Last November we switched to Python as the principal language for all new software development projects at work, ditching Microsoft Visual C++ and PHP in the process Last Friday we released our first Python application to our customers for both Windows and Linux users.

Although we make good use of Open Source software development tools and methodologies the application we have just written is propritary and the source can not be released publically, therefore we needed to compile, or freeze, the Python script in order to create a stand alone executable. Tools that do this have been around for sometime, however our application makes use of Win32 Extensions for Python and WMI on Windows, DBUS/HAL on Linux, wxPython on both, and a number of other modules. This is quite a big ask for the Python script compilers and initially the only tool which could build this lot successfully was py2exe. Sadly that only solves part of the problem since it is a Windows only tool

Then we found bbfreeze, which supports both Windows and Linux with Mac OS X support being actively developed. bbfreeze has a simple build API and we were soon using it to build stand alone exectuables for both Windows and Linux. Everything is peachy, all we needed was as means to install our application.

Enter InstallJammer. InstallJammer is a multiplatform GUI installer designed to be completely cross-platform and functions on Windows, most versions of UNIX with support for MacOS X coming soon. Perfect! We have now packaged our application using InstallJammer to create simple Next, Next, Finish installers which look and function the same on both Windows and Linux.

In the fullness of time we are planning to release our application on Mac OS X too, by that time we anticiapte that bbfreeze and InstallJammer will be upto speed with support for that platform. Just thought I’d share our experiences and I’d be interested to hear from anyone who has had to do the something similiar and what tools they used?

The subject says it all, an extremely useful resource.

• http://www.tonyyoo.com/protolize/

I did some work on my Jaws template Stanley last night and made good progress getting it nearer to completion. By using a little CSS trick all the pages at Flexion.Org are now printer friendly, something I have wanted to get working for ages. This is all transparent to the reader and doesn’t require any server based code

I have also improved the cross browser compatibility considerably and fixed a number of outstanding bugs, I have tested Stanley with Firefox 1.06, Opera 8.5 and Internet Explorer 6.0 and all three browsers render the pages the same. I even had time to test with Internet Explorer 5.0, Elinks (a console based browser), Amaya and Dillo and was pleased to see that they all degrade cleanly, yah!

There is still room for improvement and there are several Jaws gadgets which I still need to theme, but that shouldn’t take too long now the heavy lifting is out of the way.

I have also got an entirely CSS formatted version in the works called Stanley-CSS which is also XHTML 1.0 Strict compliant. Although Stanley-CSS has source ordered content (better for search engines) and it works and degrades cleanly for all the browsers mentioned above, the style sheet is huge due to all the browser hacks which have to be implemented. So for the sake of my sanity I have decided to put that on a back burner for now :-/

Stanley is the template I have been designing for Jaws and is currently the default template here at Flexion.Org. I haven’t done any work on Stanley for a few weeks but over the last few evenings I have been working on some improvements.

This round of updates adds support for Live Bookmarks and the Control Panel (admin stuff) has the same consistent look as the user facing pages. Blog, Phoo and File Browser pages are cleaned up and some tables have been removed in favour of CSS, yah! The Weather, Visit Counter and Blog side block templates are much improved using a smaller font and having all tables removed, double yah! The page footer now includes an appropriate copyright notice and the all important Hacker Emblem

New graphics have been added for the various Atom and RSS feed types and the weather icons have been completely replaced. These new graphics are completely contained within Stanley an do not require any changes the Jaws core files. The colours used are now consistent between the CSS and images to give a unified appearance.

Everything works flawlessly with Firefox 1.0.6 (as expected), Opera 8.5 exhibits one slightly annoying issue I will have to work around and Internet Explorer 6.0 will require extensive work a rounds, typical!

I am going to help my in-laws create a website to advertise their house. I don’t create my web designs from scratch these days I try to re-use stuff which other (more talented) web designers have made freely available. Here are my essential links to free CSS/HTML template resources…

• Ruthsarian Layouts – Six good-looking, free CSS page layout templates, complete with colors, headings, etc
• Bluerobot Layout Reservoir – Two and three-column page skeleton CSS layouts
• Glish CSS Layout techniques – Two, 3 and 4 column skeleton CSS layouts
• The Layout-o-matic – Enter page width, number of columns, and padding and it generates CSS and HTML skeleton layout
• Little Boxes – Various box layout CSS stylesheets
• Open Source Web Design – Various complete page templates free for use
• Web Builders Toolkit – Many more links to template resources
• The Beauty of CSS Design – A demonstration of what can be accomplished visually through CSS-based design

I have just finished hacking together a new theme for Jaws 0.5.x, which I have named Stanley, and is now the default theme on this site. I have still got to fix a couple of bugs and make sure that it is compatible with browsers other than Firefox I wanted a theme which was crisp and clean, but also fully compatible with Jaws, so I decided to blend some of my favourite themes together.

Stanley is inspired by the Kubrick theme which is popular among bloggers and although the Kubrick graphics have been borrowed the style sheet and layout are derived from the ”jaws”, ”orange-grey” and ”simple-green” themes which are bundled with Jaws. As a result Stanley is properly Jaws compatible, in that left and right layouts work, all the CSS elements are supported and CSS tweaks are used throughout to improve the visual appeal.

Once Stanley is finalized I will added the appropriate credits and license and make it available for download.

After fiddling around with the Jaws setup for a while I have finally settled on something which I am happy with. Once I found the StaticPage ‘default_page’ setting in the registry I was very happy

I will enable more gadgets as I find a use for them, but my next task will probably be creating my own theme or at least combining ideas from several existing themes.