1. First look up the Printer Name on your Linux box, it is best if it is a single word and under 20 characters. You can typically find this by opening a document, selecting Print and it should be the name in the drop down.
2. Next you will have a script that call rdesktop like so:
   rdesktop -r printer:<YOUR PRINTER NAME ON LINUX>="WINDOWS DRIVER NAME AS IT APPEARS IN ADD PRINTER" <YOUR SERVER IP ADDRESS>
3. Run the rdesktop script and login
4. Go to Printers and Faxes
5. Right-click on the Printer that matches your Linux printer’s name and choose Properties
6. Print a test page!

If you do this, you are guaranteed the following:

1. It is easy to maintain and understand the code you wrote months later
2. Chances are your application will not be the quickest in response
3. You will make use of techniques you fully understand than trying to adapt ones that you are unfamiliar with and may implement wrong

So how does JSON differ from returning XML in your AJAX requests? Lets first look at the advantages of XML.

1. Standardized and easily serialized into via .NET
2. The XML is easy to read all within itself
3. You can make use of XSLT, DTDs, etc

How about disadvantages of XML?

1. It is slow in comparison to JSON
2. It can be clumsy when not designed properly

Now for the advantages of JSON:

1. It is faster than XML to parse in JavaScript
2. There are addin’s you can install in .NET or a library in PHP to serialize a JSON string from an object
3. It is hard to make this clumsy as it is based on the Object Design

And the disadvantages of JSON:

1. It is harder to read the serialized output
2. You can’t use XSLT, DTDs, or something of the sort to validate or style the request

As for myself, I am a JSON person. I didn’t used to be though. My original AJAX applications were focused around XML primarily because I could make use of an XSLT and I always validated against a schema. However, JSON has won me over due to speed. JSON’s speed is just ridiculously fast and it showed when I converted a major application over to it. I saved nearly a third of the time it took to do a fairly simple task.

However, pick the poison that you understand most, otherwise, it could have detrimental affects.

Kiosk, uses Ajax in interesting ways to provide a better experience, but with that, the Ajax applications were built as each page was assembled. This caused functionality across pages to get a bit messy or functionality shared across pages to get thrown into individual files. Well the problem with individual files, is that is yet another file for the browser to download.

So before I get any further, let me discuss refactoring and how it can solve many performance binds your application may be experiencing.

To start off, refactoring is taking common code, or code that is used across pages or frequently and moving it to a more global location so it can be called easier and the code only has to be written once.

So where can this help?

• First of all, by refactoring code into a single global file, you can limit the number of HTTP requests if that file is accessible via the web. Since your common code is in a single file, the browser only has to fetch that code once, and will then likely cache that file for each page after, giving you even better performance.
• Secondly, by placing the common code in a global method/function, you are writing less code. As now when you need to call that code on your second page, it is already written, so just call the function. Otherwise, you would need to write the code all over again.
• Thirdly, less code equals smaller files. By refactoring your code, you can have smaller file sizes and in turn that is quicker to download, quicker to parse, and quicker to execute.

Now in my situation, I took about 4 JavaScript files and combined them into a single file adequately named “general.js”. The file contained code to automatically log the user out after a set amount of inactivity in the UI (User Interface). Secondly, it contained the version checking mechanism calls that see if they are running the latest version of the software. Unfortunately, those are the only two things it does right now, but as the project progresses, I am sure more utilities will get added in this file.

My next task is to refactor the Data Grid functionality so it is 1) XHTML, 2) easy to build complex columns with complex rows, 3) customizable by identifying StyleSheet classes for the columns and rows. Hopefully, I can get my head around this idea and get it working with little trouble to the programmer.

So what can you think of that you need to refactor? What performance gains do you suspect you will achieve with the refactoring you do? Any performance markers?

Ajax has many advantages. You do not have to parse content/page headers, you can parse XML, you can build objects out of JSON serializations, and above all there are a lot of frameworks that are cross-browser friendly so you do not have to worry about writing the framework yourself.

A Socket Connections’ advantages are much smaller in my opinion. There is no browser limitations, which is a major advantage, keeping it browser independent. It can support any type of response content, JSON serializations, XML, HTML, strings, etc.

So what about the disadvantages? Ajax has the complications of cross-browser friendliness, but that has been removed by frameworks doing all that hard work for us. Ajax’s biggest disadvantage is probably the lack of JavaScript standards being followed by each browser. Though this is removed by using popular frameworks, it matters for the rest of your JavaScript code to setup the Ajax event.

So how about Socket Connections? Socket Connection have the complication of trying to figure out where the response data starts and where the response headers end. Secondly, they are language dependent. Not all languages support sockets and some may make it very complicated to use them though, whereas, Ajax is getting easier and easier to use.

