Viddler

The Viddler Lab is going to be the one-stop-shop for all Development needs on Viddler's platform. We'd like to begin adding features, tools, and documentation to this area on a daily/weekly basis.

We had grandiose ideas, and then we decided to pull them back and just "release early, release often". This is the current approach we're taking.

We're going to begin by simply keeping everyone up-to-date on our own projects, and those that we are made aware of by the development community. However, we'd like to extend 3rd party involvement in the Viddler Lab starting next week.

We have some ideas, but we want to hear from you. What do you think we absolutely need to make developing with Viddler easy, complete, and best of all, fun?

We're going to start off by editing the front page of the lab to resemble Google Code's. We'll aggregate this groups' discussion threads, the Viddler Lab blog, and the videos from this group right onto the front page of the lab (look for this change next week). This should make it much easier to "get a glimpse" of what is going on.

The next thing we'd like to add would be up to you. We're leaning towards a Project Directory where you can sign in using your Viddler username/pass and register your project. It would include the following: Title, URL, logo (64px by 64px), screencast (any Viddler URL), description, and category. Should we add anything?

What else would you like to see? Hosted source code control for your projects? A bug tracker for you to use? Let us know to what extent we should build out the Lab and we'll try our best to make those things happen over the coming weeks.

Needed more than anything is up-to-date documentation and code samples. I would also be interested in a DjangoSnippets.com database where snippets of code can be shared with a kind of "look what I did and you can do too!" kind of flair. Thanks for asking :)

tgob: Wow, I'm really glad you made this suggestion because this wasn't even something I would have thought of. Thanks for recommending it!

Having a specific db of community Projects would be fantastic. Spotlighting, randomly looking; everything becomes easier if you have a single db, rather than just a forum for people to say what they are doing. The forum is good too .. but we're devs, we should be able to have some kind of "file" containing some kind of contextual "information" :).

It's better to for reminders and wotnot. Each Project could have it's own RSS feed, or could point to another RSS feed. Some way to be notified when another Dev / Team has updated.

A good community will give and receive. Code snippets is a great way to do this. You could also have someone (you guys or artbitrary 3rd Party) doing reviews of Projects. Maybe not reviews, maybe (i think you've talked about this) valued opinions on the Project as it stands currently. And also perhaps a method for allowing ideas to be given by other devs.

Course, you want to make sure you're not giving too much crap that noone is going to use after the initial flurry. So kudos Colin for asking the question, and much wisdom in deciding what best to do following :).

Regarding the Project Directory, it would be nice if a way to interact with the developer is available on the Project page. Even if this was a simple comment system, developers could provide each other feedback or suggestions while keeping it all at the Lab so everyone can benefit from the conversation.

While opening up a Trac/Google Code-styled source control and ticket management system might become a slightly larger task, I believe it will be good for the long run. Rather than have us spread our code across our own Google Code projects or personal SVNs, its best to keep it under the Viddler roof. The hackers and tinkerers among us can easily come across trouble tickets or bugs and submit relevant patches for consideration. New developers will be able quickly find code samples this way, too. Everyone can quickly get an idea of the pulse of the developer community and see where extra effort needs to be applied. If for nothing else, this type of system is the ideal way to begin to manage the various libraries, wrappers, and samples that will start flowing in as the platform increases in popularity.
The Project Directory could sort of integrate with this in the future, though you wouldn't be required to enable the source management side if you didn't want to.
I'm not expecting this part soon, because you got to start with baby steps. I just believe it would work really well as time goes on.

Lee: Thanks for your feedback. I have some great ideas for the Project Directory that I will write up on the lab blog once I get a few things off of my shelf. This way, we'll all develop the roadmap together.

Thanks for your input!

Can we have the ability to string a bunch of videos together? Apologies if this already exists.

But let's say I wanted to put together a "best of" showcase of my Viddler videos. Being able to drag and drop them around in a "Movie of Movies" would be ultra cool.

theunguru: Great idea! We actually have something just like that in the pipeline, so keep your eyes peeled. In the meantime, we have an undocumented "play all" player that you can try out. Just add "playAll=true" as a flashvar in your embed code. It will allow people to play all your videos through the same player.

I agree that the wiki needs alot of attention. Also I like having one place to go for information. Right now there are three places to check for updated information 1.the wiki, 2. the group forums, 3. the lab pages. which one should I start with first and which is the authoritative source?
A single point makes it easy because as much as I love interaction I really dont want to spend that much time on the developers site when I need to be building stuff.

jerome: Excellent point. Lab.viddler.com is going to be your one-stop for everything dealing with Developer information, and we'll aggregate everything else to that page.