FirefoxOS Tutorial Episode 3

I completed episode 3 of the FirefoxOS Tutorial. Some of it is a bit rough and it needs to be polished and the Dev tools section also may need some work. Finn also looked over it so he corrected some errors. References to line numbers may need to be changed as well but for the most part the episode is complete and I have a link to it below.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8028799/firefoxOSTutorialEp3

FirefoxOS Tutorial Ep 3

I started rewriting episode 3 of the FirefoxOS tutorial. I had to add a section on the WebIDE and a lot of the beginning sections had to have some changes made but some of the sections don't need to be changed a lot. Also, there will probably be some inconsistencies and other problems because, for example, you may be capitalizing words in earlier episodes that I'm not. Anyway, I have a link to my progress below. I am currently looking at the Firefox Dev Tools but I should be done soon.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8028799/firefoxOSTutorialEp3

SaveNotes App

Today Finn and I worked on fixing the SaveNotes App. The fix was extremely simple because the problem was that there were no back buttons appearing but a simple stack overflow post revealed the issue.

I started looking at episode 3 of the firefoxOS tutorial and I have no problem writing about the WebIDE but I just have to figure out how I'm going to start rewriting this because there is a lot to talk about. I'll probably just start writing whatever I think of and then just look over it and then have Finn revise it.

FirefoxOS Tutorial Ep2: Functionality

I made changes to the second episode of Irani's FirefoxOS tutorial under the section titled "The code". It was pretty simple but the further chapters will probably become more challenging to change because I'm not familiar with Ajax or JSON and it will probably be mentioned more frequently. Anyway, here's a link to the text file:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8028799/episode2functionality.txt

US Zipcodes App

Today Finn helped me fix the Indian zipcode app but he really did most of the work. We actually changed the zipcodes to US because the API for the Indian zipcodes was no longer available.

• The app currently states coordinates, city, and state and the API we are using is called Zippopotamus
• We removed the Javascript within the html file and made a separate script file because firefoxOS can apparently have problems with internal Javascript
• A few changes still have to be made, especially stuff like the app icon because it currently says "Indian Zipcodes"

I made and updated the repo by myself for once though!
https://github.com/anicholakos/IndiaPincodesApp

GPS App Development

I continued to work on my GPS App which should be finished soon as long as I don't encounter any javascript problems but I am pretty rusty with javascript. Today I actually didn't make a lot of progress because I was having a github problem but Sam was extremely helpful and fixed the issue. I did update the code so it works properly and I don't think it references the notes app anymore, but right now I need to find a way to grab longitude and latitude coordinates separately because I don't think I want to display them together if possible.

Here's a link to the repo with my app actually on there
https://github.com/anicholakos/fxos_app_zoo

GPS App

I continued working on my GPS App and it is fairly functional right now but it needs to be refined a lot. I think I'll push my changes after I make a few adjustments because right now the code is a bit ugly and it may be broken. There's a link to my branch below for reference but it only has the helloworld app. 

https://github.com/anicholakos/fxos_app_zoo

Coordinates App

I worked on making an app, which used the note app as a basis, that displays a users coordinates. As long as the user has GPS enabled it will store the coordinates in a list item. On Friday I'll actually put the app on github but in the meantime I'll make a few points.

• I changed the design a little, it could still definitely use some work. There is also a lot of whitespace that could be used.
• I'm thinking the purpose of the app will be to display the coordinates when you press a button and if you press it again you will get new coordinates assuming you moved. Right now the app just keeps displaying coordinates in a list and the app actually seems to get slower after pressing the button multiple times so that may need to be fixed.

Bugzilla Notes(Search)

Fredy emailed me again with more information this time on effectively searching on Bugzilla so I'll summarize that here. Basically there are four different types of search on Bugzilla available on the tabs at the top once you click the search button(magnifying glass).

• Simple search is what it sounds like, you simply type in some words related to the bug and it will search the website but you are also given a few other options like the product(ex. Firefox) and status(ex. open or closed).
• Instant search is even simpler because only the search bar and product are displayed.
• Advanced search is full of many more filters including classification, product, component, status, and resolution. Also you can select multiple filters by holding ctrl and clicking on different ones.
• Google search is just using the google search engine to search on Bugzilla. You would get the same results if you typed in Google "<words> site:bugzilla.mozilla.org"
• It's also possible to save searches for future use.

