danwebb.net - Misc

It's Been A Long Time...

2008-06-23T22:56:00Z

But I’ve not just been sitting on my arse playing GTA IV, oh no. Well, not all the time anyway. The reason I’ve not posted anything (or been particularly active on the web in general) is that I’ve been damn busy. Most importantly, Catherine kindly gave birth to our first son, Max, back in March which has been quite a change and sapped a lot of my hacking time. I have to say though, despite the horror stories that many veteran parents like to feed you, our experience has only been good. In fact, not good, great. I recommend this reproducing lark.

Secondly, I’ve been hacking away nearly full time on one of my favourite projects to date, Peoples Music Store with LRUG stalwart and renowned anarchist, James ‘Bringing London To Its Very Knees’ Darling which is maturing nicely under private beta as we speak. Peoples Music Store is a great idea from some of the guys behind bleep.com whereby users can construct and customise their very own download store from the music they love then get free music themselves if people buy from their store. It’s a great way to both promote and show off you’re own music taste or in depth genre knowledge and find new music from stores you trust while getting some free digital swag along the way. I’m probably not explaining it well so just drop me a line if you want and invite and the site will explain itself. Public launch is coming in a month or so.

Building Peoples Music Store has been a great learning experience. We run the site on a cloud computing platform and from content ingestion to audio preview delivery to application servers to download packaging and delivery everything has been designed to scale horizontally – and I’m pretty proud of it. Thin, Rack, Sphinx, God, Starling and a whole load more cool open source gear is all running in there. I really need to get to blogging some of what I’ve discovered about working with Rack. It simply is the dog’s bollocks.

So, enough of the excuses. What’s on the horizon?

Speaking and Conferences

I’ve taken some time of speaking and conferencing in general so as to spend lots of time with Catherine and Max but come September I’m restarting the conference trail. Firstly, I’m doing a presentation and a tutorial (with Jarkko Laine) at RailsConf Europe all about JavaScript related Rails stuff and I’m likely to have a slot at @media Ajax as well. Also, I’ll be heading to dConstruct as is the tradition.

Hacking and Open Source Business

Although I’ve not commited to Low Pro or Low Pro JQ for a good while now they are both very much alive. I’ve simply not come across anything that I’ve felt the need to add for a while. If you have any suggestions or patches do let me know. I’ve actually got time to commit them at the moment. Another little project that I’m hoping to get off the ground is called Evil which is going to contain lots of Merb/Rack goodness. The first by-product of which is the merb_openid gem for consuming OpenID in Merb apps (it’s still not quite production ready though so don’t go using it just yet). I’ll let you know what Evil actually does when (or if) I actually get something working.

So, that’s all for now. Just a bit of a status report. I promise I’ll get some useful content written that you actually care about very soon.

danwebb.net Dunk Low

2007-12-25T16:36:00Z

Thanks Catherine! The real things are on there way in a couple of weeks. Happy Christmas, Peeps.

Flash vs. Ajax: It's time to expand your toolbox

2007-03-20T04:03:00Z

I’ve decided not to write the obligatory SXSW wind down post as all your favourite bloggers already have and there’s no point in adding to the pile but I’d like to talk about one particular topic that came up in Jonathan Boutelle’s Ajax or Flash:What’s right for you? panel. In the panel he talked, quite generally, about the relative advantages of each platform, examined services like You Tube, Slideshare and several others and essentially came to the conclusion that both have their place and are not mutually exclusive. In fact, it seems that hybrid Flash/Ajax applications have the best of both worlds and that developers who’s skills lie in both Flash and Ajax will become more and more valuable.

For quite a large proportion of my career I’ve been a Flash developer starting round about Flash 4 with my final commercial work being done with MX 2004. I was even a beta tester for MX at one point. In fact, thinking about it I’ve probably spent an equal amount of time working with Flash as I have with JavaScript but of late, and mostly since the Web Standards movement took hold, I’ve been working in the field of HTML/CSS/JS (for front end work) almost exclusively so this panel struck a cord with me. I left the room with a mission: update my Flash knowledge by learning about ActionScript 3 and Flex 2 but more importantly examine more fully how Flash can fit in with more modern (read: trendy) web development trends like REST, semantics and friendly URLs and how this can all interface with JavaScript and HTML…

Flash has some really quite incredible features that we struggle with implementing with HTML/CSS/JS: Sound, Dynamic vector drawing, Sockets, local storage, video. I could go on. Why the hell are we struggling with <canvas> and VML? Comet is essentially a hack while XMLSockets are built in to Flash…and then you have Red 5. To add to this, Apollo has just been released which is looking pretty interesting. See what I mean?

The sweet spot for JavaScript and Ajax has always been for those small, progressive enhancements rather than for creating rich interfaces. It seems to me that the more you head in that direction with JavaScript the more serious limitations you encounter. Browser JavaScript is never fast, has memory leak issues, browser bugs, CSS bugs and all manner of other tom foolery that, when you get to the stage of building something like for Google Maps get’s really time consuming and messy. There are many efforts (WHATWG, Tamarin etc etc) that are working toward solving many of these problems but for now and for the foreseeable future we are stuck with em. This, I think, is when it’s time to bring out Flash. Not for the whole app of course, but used in conjunction with HTML/CSS/JS. Flash however is not without it’s problems.

