition, but alas, I was never satisfied with the first edition which I felt was left unfinished.

Clientcide Bugs

Previously I tried to stay on top of bugs that crop up in the Clientcide code. A few bugs were either too esoteric for me to fix (I’m sorry, but I simply refuse to support Chrome or Safari 4 beta yet), but for the most part, if someone filed a bug because something wrong in my work was blocking them, I’d stop what I was doing and try and fix it. Because of my focus on MooTools More lately, I haven’t been able to do this. I’ve fixed a few bugs – the easy ones and the bad ones – but still, I have eighteen bugs open, some of which I can tell are going to be painful to fix. Every time a new one comes in I cringe because I simply cannot focus on this stuff yet. For those of you out there who are stuck because of these bugs, I am truly sorry.

As you can see, my cup runeth over. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking I am insane.

Increasingly, I think you may have a point there.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 28th, 2009 at 12:51 am and is filed under 'Industry' News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.