Also, I won't be working on BuddyUp for quite awhile because apparently the developer is on vacation but I may be working on other stuff for the QA program.

Firefox bug

I'm going to make this post very quick so here is a link to the bug I filed
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1160256

FirefoxOS Design

I was reading the FirefoxOS in action tutorial today and I added some code to the note app provided by the book but it had an error(although it was a simple error that I fixed) so I just stopped reading it.

I started reading articles on the app center on the mozilla developer website

• When making an app there are some pretty obvious things everyone should do but is important anyway but these steps can be modified depending on your preference
• When thinking of an idea for an app and you have decided you should state the purpose of the app and who would use it. Also consider if it will be on different platforms
• Draw what the app will look like, probably a sketch for each screen and more if the app will be on multiple platforms
• Also if your app is on different platforms it may have different features on each platform, a mobile app will sometimes have less features than a desktop site because of the lack of space(google docs is a word processor with a lot of functions but the mobile app only allows you to view your documents and not edit them which is annoying in my opinion)

This tutorial looks really good so far and I looked at the example geolocation app on my laptop but I haven't seen what it looks like on the Flame.

FirefoxOS and Naming bug

Over the weekend Fredy emailed me saying he fixed the testcases I invalidated and he doesn't have any assignment for me right now but he will email me on Monday(which he never did and I hope he didn't forget). I did a bit more reading today and I wrote a few notes below.

• As I mentioned in a previous blogpost, the "certified" permission has permissions that can be abused(making purchases) but this permission level is not available on workplace apps and is a part of the OS
• The note app that I currently have allows a contact to be selected but it doesn't actually add that person to the note like it's supposed to so that needs to be fixed

I also wrote to Fredy about a bug but it was kind of annoying to explain so I just want him to confirm that it is a bug that hasn't been filed yet if he can.

FirefoxOS stuff

Today I finished up the last few testcases and I emailed a few questions for Fredy. One of the testcases referenced an "Active" tab which was removed recently so I invalidated that. As for your app, it worked fine on my simulator and you actually don't need contacts for it to work and you can just pull the changes from Finn, I think.

Testcases

I actually went to moztrap and noticed there was another page of testcases which must have been added recently so I went through those today. When going through them I checked for bugs or invalid instructions. I'm not really sure if I should invalidate some stuff but I think as long as the instructions are understandable I don't need to. I make sure to invalidate a testcase if the UI is different but for example one testcase says "Press continuously "Power" button" when it should probably say to "Hold down the "Power" button continuously". I also need to make a note to myself to look at testcase 26 because there was a problem with upvoting, I think.

I think I may have found a bug though because when you delete your name it gets replaced with a randomly generated one with the word Buddy and a number with it(like Buddy3478) but when you delete your name and it gets randomly generated again there is a lowercase "b". I'll have to check in with Fredy about this stuff though.

Testcases(11-20)

I don't really have anything interesting to blog about because I just went over the rest of the testcases. I don't think I missed anything and I tried to use my best judgement. There was one prerequisite that I think was wrong but I didn't report it although maybe I should have(testcase 13). Besides that I didn't really find any problems and I went through the testcases pretty thoroughly so I'll probably email Fredy soon and see if he needs anything else done right now.

More testcases(1-10)

So my new task is to go back through the testcases and invalidate any testcases if required because all the testcases were changed to be clearer and the UI of BuddyUp keeps changing.

One thing I noticed with the testcases so far was that one page is referred to as the "Homepage" when it says "Support" at the top but I think it's fine. I did invalidate a different test that referenced a nonexistent tab so the UI must have changed very recently. Testcase 9 and 10 are really long but I think both were fine so I only found a problem with one.

Debugger

You're probably already fairly familiar with the debugger but I wasn't aware that you could track certain variables by clicking on the "gutter" of a line which I posted a picture of below. You can also just screw around with your code like by stopping it at a certain point, inspecting your app, and resuming it. The debugger is also really useful for redesigning your app and seeing the changes immediately.

The problem is now I added that geolocation code and my app is no longer working and the debugger won't show anything and I really have no idea why.

