Arux Software

MCEA Technology Workshop

Sun Mar 02 15:21:58 -0800 2008

The Minnesota Community Education Association will be putting on a technology workshop this April. It is designed to showcase and compare the current and upcoming facility management, school age child care, and course enrichment software.

We will be showing our current production build of aroralite as well as a few new features and proof of concept demos. If you have been interested in seeing our product this will give you a good chance to see a brief overview. MCEA has also set up specific rooms before and after the demos for specific questions and answers related to your organzation.

If you would like to attend please send an email to jjohnson@chisagolakes.k12.mn.us to request a registration form.

The dates and locations are:

Thursday, April 3rd
Elk River Educational Technology Center
1230 School Street
Elk River, MN (map)

Friday, April 4
Shakopee High School
Door A – Second Floor Lecture Hall
100 17th Ave. West
Shakopee, MN (map)

Our Nintendo Wii Has Arrived!

Fri Nov 30 13:38:54 -0800 2007

We finally have in our possession the Ninendo Wii we will be giving away at the NCEA conference. So stop by our booth, check out the next generation in community education software and enter to win a wii. We might even set it up so people can play. Awesome give away = Awesome software? Yeah, that's a true story.

For more information about the NCEA conference check out our dedicated page for the conference.

We got our report card today...

Mon Nov 26 17:55:03 -0800 2007

Just in time for the national convention too! A few weeks ago our pilot district decided that having a third party industry consultant come review the software and processes would be a good idea. Bryant Avey from InterNuntius, Inc. came to our office and reviewed the latest version of Arora. Well... we got the results from the review today (summarized):

"Arux Software is a start-up company, and the AroraCE package is their first software product; however, the system is both well designed and well developed. AroraCE is easy to use, contains all the major requirements of enterprise software systems, and has a number of features and functions missing in many million-dollar software systems."

"The AroraCE software package is a robust, full- featured software system. The technologies, software development, and business practices employed by Arux Software are solid and comply with industry standards and best practices. Additionally, since Arux is utilizing a Best of Breed approach, their technology and software will not be at risk of becoming obsolete, legacy, or unsupportable for many years."

"In conclusion, both Arux Software and the AroraCE system, provide an excellent solution for Community Education’s business systems requirements."

In the email to the director:

"It was a pleasure working with you and with Arux on this software. You should be very proud of what you’ve accomplished with them."

If you would like more information on Arora or additional references please feel free to contact us.

NCEA Conference 2007

Sat Nov 10 11:05:21 -0800 2007

For this years National Community Education Conference in downtown Minneapolis we will be unveiling and demoing Arora. It will give everyone a chance to see how different and unique Arora really is. We will be posting up a time table of when we will be doing our different demos shortly.

Also, we will be raffling off a Nintendo wii! So come check out the booth and see for yourself why Arora is the future.

For more information on the conference we will be providing details as well as a wrap up with all our videos and slide show slides HERE.

Trac and Anonymous svn access for Whippet

Sun Oct 14 15:19:33 -0700 2007

Finally, after months of having whippet in a mostly working state and using it on for this site, we have set up access for devlopers to get it. Please note that whippet still does not have a release. This is just access to the source code for developers to play with. We currently do not have a road map for actually releasing a working stable version of Whippet yet, but we be fomulating one within the next few weeks.

You can access the Trac here: http://whippet.trac.aruxsoftware.com

or you can browse svn: http://svn.aruxsoftware.com/whippet

On the go support.

Thu Aug 30 17:45:49 -0700 2007

The last few weeks while piloting we have been in and out of the office quite a bit. To help with the communication issues and answering support questions quicker we added a few new devices.... iPhones! Every developer gets support emails from our new support system (support.aruxsoftware.com) on the phones for quicker responses.

If you have any questions about Arora or how we actually SUPPORT our products... please feel free to contact us.

Production. Finally.

Mon Jul 16 17:55:31 -0700 2007

After over 3 years of design and development: Arora is at it's pilot! Today we installed the XServe and XRaid on-site (off-site hosting is also available, just ask). Tomorrow begins the training on the school age child care portion of AroraLite. We appreciate all of the support and help South Washingtion County Schools has given us during development and are looking forward to a great pilot experience.

Not only does the software look good, the hardware doesn't look too bad itself:

If you are interested in seeing how it works in production, or would like to see a demo, please feel free to contact us.

oh, and references are available upon request ;)

Date Selecting... with a twist!

Fri Jun 15 16:05:56 -0700 2007

A lot of the Arora core relies on dates. Dates of when classes start, when people register, when facilities requests are.....etc. Some of these dates are generated by the application, but a lot of them need to be entered by users. Which creates a bit of a problem... there are a lot of way of writing something like Wednesday, June 20 2007. It can be 6/20/2007, 6-20-2007, 2007-6-20, next Wednesday... lots of options.

