Alex Hixon’s Blog

It’d probably be useful to explain to everybody briefly what all the codenames we’re on about actually mean, seeing as there’s probably going to be much discussion regarding them fairly soon. Hopefully I haven’t missed anything.

I should probably also mention this reflects my perfect view of the world, and mine only. Some of the stuff mentioned here I haven’t really discussed with many, so it may hit the trashcan quickly. I’ll also avoid getting into technical details - you can check out the wiki and try to piece together how it works if you’re so keen, or you can catch me on IRC.

• Dragonfly: The current web UI implementation, duh.
• Crystal: What I intend to be the core for our new web bits - Flasher and Avocado (see below). Basically, Crystal will consist of a pluggable backend, message transport API thingy, and the base client made from Javascript. Both Flasher and Avocado would be able to plug into the Crystal’s client bit with their own (X)HTML and Javascript to make it look and do like whatever it needs to, while still being able to have access to all the helpers, communcation libraries, shared APIs, etc. Less duplicated code, FTW. Please note that some of the stuff on the wiki isn’t the latest version of what’s in my head/doesn’t make sense. Note to self: don’t write wiki entries very late at night.
• Flasher: Alex Hudson’s proposal for a web interface that can be accessed by users without a Bongo account (either on the current server, or generally). We want to be able to interact with them, share events etc., without having to register them. Primarily, people will gain access to Flasher in two ways: either by having a link sent to them via e-mail (e.g., an invitation), or by following a link from a website. Flasher will probably end up being a very cut down version of the calendaring component in Avocado, with some extra Flasher-only bits built on top.
• Avocado: the sexy, new web UI for Bongo (hopefully). Would have it’s own neato interface, and be mainly plugin-based. Mail, calendars, contacts would be part of the ‘core plugins’ shipped with Avocado. Developing/adding new plugins should be relatively trivial. APIs will be provided from both Avocado itself (for stuff like widgets, etc) as well as Crystal (networking, basic plugin stuff, …).

Comments, please!