The little blue dot is where the gutter is and you can mark certain lines of code

Awesome Note App

I continued looking at the book since I had no other task. I got to the part where it talked about making a note app and a bit on how to to debug if necessary. The explanations are pretty good but I think there was one error in the manifest file because I could not run my app although maybe it was my fault. You made the app yourself but I posted a screenshot of it below. This does make it really easy to convert any website into a mobile app because you just have to make the manifest file and add an icon(and probably redesign it).

FirefoxOS in action

I finished my task so I decided to read some more of that book today.

Security
There are 3 different types of permissions for Firefox OS that determine what an app can access because you may not want websites to have access to your SD card and then it gets a hold of your pictures.

• Standard:  Stuff that can't really cause harm like gps or vibration
• Privileged: Stuff that can expose personal info like contacts
• Certified: Stuff that can cost money like making calls or disabling wifi and wasting data

Whenever a FirefoxOS app would like to use one of the higher permissions it prompts the user, unlike Android where you are only prompted once before installing the app.

Developing

• Making an app is obviously very similar to making a website except you have to keep a couple of things in mind, people are tapping and not using a mouse, and the phone is less powerful than a desktop.

Also, I learned how to use some basic git commands from Finn so I shouldn't need as much help when using github

Finished up invalidating

I finished looking over all the tests, it was pretty tedious but got easier towards the end since the testcases seemed to be more up to date. It wasnt really hard and I usually knew when I should and shouldn't invalidate something, but there was one testcase though that I wasn't sure about because it said to tap on an input field but it was a button. I didn't invalidate it because I was unsure and it didn't seem too important but I was thinking it made it sound like the button was a text field.

Most of these tests had the same error though because there was one wrong button but I did invalidate one today that had quite a few wrong buttons and pages listed in the instructions.

Invalidating more stuff

Fredy emailed when class ended yesterday and he wanted me to continue checking is testcases were valid so I did that for today. I don't think I really need to go into detail(unless you want me to) about it because it's pretty simple. I usually just keep invalidating a test because a button or web page is titled wrong since there seem to be so many UI changes and the github repo seems to be updated at least once a week. The app was especially changed a lot recently which you can see on the "My profile" page below so the test cases are unclear but the app looks a lot nicer.

FirefoxOS in Action

 I emailed Fredy about what I should be working on but until then I'll just continue reading.

There are a lot of reasons why FirefoxOS is appealing

• It's convenient for web developers
• You can reuse web page code
• It can utilize cheap hardware
• Browsers are updated often as opposed to an OS
• It's free, no market places and you can use any familiar libraries

There are three distinctive software layers in Firefox OS:

• A Linux kernel, called Gonk.
• The browser engine, called Gecko.
• The UI, called Gaia.

Also, here's the logo with a smaller circle.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8028799/Librifox2.svg

Invalidating more stuff

I'm still going through all the tests looking for errors. Most of them are fine and I don't think it's worth reporting any spelling or grammatical mistakes unless it makes it harder to understand the test.

• I invalidated test 6 because a button was located on a wrong page
• Test 8 also had an incorrect button name

Also, here's a link to the LibriFox logo with a solid color, I think blue is good but maybe a different shade would be better. Either way the fox looks really good.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8028799/Librifox2.svg

Invalidating Testcases and a New Bug

I invalidated my first test case but I don't really want to continue until I get a response from Fredy in case I am doing it incorrectly. While I was waiting for a response though I went through the new version of BuddyUp and I think I found an unlisted bug. You can now set preferences in BuddyUp to filter questions but there are 2 "All" options in two drop down menus which you can see below.

I filed the bug during NSF, here's a link to it. Fredy also said that what I am doing with the invalidating is fine.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1148211

2 "All" options

Validating Smoketests

I got a bigger task where I have to go through all the smoketests and all the steps and see if they are all correct. So all those times where the steps were not exactly correct I am going to mark as invalid so the smoketests are more helpful and clearer.

I went through a few smoketests and I'm pretty sure I didn't miss anything but I'm not sure if I should invalidate a test because there was a word missing. I'll probably ask but I don't think it's worth invalidating a test over. Fredy said I should invalidate a test for these reasons:

• Different wording: for example test says click on the "ABC" button but

the button now is called "CBA".

• Wrong placement of an item: for example test says click this button at

the bottom of the screen but the button is at the top.

• Non-existent item: for example test say to click on a button that

doesn't exist.