So we are just going to give the user this nice looking, very functional calendar:

... and done!

Not quite...that's a lot of clicking for staff/administrators. We like thinking outside the box to make some cool things happen... so of course we added our own TWIST. A smart date selector... that's right... SMART. Check it out!

It accepts all sorts of input, including: "next wednesday", "last monday", "today", "tomorrow","15th feb", "january 23 2009"... and some classic favorites ... "5/19/1985".

Once again: Cutting down data entry, one click at a time.

WANTED: Small Pilot District.

Fri May 25 13:57:31 -0700 2007

It's not 100% official, but it's official, we have signed our first pilot organization for Arora. Not only is it the first, but it's one of the largest in the state of Minnesota.

We are very excited to be able to prove that Arora works for organizations doing over $1M in registrations a year. It's a great opportunity for us, but we still want something else.... A small organization!

Seems weird that we would want a small (population LESS than 10k) organization to work with? Not really, we need to prove that Arora can meet the needs of every community education organization. So we are currently looking for a small organization who would like to stop living in 1995 and fast forward to 2007 with a great team and a great product.

If you would like to talk to us or see a demo: Contact Us

Summer Hours!

Tue May 22 13:23:43 -0700 2007

We have begun our summer hours! Unlike most companies who cut back hours during the summer we ADD hours to our work schedule. This has a lot to do with Mark and I both being done with school so we can work a full 40 hour week.

We also started work in our new office... the walls are currently pink. It's going to be painted tomorrow and then we may get around to decorating between writing ruby and answering emails. I will put up some pictures when we are all done.

New Site Design

Sat May 05 08:57:00 -0700 2007

We are please to introduce our new site design to the public. This core redesign helps us to deliver content to you in a more structured manner. The site now runs on Whippet, our not yet released open source content management system, instead of static, difficult to manage html files. It also allows us to integrate our blog into the corporate website.

Next we are going to start development on our open source support system that we are dubbing Cardigan. This support system will allow our clients to login to our site to submit bug reports, request new features, or request tweaking of existing features. We are also planning a "in browser chat" that will allow our clients to chat directly with our staff. Our current goal for Cardigan is to be completed by the release of AroraLite.

After we have finish Cardigan we will build a system to allow us to communicate and work directly with the open source developer community. This system will also be open source and have some features that developers are use to seeing in other systems. But, we are going to take it a step further and make it a system that will encompass all of our projects.

We are excited about these new systems that we are designing, but be assured that these systems are not our primary focus. Our primary focus is to finish off the Arora base system and release AroraLite. These systems will only help us streamline the processes that will occur once Arora is released, and they will provide a better client experience.

Speedup for Loading of TinyMCE editors

Thu Apr 19 18:32:22 -0700 2007

I was worried about the size of the tinyMCE javascript files and the length of time it takes to load tinyMCE into textareas. I ran across the tinyMCE Compressor.

The tinyMCE compressor is a backend for reducing the overall download and initialization time for tinyMCE. It consists of a JavaScript loader that requests a page that compresses the specified resources using GZip. This method makes the overall download 75% smaller and the number of requests will also be reduced.

I installed the tinyMCE Compressor into Whippet and the load time for tinyMCE became instantaneous. Because of this wonderful finding I will be installing the tinyMCE Compressor into the core of Arora.

All in the Family...

Tue Apr 03 01:28:19 -0700 2007

Mark is finishing up the relationship code this week, and it's some pretty interesting stuff. It kind of makes Arora stick out a bit, and by a bit, I mean A LOT! When we started designing Arora the user management was always a real hard concept to grasp. Actually, it is a really easy concept to grasp, but making a computer and database understand what's going on is not. For a visual aid, here is the slide that I used at one our recent demos:

In the slide you can see that we have two primary users, the mother and father (with different usernames/email addresses), and three children. The magic of Arora is that either parent can register any of the children, using completely different usernames. That's interesting... but nothing innovative... or is it?

So we know who the members of a family are... interesting. We know that Bill and John Jr. are brothers, and they have a sister little Susie.

Family discounts, sibling care, and family searching are just a few of the MANY advantages of relationships.

Arora... Ferrets... Searching... WHAT?

Mon Mar 05 00:52:07 -0800 2007

So we have been integrating this cool search technology called acts_as_ferret into Arora. It is a way of searching through the database VERY fast and VERY accurately. Here is a pretty graph comparing ferret to the other well known searching technologies (reference):

So it's fast and accurate? Is that good? YES! You would be surprised the number of web application (and applications in general) that have horrible search engines. Using a technology that indexes the database rather than just using an SQL full text search (or even worse LIKE statements) creates great applications. Customers are more prone to use a search than to try and navigate through categories. Think about google, there is a reason they are most peoples homepage.

