Differences

—		blog:written:online_notebook [2010/03/06 17:20] (current) davek created
Line 1:		Line 1:
		+
		+	====== Online Notebook Using GWT and AppEngine ======
		+
		+
		+	I've always been a fan of computer-based note taking.  Many years ago a friend of mine showed me the advantages of UltraEdit.  It's a simple (actually, complex capabilities but used simply in this application) text editor that lets you open multiple tabs.  A .proj file can remember your tabs so a simple link opens all your notes in an instant just the way you like them.
		+
		+
		+	I would keep things like "general", "actions", "finished", "waiting", "books to read", "mediation notes" (I'm a volunteer mediator), etc.
		+
		+
		+	The trouble is that, in this world of everything online, I couldn't access it from, say my iPhone.  Or since I run UltraEdit on my windows laptop, it wasn't handy when working on my linux box.
		+
		+
		+	After a recent laptop harddrive failure (at least I was backed up), I decided it was time to move notes online.  Being a fan of dokuwiki I setup an https site for myself with a few pre-defined pages for my notes.
		+
		+
		+	But that didn't work so well.  It's annoying to have to click edit and wait for the page to refresh.  Switching to another notes page isn't as simple as clicking a tab:  close editor; click page; click edit.  Not exactly the vision of dynamic web content that acts like a desktop application.  additionally, my notes have grown huge so loading the page takes a long time.
		+
		+
		+	Well, I have been using GWT at work and learning a little about java servlets.  Being impressed with the eclipse plugin for GWT, I figured it's time to look at a notebook application running on google appengine.  I'm just barely getting started:  [[http://www.komacke.com/svn/trunk/Notebook/|http://www.komacke.com/svn/trunk/Notebook/]] and [[http://komacke-notebook.appspot.com/|http://komacke-notebook.appspot.com/]] .
		+
		+
		+	Appengine development under eclipse is absolutely amazing.  The plugin completely emulates the appengine environment so you can run the thing completey in eclipse (and your browser, of course).  Then click the appengine button and voila, your application is running on appengine - live!  Of course you need to setup your account.  But it's like 3 things and tied to your google account - really easy to setup.
		+
		+
		+	Appengine itself looks really cool.  In about 15 minutes I added authentication using the google accounts system.  I'm just about to monkey with persisentence which will store POJO's in a database.
		+
		+
		+	It will probably take me forever (work and a young son limit my free time) but for personal projects, it's the journey.

Back to top