• Other inconsistencies: for example I am not sure what to do in this

step, or how to proceed with this test etc.

BuddyUp

I guess I never really did explain what BuddyUp is so I'll do that right now. BuddyUp is an online help app like you said and there are helpees and helpers. Helpers are obviously the ones who help while the helpees are the ones who require help. You need an account to be a helper but you can be a helpee without an account, you are just given a random name. From what I understand anyone is a helpee and helper though, I think those terms are used mainly for testing because with my account I can ask or answer a question at any time. There is also a vote system to upvote good comments but there is no downvoting and a leaderboard features who was the most helpful every week. I think that answers your questions about BuddyUp and you can also download the app on your own device.

I read some of the beginning of the book but I don't think it's necessary to summarize it because it just talks about the author and a bit about why FirefoxOS is appealing.

Smoketests 16-20

Some more smoketests were added so I mainly did testing today

• Test 16: This one was about asking a question for the first time. I wasn't sure if I was required to be logged in or not but it wasn't a prerequisite so I did it logged out and it worked. Also here is the related bug, the discussion is kind of interesting.
• Test 17: I'm guessing I can/should be logged out as long as there is no prerequisite listed but I'm not entirely sure. This test was about asking a question when I had already asked one previously and it passed. 
• Test 18: This was about not being logged in and then going to a question to sign in and then answer which passed.
• Test 19: This was a specific series of actions like loading more questions and syncing the questions which I passed. I hope I'm doing these correctly because I don't think Fredy wants me to fail a test if it's not 100% correct because a few of these, like this one, are basically 99% correct.
• Test 20: This test was about asking a question and getting similar questions to click on which I failed because when clicking on a question and pressing back the list of similar questions disappeared when they shouldn't have.

Bugzilla

I spent most of today working on bugzilla but I did work a bit on my app. During NSF I made some progress and today I just wanted to work a bit more so I didn't forget what I was working on. I made some brief progress so I'll just leave it at that for now.

I learned a bit more about the fields that are in bugzilla so here is some of what I learned. Also, I'll be getting more tasks next week.

• Summary field: Pretty simple, just contains a very short summary of the bug but it may be helpful to put tags, like [Flame] or [User Story]
• Whiteboard: This field is for adding specific words like [blocker] which means the bug blocks some function while [p=1] I think means high priority
• I'm wondering if there is place where I can read more about tags(I'm guessing something like p=2 would mean lower priority but I'm not sure) because it might be helpful to put them in any future bugs I file
• Version: Pretty straightforward but BuddyUp doesn't have a version number yet
• Platform: I was a bit unsure about this one, apparently it's really only useful for application components but not web apps or sites components. In my case, I guess I would put FirefoxOS 2.0 for the platform if it's a bug I find outside of BuddyUp.
• Depends On/Block: I believe this is for listing related bugs. I found an example of a bug with related bugs here. You can click on either "tree" or "graph" to see how the bugs are related.
• CC List: This just allows you to add people to a bug where they will get a lot of notifications so you have to be careful who you add.
• Flag: This seems to be like CC except if you "flag" someone it shows everyone that the bug is tested by a testcase. I might need some clarification on this one.

Here are some helpful links
https://www.bugzilla.org/docs/4.4/en/html/lifecycle.html
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=fields.html

Some App Development

I decided to work on my app a bit more, I didn't have a task available and I didn't really want to file bugs. It seems like the process for filing bugs can be really slow at times because there are so many filed and when you find one there is a good chance that it has already been reported. Anyway, Finn gave me a jsfiddle link about positioning buttons which should be nice because it's an alternative to the css I have been trying. The problem is that my code is pretty ugly so I had a bit of trouble but I got the positioning partially working and I also broke some of the app.

Filing a Bug

I'm short on time so I'm just going to link to the bug I filed.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1144877

Bugzilla

Fredy sent me another email with a lot of helpful info. I also just tried IRC for the first and I idled in the #firefox channel that fredy told me about. I used mibbit because it basically required no set up. Fredy talked a lot about bugzilla so I messed with that today and I'll summarize some of it here. I can also forward any other emails, if you like.

