[wp-hackers] [GSOC-Proposal] Application prototype

[Sebastián Ventura]

This is my application prototype. I would love if people could comment on my
ideas and complain with the way I want this to be done.

Thanks in advanced,
Sebastián Ventura


Project Proposal
----------------
Project proposal on my blog: http://www.botplatypus.com/?p=19

Well that explains pretty much everything without details, so here are the
details:
For video uploading I would like to add the functionality of choosing HTML5
in core WP when you are uploading videos. By default the option should be
"HTML5 or Flash" so when people want to see the video they will have two
tabs on top of the video to choose which one to use; I don't believe in
browser sniffing because as browsers are speeding their way through
improvements I think that this will cause problems (there is a plugin for a
HTML5 that doesn't have Opera, which supports ogg/theora, as one of the
HTML5 browsers), so I think is best for the user of the webpage to decide on
this.
The Flash version is exactly how videos work nowadays in WP. The HTML5
version would try to play the video with the browsers codecs (I think it
will be best only supporting ogg/theora for its "open sourceness" but this
can be changed) and if it fails a link for a download of the video would
appear.
The second proposal is adding a slideshow option to the top of the add new
blog post page, so people can just simply click on the symbol (that would be
next to videos and images when you are posting a new psot) and add as many
pictures as they like as well as different templates on how the slideshow
should look. They should also be able to add descriptions for each image
uploaded that would change as the images change. The blog post would be a
static thing in the slideshow.
I think that AJAX is what should power the slideshow so the browsers don't
have to refresh the whole page to show each image and description. I would
also love if there could be a way for adding different templates to
slideshows.
Lastly, I would like to add a gallery core functionality to WP that would
work in the same way as categories do, with the only difference being that a
gallery would only have images and/or slideshows (maybe videos too). This
would be separate from Categories and there should be a page for each
gallery letting people see thumbnails of the pictures on the galleries and
see the image with the blog post when they click on them (although this last
part is a template thing that should be added to the default template). Each
time someone uploads media they can choose if it should be added to a
gallery (maybe even letting different images on a slideshow have different
galleries).
And, adding on this last topic, I think it would be great to add into the
slideshow thing an option to make a slideshow from an existing gallery.

Schedule of Deliverables
------------------------
The schedule will be divided in the three parts.
I will have the videos upload and the slideshows completely functional, but
not styled nor tested, about one third of the program; the first two weeks
will be for the videos, the third should be for the slideshow, and the
fourth should be for fixing both of them. As I enter more into the code the
second third would be implementing the galleries and having them completely
coded and tested.
The third third of the progam should start with uniting slideshows with
galleries and after that is done (which should only take a week at most),
the testing of the first and styling of both should be done during what is
left of the last third of the program.

As I live in South America, I will have midterms exams through the coding
(June-July) but I don't believe this will be an issue if all goes well (and
the prospective is good).


Work/Internship Experience
--------------------------
I currently work in the Banco Hipotecario del Uruguay in Infraestructure, so
I have to be very versatile to work in different programming environments
and work in group to solve different programming problems that may arise in
Development and in Production envrionments.

Academic Experience
-------------------
I am a student of the Universidad de la República here in Uruguay studying
Computer Engineering, and planning of finishing all courses by next year. I
am in the fourth year of a five year program, having only lost one course
(which is somehow optional in fact) and I will be an Engineer Analyst (which
is the mid-career title) by mid-year.
I have done an intensive course of PHP and MySql (and got a 100% in the
final evaluation), and have experience working for myself in this area
having done two webpages that are powered with Wordpress (with modified code
for the templates and some of the core to make it work as I wished); I have
also done a chat prototype that simulates a chat environment with random
answers and random people.

Why WordPress
-------------
I chose Wordpress because I use it a lot. As I said earlier I mantain two
webpages (one still in development) powered by Wordpress and I think it's an
excelent tool for many different things. Giving back to it what I can is one
of my goals.