Scott also took the searching to the next level for Arora... If the search is a direct hit, such as a course number or title perhaps, it goes straight to the details for that class. No point in sifting through some results when we know where you want to go, right?

Hands Off that Mouse!

Sat Jan 20 11:17:53 -0800 2007

So when we were evaluating what software is currently out there and being used we talked to a lot of people. One of the main complaints from the staff was (besides "ITS SLOW!") was "too many clicks". So how do you improve something that is a integral part of computing in general? We took a look at what was going on... it was pretty obvious... drop downs. Sure, they are great for programmers, the user can't enter bad data in that field. After all, we control the options! Standard HTML drop down are sooo 1995 though. I mean really... it doesn't even look pretty:

In the drop down above, I had to click the arrow, now I have the options, which I may need to scroll through. What would happen if I am looking for a user in an organization of 40,000+ registered users? It would be a mess!

So how can we make it better? What would happen if the drop down was SMART? Smart... like reading minds smart... Here is what we came up with:

So how does that work? Well it's pretty simple, as I type a character it starts narrowing down the list in real-time. I used the tab key to get to the field, I type a few characters, use the arrow keys to select which person, and hit enter on the person I want to select. Done. No need to touch the mouse!

I also sorted the list VERY fast, so I don't have to scroll down to the appropriate letter. It searches for both first AND last name. Imagine someone telling you their last name over the phone "N-O-V", by that time you have narrowed the users from 40,000 to 20!

If you look close you also notice the option to "add person", thats right, it can't find it, add it! Let's see your dropdown v1.0 do that ;)

Time to get Full

Sun Jan 07 01:58:20 -0800 2007

Well, It's official. I am now working on Arux Software related projects, mainly Arora, full time. I have left my previous employer and am devoting all of my professional time to Arux.

This is a big milestone in Arux Software's history as I am the first full time employee. Up until this point it has just been the 4 of us working in our spare time. Mostly weekends and some evenings. This change will provide us the opportunity to get things done faster.

I cannot wait for Steven, Mark, and who knows maybe even Scott to join me as full time employees here at Arux Software.

Why Ruby on Rails?

Mon Dec 04 13:50:37 -0800 2006

We seem to get this question a lot from the more tech savvy customers... Why are you using Ruby on Rails?

It's a good question, no doubt about that. We could have just as easily used something like PHP or ASP, but what's cool and innovative about that? Sure they are well known languages, but they lack the elegance, and most importantly, the development speed. Not to mention the awesome integration with a little buzzword we like to throw around, AJAX.

Using Ruby on Rails we can develop simple functions that query the database (which is all most web apps actually do) in hours instead of days. Rails also comes complete with "gems", this is a plugin technology that is implemented into the core of rails. There are gems for all sorts of things including: credit card processing, wysiwyg editors, pdf generation.

Finally, RoR is open source. The first thing that comes to mind when people here "open source" is FREE. That is true, but it also allows us to extend the programming language to fit your needs. We are not waiting for Microsoft to patch ASP so we can continue development or fix a problem.

Overall we have been very happy with RoR as a development platform and think you will enjoy the benefits of a much more versatile product.

Enhancing Rails' built in Javascript Effects

Wed Sep 27 01:33:21 -0700 2006

Rails has an extensive javascript library that has all kinds of helpers for ajax and dhtml built on Prototype. Prototype features a unique easy-to-use tooklit for class-driven developement. It also has a nicer to use Ajax library that I have played with (which includes DoJo). The only problem is that Prototype is lacking some nice dhtml javascript effects that we where looking for.

Enter stage right, Scriptaculous. Scriptaculous is an built on top of prototype and so it easly integrates with rails applications. Scriptaculous provides and animation framework, drag and drop, Ajax controls, DOM utilities, and unit testing.

We hope to be able to use Scriptaculous to it's full potential to help enhance the user experience of Arora and all future products.

Arux Software becomes Arux Software, Inc.

Tue Sep 19 20:04:25 -0700 2006

So now we're a real company and everything! We finished up the paperwork today to make our little (for now) venture incorporated.

Here is the Proof.

Don't worry though, just because it's legitimate and we are paying taxes doesn't mean we will be more concerned about the money than the product.

Let the coding begin!

Wed Apr 26 01:50:02 -0700 2006

Exciting times are here. Mark has committed the first code that will become the codebase for Arora. Up untill this point there has been a great deal of planning and some prototype work (in php). We have been discussing with local community education orginizations for a few months and have decided to go ahead and create a new solution that will change the landscape of online class registrations and facilities management for community education.