Smoketests

• Always run the latest version of the app which can be done through this method
• An easy way to get multiple users is to use the device and the simulator
• I should not fail tests that pass but have a wrong sequence of buttons which may be due to UI changes. Instead I should mark it as invalid and say what is wrong with the testcase itself.
• Search in bugzilla for bugs that may be relevant to a failed testcase
• Screenshots may be helpful for UI bugs or bugs that are hard to describe
• Also, it's good to still describe which step failed the testcase 

Bugzilla

1. To file a bug report you have to first create an account or use your moztrap account
2. Categorize the bug as a specific product(website, app, etc)
3. In this case, after clicking "File a bug", you have to search for BuddyUp because it isn't listed
4. The bug must then be summarized and you may choose to report the bug or follow the bug if it has already been listed
5. If it hasn't been listed then different fields have to be filled out and then the bug report will be posted.

Testcases 9 and 10

fredy sent me a very helpful email with some tips. The third one was really nice because it talked about how if a testcase can be completed but the UI was changed I should mark it as invalid, instead of failed which is what I have been doing. I also tried finding related bugs for the failed testcases but I didn't find anything.

• Test 9 was to see if a helper would get a notification when a helpee responded to a helper's comment which failed because I did not receive a notification as a helper.
• Test 10 was similar but it was just to mark a question as resolved but failed again because I did not receive a notification as a helper. I did a few brief searches for related bugs but nothing came up.

BuddyUp: Tests 11-15

I need to skip test 9 and 10 for now because they require two users. Also, fredy emailed me and I replied back to him, he will be assigning me more tasks during the week.

• Test 11-13 involved asking a questions and all of them passe.
• Test 14 asked me to change my username which failed because after changing the name and going back to my profile, I was left with my original name.
• Test 15 was to see if I could view the top contributors of the week and their profiles which passed.

More Tests

I did a few more tests but one test(case 9, which is really long) requires 2 users so I'll do that one another day.

• Test 6 was about changing my username to a default name(one of their randomly generated ones, like bluemonkey56) but it failed because when I deleted my name I was just left with an empty field and the screen didn't change when it should have.
• Test 7 was about resetting my password but it failed pretty fast because there was no "Forgot your password?" button on the right screen.
• Test 8 involved writing an answer which passed because it posted and displayed the time sent.

Smoketests

I've been finding a lot of bugs but I want to finish these smoketests. I just had a problem where the app was saying I could not login with credentials but it turns out I had logged in the entire time without any notice.

• One smoketest was to add a category to a question which passed
• Another one was to see if a user would be restricted from signing up if their email address was invalid which worked except that the email address was not red when it should have been. I wrote "The user is prevented from signing up but the email address is not highlighted red if something invalid is put after the "@" symbol, like "hello@mail.com", but emails like "hello@" and "hello" are red and emails with a period and then a blank space are highlighted as red such as "hello@mail."."
• I had to try and change my username which failed because my username was changed but no feedback was provided.

Smoketests

I finished one smoketest but I have a lot of info and screenshots that I will put captions on. So I'm guessing you can't see my progress on moztrap so I'll just summarize the test case, I was supposed to sign in with an unverified email which actually worked for the most part except I failed it because I was taken to the wrong page.

I'm also going to add a few notes from our session with Marcia:

• About every week there will be a new set of smoketests for me to finish. Also I should be very literal with everything(so I should fail stuff if it doesn't work 100%)
• I'm going to be paired up with a new mentor for other work
• Screenshots aren't really necessary for the smoketests but I should report bugs even if it's probably a duplicate and be very specific(Version #, Screenshots, Crash report if necessary, etc...)

My Profile page

BuddyUp does block unverified accounts

Profile when disconnected form wifi

Error I got in Buddyup

BuddyUp Smoketests

I did the first smoketest and it worked for the most part. All I did for the smoketest was just mark the 6th step as fail but I also took a few screenshots and there were a few other problems and I wasn't sure if I should have posted those or not.

• So I think it's worth noting that when I did the 3rd step it failed completely when not connected to wifi which is obviously required but the error message is pretty vague and unhelpful because I was about to mark the test as fail until I realized I had wifi off. I had a few screenshots of it but I couldn't email it due to an error and setting up my gmail account was really annoying because the flame is considered an insecure device so I just used the WebIDE to save screenshots that you can see below.
• The 6th step failed because after clicking the link to verify my account I was taken to a sign in page rather than an account homepage and the email itself was supposed to display a link but it didn't appear on my device.

