We are working towards releasing an alpha in a few weeks, and we need volunteers that can give some feedback on the UI experience.

If you can help out, please e-mail me at omer at this domain.

Marketing-wise, one of the problems Regionerate is facing with is that most developers think Regionerate does #regions, and if you use it, your code will be gianormous, because it will allow you to stuff your face full of code and stick it in a #region.

One of the features that will be released as part of v0.7.5 is the Holy War Prevention Switch (its already available in the trunk & nightly build, in case you want it), which simply allows you to override all #regions in the application and turn them into comments or “invisible” regions.

Besides the Holy War Prevention Switch, I would like to use the new Online Code Layout Editor in order to market Regionerate as a tool that does not force you to use #regions. And yes, it is too late to change the name “Regionerate”

So I was thinking that the new code layout editor will let you create Areas in which you place elements in. These areas may be rendered as plain areas, #regions, or with a comment on top.

So what do you think of this idea? Comments will be appreciated.

So I got some suggestions to use jQuery in order to make the editor hip. I started looking into jQuery UI, and it is awesome.

Also, I’m getting into Ruby on Rails for the back-end implementation, and it is also quite refreshing. The kind people from JetBrains have given Regionerate a license for RubyMine. If you are into Ruby on Rails, you should really check it out.

Off to code.

From now on, all announcements will be posted in the devblog, so you won’t have to keep your eye for updates from two different feeds.

The new website is a lot more concise and clear, in my opinion. Do you like it?

Its been a strange journey. I’m guessing it was a bit different from an ordinary Joe’s degree, as I came in with about 8 years of professional experience in software development. But when you know a topic and restudy it from the basics, you can reflect on different aspects of it, and still learn a lot.

My Graduate Project

As part of my study program, I must participate in a final project in system analysis, in which I must analyze a client’s domain, propose a software-based solution and develop it.

I am also taking a course on project management by Alex Coman, which also happens to be my graduate project director. Earlier this year, I gave a lecture on Regionerate and its project management. Mr. Coman seemed to like it, so he suggested I base my graduate project on Regionerate.

Not an Ordinary Project

As I said, the graduate project should be based on an actual business (as in “the laundry place down the street”), and we are supposed to analyse its core problems. After doing that, we need to build up a classic 3-tier architecture app and deploy it at the customer’s site.

Needless to say, Regionerate is not a business, its an open-source project, there is no single client to answer all the questions, and it is not a classic 3-tier application.

Mr. Coman is aware of those differences, and he is OK with us going a different path which is more suitable for this kind of project.

So What Are We Developing?

A UI for building code layouts.

According to feedback I got over the years, most of our users use the default code layouts that ship with the installation, and only make tiny differences to it.

Why? Because we are all lazy, and the code layout schema is scary. Heck, I even get scared of it sometimes.

I think that you will agree that one of Regionerate’s strengths is that it is very customizable, but what good is that strength if most users are intimidated by the code layout schema?

So we are going to develop a drag-n-drop interface for creating code layouts, one that will hopefully help more people take advantage of Regionerate’s highly customizable layout abilities.

Your Help

This project will take a few months, and we want to make decisions with you guys. So we will be putting polls on big decisions we need to make.

These polls and the results are part of the graduate project, and Mr. Coman will be inspecting those, so if you want to help us out – participate in the polls and add your comments. These will eventually be pasted into the project paper, so your participation will be appreciated.

Off we go. Wish us luck.