The company I currently work for permits us to define self-indulgent personal objectives which factor heavily into our bonuses each half year.  A lot of people take the easy way out (quite frankly, because they can) and do pretty basic things like give presentations or do other less-than-ambitious projects.  I try not to do this myself if my core project work is at all manageable.  Sadly, this is less often than I’d like.  But I digress.

This half (note that much of the half is already expired!) I have decided to combine several of my personal technology interests into a project which will reinforce my knowledge of each.  The project will be a Rails-powered website which leverages the YUI and YUI-Ext user interface widgets.  The database will be MySQL and I will endeavor to keep the markup clean and semantic and the Javascript unobtrusive.  I’m going to make some concessions in the validatability of the markup and the degradability of the site because I’ll be making heavy use of Javascript.  That said, alternative UIs are definitely possible, I’m just probably not going to bother.

So what is the application?  Its modeled after a Mac-based information organizer utility called Yojimbo.  You can store bookmarks, notes, web page archives, serial numbers, and passwords within the Mac-based utility.  This is obviously easily done in a Wiki or online spreadsheet, but the point is not necessarily to create a whiz-bang application, but to learn the technology.

Since Yojimbo is designed to be run on a Mac, it has a single-user usage model.  I’m going to tweak that slightly and add some multi-user facets to make it a useful utility for my team at work.  Quite frankly, I need something like this to track various serial number and passwords that come into play daily.  I’m not blessed with great mental recall, so this utility will be helpful for me at the very least.

My secondary objectives are to expose my workplace to some of these “new” technologies.  We are completely Java right now.  Further, most people have a tenuous grasp on standards-based markup and next to no knowledge of Javascript.  As you might expect, our apps most of the time resemble the Extreme Makeover Home Edition before house.

Along the way, I hope to post a few notes on the implementation here.  I’ve not seen much blogging on YUI + Rails, so maybe I’ll help to fill a void.  I’m not sure how the folks at Bare Bones Software (makers of Yojimbo) will respond to this type of project, so its unlikely that I’ll be able to put the site up publicly.  If they are amenable, I’ll see what I can do and maybe make it available.

Hopefully, this is of interest to some who may wander by.