Verification email had a link but it wasn't visible

Sign in page instead of homepage

Email error so I couldn't get a hold of my other screenshots

BuddyUp

Marcia gave me a new assignment that had a lot of links and I also found a part on best practices when reporting bugs which is handy. The instructions were a bit confusing though and I was supposed to leave a field blank but I couldn't so I emailed Marcia about that. I also have a few other questions but I'm guessing we will meet with her soon so I'll just ask her then.

Firefox App

Today was pretty frustrating because I spent nearly the whole day trying to position 3 divs and I never got it working. I just wanted them to be placed side by side and I tried multiple methods and I looked at a bunch of stack overflow posts and someone even posted a very nice jsfiddle link but I could not figure out the problem. I think I'll spend a little bit more time on it because I have a few more ideas but I might just abandon it soon because this is more annoying than it should be. As for the ATIC form, I don't really know what is going on with that because I just remember Dylan emailed the lady running the project and I didn't hear about it after that.

More Work on my FirefoxOS App

I made the app a lot prettier and I fixed an animation problem because the div I was animating did not have a relative position. The problem I'm having right now is positioning a container with buttons in it and for some reason I'm so bad at positioning stuff. For some reason my repo isn't working for whatever reason so I'll definitely get my changes pushed Monday and then you can see the app for yourself.

FirefoxOS App

I got the structure of my app working which I think was mostly due to an unclosed div and I added a few touches like a back button. So what I'm working on my app now is being able to move a div using buttons but obviously the phone won't have a keyboard so I have to make my own buttons. I thought it was going to be pretty easy but I have no idea why my code isn't working. I'm just saying that if one id is clicked, another id should be animated but I can't figure out the problem.

FirefoxOS App

I continued to work on my app today so I fixed a few problems mostly involving classes and IDs. I made it so that the app is a list and you'll see how I did it but it also currently doesn't work because when you click on a list item you aren't redirected to another page. I'll try to get it working by the end of the week assuming I don't get a response from Marcia but I'll push it to github either way but it would be better if it was functional.

jQuery Mobile Working

Marcia is apparently going to be traveling for the next few weeks so she can't be as responsive and she wasn't able to review my work so I don't really have any tasks currently. I decided to just work on my app then in the mean time which meant that I had to get jQuery Mobile working. I spent most of my class time doing that and I did finally get it working after I just closely reviewed a different app I made. Turns out the problem was right in front of me, I was just importing the jQuery Mobile CSS incorrectly.

BuddyUp Tasks

Marcia emailed me a very helpful email and she modified the etherpad link so I know what to do now. I just need to email her about a couple of things, like where I should post my results, but she was very helpful.

So I went through the Helpee Ask a Question Scenario and the first time I did it, I did not get a confirmation screen with an "OK" button but I saw my question with the timestamp. The second time I did it the scenario passed and it included the confirmation screen and I noticed that "notification" was spelled wrong.

She then wanted me to make my own test case for answering a question so here is what I made and I'm going to email her to see if it's good.

Acceptance criteria: * “View Unanswered Questions” button available on home page as I launch the app * Tapping the “View Unanswered Questions” button lets me view questions* I can choose between new and active questions to answer* Clicking on a question makes replies appear and a text box at the bottom allows users to reply to questions* Submitting the question closes the keyboard and my reply appears with a time stamp.     

               

• launch the BuddyUp app from the homescreen.

• The app successfully opens and you can see content.

• Tap on the "View Unanswered Questions" input field.

• The user is directed to the Unanswered Questions page with 2 tabs at the top, "Active" and "New".

• Choose a question and type a response in the text box and press the arrow to send.

• You will see your reply posted below any other previously posted replies with a timestamp.

BuddyUp Tasks

I emailed Marcia but she didn't get back to me during the class period but hopefully she responds by tomorrow and I understand what to do because I haven't accomplished too much with these BuddyUp tasks. I think I almost understand what to do but I want a bit more guidance, I think she wants me to reply to a helper in BuddyUp and then document it on MozTrap or something but these instructions are a bit confusing because she is talking about two tasks and it's pretty vague.

BuddyUp Tasks

I took a look at the etherpad link again to follow her instructions but I don't really understand what to do and I think her instructions may be wrong because when I searched for the test case, nothing came up. Maybe you understand it better than I do but I'm now lost so I'll ask you about it tomorrow and I'll email Marcia if necessary.

