tNook Development Blog

The database engine for displaying items was the first page that we built here at tNook. It all started when I took my wife to Jamaica for a quite week long trip. I knew that she would sleep in and I could start coding the item page that would eventually drive the design for tNook. Back then I only had an idea for the tNook engine, an engine that anyone could build a database to track anything that they collect. I would wake up really early, sit on the balcony that over looked the ocean and code the item page. It took me a few mornings to build the page but once it was done I knew that the engine would work. I sent the sample to a few people that I wanted to work with on this project and they also saw that it could work. That initial design has not changed that much until today.

The item page had a limitation where the top section could be one or two columns. If you wanted some data to span over those two columns you could not, or you had to make the entire top section only one column. This was an issue for the Pirates tNook. The card name was too big so I had to have just one column for all the data. Since there were so many fields for a card that we tracked the page was really long and people had to scroll down to see all the data. So I changed the item page so that if you wanted a column to span two columns you could do it. So now the card name and the set name span two column, there are a bunch of fields that are then split over two columns and the large text fields follow below. Now you can see all the data on one page without scrolling.

See: 062 – Firepot Specialist (U)

The build a tNook interface will be updated soon so that you can change your designs to take advantage of this feature.

Happy tNooking.

Today we promoted an important upgrade to our tNook database engine.  If you have used tNook in the past you know that we have the ability to store multi values in one field.  For example a comic book can be published by two publishers, JLA/Witchblade was published by both DC and Top Cow.  The change we implement was the ability of a multi value field to be part of the filter. 

When you go into the comic book tNook the issues and titles were changed to be filtered by publisher.  If you were to click on the publisher DC you will see a title called JLA/Witchblade. JLA/Witchblade by DC  If you clicked on the publisher Top Cow you would also see the title JLA/Witchblade  JLA/Witchblade by Top Cow.  Even thought these show up in multiple filters they are the same item and there is no need to create duplicate items.

You might be asking: Why is this change important.  The answer is that one of the tNooks that we want to build is a DVD tNook.  As you all know a DVD can be categorized by multiple Genres’ such as Comedy and Romance.  So if you click on the Romance genre you will see the DVD as well as if you clicked on the Romance genre.

Happy tNooking.

It is a hard to know when to move your focus from new features to loading more data into your systems. As a technology company you want to keep adding new features so that your site stays new, fresh and your competition behind you. But you also need lots and lots of data so that people are drawn and stay interested in your site. We at tNook have taken a long look at this issue and for our next development cycle, or sprint as we call it, we have decided to break our time into the following 3 segments:

• 55% of our resources on data;
• 30% on developing new features and bug fixes; and
• 15% on server and backend improvements.

This is a big shift for us but we understand the need more data, lots more data. Even our development tasks are focused on getting more data. For example we are adding profile pictures and a “Who Done It” section. You will be able to see the top contributors for any tNook or all tNooks. We will also have an automatic means to upgrade a person membership level based on how much they contribute back to tNook. If you add data you will get all the free trades you can make for a month, year or even life time.

Sprint 18 has been approved and will start on September 14th and will end on October 11th. We will blog and Twitter as we deploy the different elements in the Sprint. We look forward to getting you more data to collect and trade.

Happy tNooking.

Everytime I look at the image at the top of the Blog.tnook.com I am reminded of how much I appreciate the work of Jason McKeeman. For those that do not know the history of tNook, when we were first starting out we contracted Jason to do a lot of the initial code for tNook. A lot of the current look and feel of tNook was designed and developed by Jason. Jason is now looking forward to a career in animation and he will be truly missed by us at tNook. Good Luck Jason and I hope we see your name up with the greats at Pixar and DreamWorks

Welcome to the tNook Blog. This will be the place to see what we are currently working on, what we have planned for the future and anything that we find interesting on the Web. The plan is to blog once a week and whenever we have major news, a release or find something really cool.

We are currently working on getting the sandbox server back up so that people can continue to build tNooks. It was taken down to update the hardware and the OS. We are currently updating the OS on all the servers, but since we have redundancy on the web servers and the database servers you will not see those servers down as they will automatically cut over to their redundancy servers.

We spent the last month getting all the pages to work with IE8, Firefox, Google Chrome and Safari so you will see huge performance with those browsers. It is nice to see that they all work with the same code base. No more special coding for IE. Thank you very much Microsoft.

So what is coming up? Well we plan out our development cycle one month in advance. The features planned are some improvements to the UI for the wanted pages. The major focus of this development cycle is on populating the existing tNook and designing the features that will be releases next development cycle. We will also be focusing a lot on the FAQ pages so people know how to use tNook and more importantly how to build tNooks.

Looking forward to blogging again soon!

Troy