Blogs

After reading through Jorge's blog post on the guidelines for Liferay contributions, and after following the link to the style guidelines on the Liferay wiki, I put together a configuration file which works with Eclipse's built-in code formatter to adjust the whitespace in your code so that is compatible with the stated Liferay guidelines. To use this configuration file, go to...

A few weeks ago I blogged about Tomcat's JNI native library.  Recently, I have been at a client site trying to squeeze every bit of speed out of the servers while running on a deployment with JBoss-Tomcat.  Now, I realized that you could not just run the standard Tomcat APR code because JBoss makes their own customizations to get Tomcat to run.  Rather, JBoss distributes...

Ever needed to do file content searches? NO! Then you probably aren't a programmer... j/k I frequently have to search lots of code for some pattern. You'd think this would be a trivial task, but not even large IDE's like Eclipse make this easy for you... usually they do... but not always. So, in the cases where my IDE doesn't do the trick I use Sagasu. Sagasu is a front end for...

So ive been tweaking with the LDAP stuff recently to make it easier for people to do LDAP integration in Liferay.  We've added some default LDAP server settings (feel free to send me corrections or additions.. i know there are many more LDAP servers out there) and also tweaked the code a bit to allow live "Test" buttons for the LDAP connection, user mapping and group...

Quietly and without much fanfare, we have released the first document in our new Liferay Documentation Project. This is because it's a rather small document, but it fills a need to have some instructions for using our Plugins SDK available. Since the Plugins SDK is now the preferred method for creating portlets and themes, not having it documented was sort of a glaring omission. This...

So yes, there has been a long delay from the last time I blogged, but I thought I would come back with something that I have actually been asked a lot about recently, which is CSS Inheritance. I'm finding out that front end technologies are like Sanskrit to many server side developers, which is strange, because CSS and Javascript, to me, are easier to understand. But issues like...

One of the toughest parts of contributing to Liferay is that we are very strict with the coding and design style. We do this because we believe that keeping a very high level of consistency is what allows the product to keep evolving at maximum speed. Fortunately there are very smart people in the community that have been able to learn this rules just by looking at the code and they...

That's right, Liferay, the world's leading enterprise open source portal framework with Fortune 500 clients in the U.S. and Europe, has developed a new super easy tool that helps you write your own iGoogle Gadgets, with a real-time preview! Nifty, huh? Your friends and loved ones will watch in awe as you create whole collections of new customizable high-grade groovy gadgets before...

This is a list of things I learned at the Liferay retreat. You should not give Nerf guns to developers with pent up energy from sitting around coding all the time.  Pandemonium will ensue. Many Liferay-ers are multi-talented. We have singers, guitarists, dancers (sort of), people who are good at sports, and, um, monkeys. There is debate over whether you need to be...

In the U.S they use AIM, in Europe they use MSN, but the true and rightful King of the Instant Messaging world is still, without a doubt, ICQ. ICQ (a cleverly pronounced oronym of "I Seek You") was first released in November of 1996 by Mirabilis, and from it's downloadable birth contained some of the most outstanding features still unrealized in the 'modern' IM world. 1. Offline...

I had the pleasure of training in Santo Domingo.

Determining the best strategy for doing releases is one of the hardest challenges of developing a software product. We get lot's of feedback related to it, although it's usually in the form of indirect comments or questions. Some very common examples are:    "When are you going to release the next version? I really need feature X"    "Another release? I just...

We had a long conversation at the office regarding release process, versioning, etc, that we'll be presenting at the LA retreat this year. But in a nutshell the goals were to:- increase timeliness- improve the quality- lock down features- have a LTS / EOL plan for incremental micro (x.y.z)/ minor (x.y)releases- formalize a QA process- start a beta testing program5.0 will be almost...

Okay, I couldn't resist posting this. We had our first snow in this area today (Southern New Jersey, not far from Philadelphia, PA), and it was the triple whammy of: Christmas coming Snow Getting ready to attend the Liferay retreat that caused my two and a half year-old daughter to begin combining the three concepts in song. Though I didn't get it on video, she...

In the last few weeks I have spent quite some time trying to debug some weird problems on deployments of Liferay.  Here are a few tricks that I have come across that have proven to be pretty useful. 1. Monitoring Memory and CPU usage This is pretty basic and is quite helpful in performance tests.  Monitoring these aspects will help determine if a system is memory-bound or...

Good news all you Linux Liferay users/developers! With the most recent release of Adobe Flash Player (Version: 9,0,115,0), the new multi-file uploader available in the portal now works in Linux. I'm using Ubuntu 7.10, and though there isn't a .deb yet, I just couldn't wait anymore. I downloaded the .tar.gz package, followed the instructions and voilà, it worked! Note: I just...

4.3.5 is the latest stable and recommended production release from Liferay. Release Notes: http://support.liferay.com/secure/ReleaseNote.jspa?projectId=10014&styleName=Html&version=10260 SVN Tag: http://lportal.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/lportal/portal/tags/4.3.5/ This release includes more bug fixes. Most notable is that this fixes the problem with compiling large...

Before I joined Liferay I used to check up on Brian's work from time to time, hoping I could somehow be a part of this small piece of software called Liferay EP. As we're approaching our 9th year in development and our second annual Liferay retreat, I became a little reflective of the early days. Here's a sneak peak of Liferay EP 1.7.5 (October 10, 2002). Note that back then you had to...

This weekend is the annual Liferay retreat. That means that many of us are preparing to head to LA to meet and greet co-workers we don't often see in person. For my familly and I, it is especially nice to get away and see new places... we don't get away much. Well, mother nature was kind enough to realize that we would be away for a week and thoughtfully took it upon herself to...