FirefoxOS Bugs and App Dev

I'm going to combine my Thursday and Friday posts since Friday was a short day.

On Thursday, I looked at the BuddyUp pdf which I assume is the wireframe Marcia was referring to. It seemed pretty straightforward so I just skimmed it but it seems like it's pretty important so I'll take another look at it. I also helped Dylan a bit with the form and I helped Finn with javascript. I also can't seem to get my Jquery Mobile working and I think regular Jquery is required, but when I have both they seem to conflict so I'm not sure.

I worked a bit on my app and I just commented out jQuery mobile in the mean time but I want to get it working so I can easily style the app. Marcia also emailed me and sent me a link to etherpad with notes on what I should do next. I took a look at it and I made an account so I should probably start getting to work on that stuff next week.

Setting Up Firefox OS and Refining the Form

On Wednesday I was a bit scattered but I emailed Marcia and I know what to do now. There is a pdf I need to look at along with some other links but Dylan and Jack need to work on the form a bit more so I'm going to help them with that. I just need to handle the SQL because I think Dylan can do the rest so after that I should be able to start looking for bugs.

Firefox OS bugs and Github

• There was another slight annoying problem with ATIC but it should be good now and all changes are pushed
• While my phone updated to the latest stable version I made some instructions to make sure what I am doing is right
• First get BuddyUp in case I have questions
• Try and find bugs use Bugs Ahoy to find and document new bugs
• Tasks might be helpful when looking for bugs
• I also added jQuery Mobile so I can use that while developing
• I can now also push changes to the FXOS repo but apparently there is some tiny problem that I think Finn wrote about in his blog

Fixing up ATIC

I was planning on getting started on looking for bugs but there was a slight problem with ATIC. Apparently I screwed up one of the pages so I worked with Dylan and we figured out the problem. Dylan and Sam helped me with git so I think I better understand how to use git. I accidentally deleted the original project page but I got it back from an old revision.  I set up the correct routes and all the links are working so now Dylan should make sure that the form is ready or if changes should be made to it.

Firefox BuddyUp

I got BuddyUp off of github and there are instructions here. It's pretty simple so when I get the next device I'll get BuddyUp and start trying to find bugs. I'll also look at previous emails from Marcia for help on where to start. I also worked on my app and I was able to fix the formatting of it. I have some ideas of what I want to do and I'll post some pictures when I make more progress or just upload the app to my website when it's better.

Firefox App: Moving Circles

On Wednesday I decided I would try and allow users to move the shapes around but I kind of got stuck. I also had another problem where I would replace divs with other divs and then you could not interact with the new divs. I guess I'll just work on this app on my freetime because I will have to focus on buddy up soon.

Firefox Apps

I'm still working on firefox apps, I'm just adding a bunch of random stuff to the app like shapes that fade and morph but I also tried to get one to animate randomly when it wasn't clicked and to stop when it was clicked and I managed to break everything so I have to fix that.

Firefox OS App Dev

I made a small app for the firefox simulator that's just a circle that you click and it morphs the more you click it. I guess I'll continue working on apps until we are given a specific task by the Firefox team.

It's not that interesting but if I add more to it I could put it on my website so you can actually try it.

ATIC Form

On Thursday I was working on bug fixes that mainly just involved stupid errors especially one where there was a misplaced comma in the rebase statements so that it thought that there was a template called 'layout.tpl,' and it took a long time to notice that one little comma.

On Friday I worked on styling and adding finishing touches to the form. I styled it and made the formatting much better. It still doesn't look very pretty but it's a lot more user friendly. If you want to take a look at it just go to the projects tab. Here is a link to my branch so you can see for yourself.

ATIC Form Progress

I'm still working on the ATIC form and I keep getting different errors but I've been able to slowly fix them up to this point and you helped me with the database problem. I've gotten some errors like where I had the wrong directory in the rebase line and other stuff but I've been slowly fixing them all.

ATIC Add Projects

I think I am nearly done with setting up the form for ATIC and I'm pretty sure I can get it done before the week is over. I finished setting up a template for the page for adding a project and I set up the add project function. I actually have an SQL related question that I'll ask you tomorrow but I should be able to demonstrate the form soon.