What are your thoughts?

For example, imagine having the ability to upload 1000 images for all of your products using cpCommerce or a different cart variant. You would have to upload them individually. Now, take a look at how kiosk handles it.

Let’s take a look at the Kiosk Image Area located in the Administration Area. This area has many options, but look at the intriguing “Find FTP’d Images”. Now that is what I am talking about!

Now, this is the folder where the images are stored in Kiosk. Look carefully, and you will see a folder named “FTP”. This is the folder where your 1000 images should be uploaded to.

To show you that this works, I have placed over 600 images in the folder! I realize that isn’t exactly 1000, but it should be enough to prove it will work with 1000 as well. Now, that I have the images placed, I need to head back to the Administration Area to complete this process.

Back in the Images Administration Area, I clicked on the “Find FTP’d Images” and this is what you will be presented with! Now realize, only one process of this is able to run at a time. So if you have 4 people updating the store, when one person runs this command, it will prevent the other 3 from running it too. With that said, the process also checks to see where in the process it is. For example, it checks every few seconds to see if it is finished inserting the images, or if it is still running. Now, I know what you are thinking. What about the Time Out Limit in PHP? How do you get around that? Well that is my secret and you can’t figure it out unless you pull down the Source Code from the SVN Repository.

Finally, when it is all said and done, you the user are prompted with this final screen. The process is complete.

Upon clicking on “Close” it will reload the page to show all of your images now listed within the application. That’s it! It doesn’t get any easier than that! Feel free to comment and leave your remarks, as this is going to make kiosk stand out from Joe Smoe and you got my word on that!

Images are entirely reusable. So if you want to show a Product’s Image as the Category Image too, YOU CAN! And you can do it without uploading another file! I like to think kiosk is taking what cpCommerce started and taking it to a whole new level learning from its’ mistakes, and hopefully you all agree.

Well that is enough on that for now, I will update everyone once again, when I have these sections entirely done. Then you can pull it from the kiosk subversion repository and give it a try yourself.

I wrote a few sample scripts using it in less than 5 minutes! 5 minutes!! I cannot stress that enough. I was amazed at the type of complexity I could write in just a few minutes of using it. Now, I am not a “big” M$ fan, but I am willing to give credit when due, and they deserve credit for this. I am truly pleased with the fact it works in Firefox, it works in IE, and it probably works in Opera (though I haven’t tested it). It has files for all languages, to handle currencies, dates, etc. Totally amazing.

I have so many plans on how to use this to perform more advance functionality in several of my applications and best of all, I didn’t have to write my own XmlHttpRequest methods.

At work, I write my own Ajax utilities. Primarily because we run .NET v1.1, and it is just FREAKIN’ easy to serialize a class straight into XML than write methods to output JSON. So, if you didn’t figure it out yet, I wrote prototypes in JavaScript to read the XML and make useable objects in JavaScript that could easily be handled. This process seems to be a bit slow, and though its effective, its costly to wait 5 seconds for the process to finish.

So why don’t I just write my own for my upcoming applications? Well the difference is, the upcoming applications are in PHP. PHP does not have nice ways of serializing directly into XML, so that is less of a reason for continuing my current approach. Plus, with it taking 5 seconds to run, it kinda seems like its slow. I visit many sites whose Ajax runs much quicker than that.

So let’s hear it! Tell me which Ajax framework works best for you, what are its’ strengths, its’ weaknesses? Leave nothing to the imagination.

I am not going to go into a lot of detail over what the project is about or its purpose, but lets just say it will ROCK!  I have been working on the schematics for the past 16 days, and with only two tables away, I am looking to get a few developers who may wish to contribute.

If the need is there, I will setup a SVN repository on this site.

To give you an idea on what type of help I will be needing, here are a few specs of the application so far:

1. Entirely Object-Oriented
2. Database interaction is inherited by all of the other classes
3. The Database class inherits the Error handling class, to ensure all error handling is done in the same fashion.
4. Design templates to direct the output of the pages is a REQUIREMENT, whether that templating will follow the footsteps of cpCommerce or go a different direction is still up in the air.

So basically, I am looking for several programmers with OO experience in PHP, though any OO experience in any language is likely to be beneficial.  I will be looking for a few Graphic designers to design templates for the system.  Looking for something sleek and fast loading.  Knowledge of CSS and XHTML is preferred.

If you are interested, leave a comment.  I will be checking it from time to time and when enough leave a remark, I will setup the repository and get in contact with each person.

Oh, and the name is “kiosk”.