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Photo library viewing blade

BilthovenYank

Photo library viewing blade
« on: May 14, 2002, 01:38:34 AM »
Does anybody know of any packaged blades that work similar to the MP3 streaming blade but allow one to browse through thumbnails of images in nested subdirectories?  If not, has anybody ever written a perl CGI app script that does this?

Tanner

Re: Photo library viewing blade
« Reply #1 on: May 14, 2002, 03:30:33 AM »
what's the MP3 plugin' that does this? It sound nice! :)

Andrei Taylor

Re: Photo library viewing blade
« Reply #2 on: May 14, 2002, 02:45:31 PM »
The MP3 plugin streams MP3's from an ibay works well.

Dub Dublin

Re: Photo library viewing blade
« Reply #3 on: May 14, 2002, 07:51:35 PM »
Right now, no one but Mitel can write blades.  That's because (as I understand it) Mitel has so far refused to release the documentation for either creating blades or the blade API.  As a result, only Mitel can create blades, and the code apparently limits blades to being distributed from the Mitel site.  (In fairness, the blade architecture has a place-holder for "unsupported" blades, but none of these are allowed now.)

Giving others the ability to add blades would be a great move, but one that Mitel seems to be threatened by - I suppose they feel that they would have a hard time getting people to part with $1500/year for their service if credible alternatives are available just by flipping on a few blades.  They're right, but they're having a hard time getting people to part with that already: Mitel's 3x price increase since buying e-smith has effectively priced their supported version right out of the market it was intended to serve.

[rant]From where I sit, Mitel can either open this up and let e-smith improve, or lose control to a fork that the external developers will eventually demand. (Such a fork would be likely to quickly become the preferred flavor.)  In my opinion, Mitel's position is untenable because it fails to recognize Joy's law:  No matter how many brilliant people you have, you'll find most of the best people don't work for you.  You need a strategy that acknowledges and leverages that.  Mitel doesn't have one.  If they do, I'm available.[/rant]

Dan Brown

Re: Photo library viewing blade
« Reply #4 on: May 14, 2002, 11:39:01 PM »
Dub Dublin wrote:

> Right now, no one but Mitel can write blades.  That's because
> (as I understand it) Mitel has so far refused to release the
> documentation for either creating blades or the blade API.

    Not exactly correct.  Some documents have been written and posted to the devinfo list describing just what a blade is, and the source to existing blades is also available.  From those, it should be quite possible to build a blade.  That doesn't, however, answer the question of how to make accessible through the server manager.  As a result, I have created what I believe to be a proper blade, but I don't have a way (that I know of) to test it.

    Of course, there's nothing stopping you (or me, or anybody else) from looking at the blades code and figuring from there...

    One of the documents that explains a little bit about blades is at http://myezserver.com/downloads/mitel/howto/blades-howto.html.

    A standard rule of argument (if not of common courtesy) is "never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity"--or, put more generally (and less rudely), don't attribute to sinister motives that which can be adequately explained by non-sinister motives, which is what I think you're doing here.  You say that Mitel has "refused to release" the documentation.  It's true that they have not released complete, clear, concise documentation, but they have repeated stated that they intend to do so.  It's possible that they're lying, but it's also possible that they simply have limited resources and have assigned this a low priority.  You seem to believe that the documentation exists and they're keeping it from us; I expect it probably doesn't exist in a usable format.

Randall

Re: Photo library viewing blade
« Reply #5 on: June 09, 2002, 02:17:15 AM »
Dub,
Ever hear the term "Driving while blind"?  Well "U" are... If you check some of the posts answering user's problems and comments such as yours, you will some of the answers and solutions come from the engineers and staff of e-smith.com .  As one of them wrote in answering another frustrated user, they support and take care of their paying customers first.  Then they work on answering questions from those of us not paying for the free software and at the same time trying to suck out whatever knowledge is left  at the end of an already long day.  I used netmax file server for years, and believe me there was no free software downloads, little to nothing in the way of add on's,  NO free email support past the 30 day purchase agreeement, and probably things there havn't changed.  They are there for one thing only.  To make enough money to pay the engineers for one more day,   I know I sound rude, and I too in the past have said nasty things about the folks with which I had purchesed their software.  But, I know my place here.  I am here for nothing more than personal growth....  and to build the biggest play toy on my block!