ATIC

I started working on the form for ATIC and I'm pretty sure I finished setting up all the templates. I also made the database so all I need to do now is finish the submit buttons. I'm going to test it once the submit buttons are done and I'll blog about how that goes.

More Fruits and Veggies

I worked more on the fruits and veggies database and it now has a hierarchy so that if you go into addfruit and hit submit it will go to '/addfruit/submit' instead of just '/submit'. I also changed it so that you can't leave the food name field empty. I also accidentally added a fruit with no name that I couldn't delete so I just added in the line "cur.execute('DELETE FROM food WHERE name=""')" temporarily in run.py. The next thing I should do is add buttons to return to the table when a fruit is removed.

Fruits and Veggies

On Thursday I worked on bottle zoo and I was looking at run.py to get the submit button working. I had an idea of what to do by looking at the sql delete statement and the function on how to add fruits.

During NHS Alex and Sam helped me and we got the submit button working. Alex also suggested that I change the URLs so it forms a hierarchy like '/addfruits/added' instead of two seperate URLs for both. Also you can currently add in blank strings which should probably be fixed.

SQL and HTML

So I was working on the fruit table in bottle zoo and I figured out how to display the page with your help although now it won't submit so I need to learn how to allow users to make changes.

To delete something in SQL you just write
DELETE FROM table WHERE column=columndata;
for example
DELETE FROM Movies WHERE Title='Big Trouble in Little China';


To let the user remove something from the table you would use an html form where the user would select what they want deleted and then submit it. I need to read about cursors but I guess the cursor goes through the database and makes the changes.

Bottle Form

Dylan and I got a form set up so now we have to try and set it up so data can be submitted. We kind of have an idea but the bottle zoo you showed us should be really helpful.

ATIC set up

On Wednesday I worked with Dylan to try and get the form web page working but we didn't really make any progress but I realize now that the problem was that we were messing up the rebase line.

Jack helped me with github so now I have my own branch and everything is installed so ATIC is fully functional! So I got a form webpage working and the reason it was not working before was because we had the wrong path in the "%rebase" line.

Webfaction Instructions

1. Log into webfaction and choose application under the domain/website tab
2. Choose mod_wsgi for category, use latest python for app type, and name obviously(we are calling it ATIC). Then hit save.
3. Go into websites tab and make sure the domain and apps are set
4. Log into webfaction using the command line(ssh atic@ip)
5. Go from the home directory to "webapps" then into "atic"
6. Then make a directory called lib/python3.4 and install bottle in that directory using
   $ export PYTHONPATH=$PWD/lib/python3.4
   and
   $ easy_install-3.4 -s $PWD/bin -d $PWD/lib/python3.4 bottle
7. Put adapter.wsgi into main directory and add the line
   "WSGIScriptAlias / /home/atic/webapps/atic/adapter.wsgi"
   in apache2/conf/httpd.conf
8. Then move attic.py, static, and templates into lib/python3.4 although Matt said this was not good practice

You can also look at this post for reference as well


Also, I didn't have a lot of time yesterday to blog but that was when you were helping Dylan and I with bottle. Alex also linked me his math_drill project for help.

https://github.com/ahirschberg/math_drill/blob/master/run.py#L160-L173

https://github.com/ahirschberg/math_drill/blob/master/template/students.tpl

Cordova

I spent most of the day just reading random documentation about Cordova. I found some interesting links about optimization although I can't really apply it, it is still neat stuff. I found a page which talked about design, testing, good practices, etc and it also linked to these two pages about increasing performance for apps. I didn't understand a lot of it but apparently onclick events are a big problem that can make an app unresponsive.

Cordova

I did the setup for building Firefox OS apps which didn't take long and it worked perfectly fine and the OS looks cool. When I was doing the setup for android apps it was taking a lot longer because the Oracle Java 7 JDK was taking a long time to install. Anyway, I finished installing Android Studio but I couldn't run it which seems really weird and I don't think I screwed anything up but I'm not sure.

Still More Bottle

I reviewed some of the beginning of the bottle tutorial and continued on to the later stuff. Some of it mostly makes perfect sense while some other stuff I have to reread a lot and I still don't get it. I understand stuff like how to make custom error pages and how to mess around with downloading files and suggesting file names but I don't really understand what it is talking about with stuff like generating content. I'll also take a look at the form example some more since that is what we are trying to do.