Ruby On Rails Development

May 17, 2011

I just came across an odd situation in Ruby on Rails where I was working on a fairly complicated form where sometimes you displayed and were editing an existing record, but sometimes you were displaying a blank form and creating a new one. This all worked when I originally was just creating a new record each time but when I also allowed for users to update the data using the same form I hit a problem.

Aug 27, 2010

Building Martel Maides a new website was a fairly large undertaking and involved a website build, plenty of custom functionality as well as a complex integration project with their existing back-end system. The website look and feel was provided by a third-party designer and my task was to build the entire site from the ground up including some elements of design, but mostly a large amount of HTML and back-end code which in this case was Ruby.

Apr 13, 2010

Fairmoves was a website for a startup estate agent in Guernsey, the project gave me the chance to write a Ruby on Rails application and involved a really slick integrated design. The design used a simple informational front page with a scriptaculous slider control that allowed users to select a price range to view on the property listing page. The listing for each property was put together from highly structured database fields that allowed for some slick graphics indicating the number of bedrooms, bathrooms etc.

Nov 29, 2009

Find was a joint venture between myself and two collegues that intends to satisfy a niche in the Guernsey market. Many websites exist throughout the UK that offer used cars, estate agents and property etc. but with Guernsey having difficult import/export issues as well as being isoldated from the point of view of commuting – a customer from Guernsey has very little use of UK wide searches. I was responsilbe for the core design of the site functionality as well as all of the development and some design.

Jun 28, 2009

This project was to build an online system with various user roles for requesting, completing and reviewing risk reporting questionnaires. Ruby on Rails seemed the best framework to use for this and a lot of the system simply uses styled versions of the standard Rails scaffolds. The core functionality of the system was to track the workflow of risk questionnaires and these are presented in a series of tabs, each tab containing a table of questionnaires in that “state”.

May 14, 2008

Despite the project still being in the early stages of development I managed to get to the final of Schroders sponsored Bright Young Things and received some great advise from my mentor Julian Winser. I’m sure this will all be a great help in the long-term development of this creative agency workflow tool. It even managed to generate some publicity in the local press. So, what is briefus.com [briefus.com][2] is for anyone who has to deliver work against deadlines such as project managers and helpdesks but the emphasis is on creative teams.

Aug 21, 2007

Rails migrations are brilliant. I say this because until now I had heard of them, seen articles about them and like poor misguided VB programmers I had completely ignored them. They make loads of potentially tricky database migration, rollback and versioning issues a doddle but mainly (from my point of view) they mean I can develop more in ruby and less in SQL. This makes my development faster, easier and more standardised which in turn makes my life simpler, calmer and more fun – everybody wins.

Mar 6, 2007

As the companies creative team (web and traditional) grew, we required a system for managing our briefing system. I designed and wrote briefus to meet this need. All members of our marketing department have access to the system and are able to create new briefs. One of the creative team leaders then assigns the brief to a member of the team and sets deadlines. Members of the team manage their work using their personal “to do” list and brand teams manage their briefs through the brand pages.