I will have the OCP exam

I'll take my OCP exam in a short time. The development of To-Do application will be suspends in a short time.

During these time, my pleasure visitors can go to my OCP exam preparation blog for understanding my preparation progress; or

Reading about Google Widget Toolkit (GWT). It is a very well AJAX application development tools. I'm also trying to take time for reading it even I need to prepare my exam.

Good bless me!

Planning IT project

IT project always gives people a bad image that is out of control, delay, over budget... etc.

Why it has such image for the people? The major result is bad planning or no planning when the project is beginning.

Yes, most of the people know there has a product from Microsoft, MS Projects. However, not so much people like to spend their expensive time to use it. This situation specially happening in a SMALL / MEDIUM size company.

Even the people like to use this kind of project plan software to do their IT project. There still another problem that is...
- How to do the IT project plan
- How to estimate the IT project size
- How to control the project under the schedule, resource and archive the milestone

All these areas are very difficult to handle and fully understanding. It's impossible to explain all of these issues here. However, we can take this knowledge from different books and the corresponding project management organizations.

This is 2 famous project management organizations for IT project.
- Project Management Institute (PMI)
- Projects in Controlled Environments (PRINCE2)

To-Do Application Features

The To-Do Application features that are planning to be include in the first beta has,
- Create to-do task
- Edit the current to-do task
- Remove to-do task
- List to-do tasks
- Sorting to-do tasks by completion date
- Fields for each task has, "name", "description", "completion date", "status"

How about Eclipse Stand Widget Toolkit (SWT) ?

We have a norm in software development said that Simple is the best.   I think I should remember this when i selecting framework to develop this simple application, To-Do Application.

Because of this reason, I'm starting to try the Eclipse Stand Widget Toolkit (SWT) library.  I think this would be the best choice for me to develop the To-Do Application.

Trying other technology for developing client Application

I read the Eclipse web site (http://www.eclipse.org) today. I found the new version of the Eclipse IDE 3.2 is released.

I known it has different sub-projects that divided from the Eclipse IDE project before. And, I tried the Rich Client Platform (RCP) when it still be version 3.0. I felt that it is not really mature as i through at that moment.

For the moment, it give me a real surprise when I try to create a sample RCP Application last night. It is very easy to make a RCP application with the wizard provided in the Eclipse IDE by default.

I did a very simple RCP Application by following the tutorial that come with the Eclipse IDE. This is the screen capture of the sample program that i make. I'll make avaliable for your download once i find somewhere can let me put the file there.

Something Interesting

Oh... This one is not completely related to the To-Do application design or development... But, it is really interesting...

I found a very interesting web site http://cartoon.msn.com.cn . It can help you to create your own style cartoon face with your photo. I do to created my own cartoon face. Do you like my cartoon face?

To-Do Application Architecture

After several days’ brain storming, I have a rough idea of the To-Do Application.

Since, this is a very simple application. I'll use a client-base model to develop this application. And, the platforms independency is one of my expected requirements. I'll use Java (http://java.sun.com) as the development language.

I believe a client-based application need to have a very attractive user interface and look & feel. And, only have this make people want to use it. So, I'll try to use the SwingLabs library (http://swinglabs.org/index.jsp).

I think the coming two months will be spend on testing the usage of this library