I lost interest with Flash mainly for these reasons:

Monolithic applications: Flash apps tend to exist at one URL, fail to respond to the back button well and generally work within their own environment in the browser rather than working with the browser.
Bad programming environment: Working on a Flash app with more than one person was always a pain in the arse. Because a lot of the app was contained inside one or more FLA files which could only be opened by one person at a time and it was a binary file version control was a pain.
Controls didn’t work enough like browser controls: The in-built components helped a bit but Flash select boxes, scroll bars and other widgets just didn’t look or act the same. Bad for usability.
Accessibility no-no: Previously SWFs where essentially a black box to assistive technologies and event MX components seemed to have trouble with keyboard focus and tabbing. * Limited and tedious interface with JavaScript: Getting data in and out of the SWF was possible but never easy.
ActionScript is heading toward Java: Oh man, don’t get me started. As ActionScript develop it becomes less and less dynamic. `You get native classes and packages but type annotations? I suppose you get a performance boost but really. Static types are for stupid people…we don’t need em
It’s not open source

After re-examining these many are solvable, avoidable or have been solved recently. Solving the first problem is probably the most interesting of the lot. We all know the internet works best when it’s used as a linked web of resources. To do this each resource in the flash application needs it’s own URL even if these all just point to the same SWF. I’ve not seen this done but I’ve got some ideas on how this could be achieved. What I’m thinking is that rather than a Flash app having one end point, eg. flashpaint.com it can have an end point for each document that can be favourited, linked to and all that shit eg: flashpaint.com/pictures/dans-bum. If we architected an application like this it would be easy to use the end point to provide different formats eg. flashpaint.com/pictures/dans-bum.svg etc.

The bad programming environment problem is solved for us. Flex 2 is all text based and although a bit XMLy for my liking isn’t bad. You can even get a Textmate bundle for it. Most importantly you can lob it all in version control. Better. Accessibility has also been greatly improved of late, I don’t yet know the details, but I do know it’s no longer a black box.

The interface to JavaScript has been improved too with the Flash/Ajax bridge (stupid name aside) but I think this can be improved further. It’s all a bit heavy on code and complex but sure it can be streamlined some. Unfortunately though, ActionScript continues it’s journey away from the land of dynamism but on the upside you do get E4X and all kinds of other nice stuff and we can’t do much about it. Even JS 2 is going this way.

Then finally, there’s the whole open source thing. Where do we start? I’ll start by saying that I’m not a religious person neither spirtually or technically. I’m a pragmatist and while I normally work in open source with its many benefits I can take a bit of proprietary action if need be. I’ve heard many members of the web standards and ajax communities basically strike Flash off on this point alone which to me is just insane. It may be proprietary but it’s got a great community around it (and a great OS community for that matter) so that works for me. No, it’s not a standard, but really, what have standards done for us anyway? The power of the ‘web standards’ movement was, in my opinion, more about moving back to semantic HTML and the separation of content and presentation rather than about valid code and standards anyway. I say drop your prayer book and use the best tool for the job.

So yeah, I’ll be looking in to Flash and Flex then. I might even write about it. But then it seems other people already are which is cool. So what do y’all reckon? Am I barking up the wrong tree?

PS. That comment about Static typing was totally unqualified and slightly stupid statement. I like it though. It’s the kind of thing you’ll catch me saying after 5 pints at Pub Standards.

Coding Like A Bitch: Mephisto Plugins Upgraded and Fridaycities/EventWax Beta Biznizz

2007-01-31T16:57:00Z

Just a quick note to say that I’ve just upgraded to the newest version of Mephisto which has forced me to update my Mephisto plugins to work with the new updates to Liquid. Sorry for being slack on that. I’ve had a ton of email about it but hadn’t had the chance to fix these since my new venture into the freelance world has started.

In unrelated news, most of my coding effort has been going into a site called Fridaycities which is a cool site where Londoners ask questions and get insider info about all things London-ish. It’s great to browse around…Apparently there’s an Elvis Chinese restaurant on Old Kent Rd and a naked disco in Vauxhall. Who’d a thunk it? It’s still in very early stages at the moment but the FC people have got big plans and myself and Mr Tanner are beavering away on it as we speak. It’s invite only but you can check out the posts without registering so go have a squizz.

Finally, EventWax has been going great guns. It’s great to see a load of events running on there including @media2007 and BarCampLondon2. We been collecting lots of feedback and slowly introducing features but there’s going to be some cool changes in the near future so keep an eye out there.

Finally, I’m stacking up a few patches for Prototype and Rails that I need to finish up. Hopefully I’ll get chance to do that soon. Writing patches for Rails is weird. I tend to find myself spending 20 seconds on getting the patch done and 3 hours trying to bash tests together. Does anyone else find writing tests for the Rails core a bit of a pain in the arse?

5 Things, That's The Meme, That Meme Again, It's 5 Things

2007-01-16T02:13:00Z

Argh, dammit. It’s 2.15am and I should be sleeping but instead I find myself drawn into this ‘5 Things You Might Not Know About Me’ meme thingy by Pub Standards overlord, Mr Darlow. I’ll try to make this brief and as none-boring as possible.

5 Things You Might Not Know About Me

When I was about 5 I got bitten by a dog at nursery school. It gave me an infection that very nearly paralised me (or so my mum says).
Back in the day I was a rapper and Drum ‘n’ Bass MC. The band I was in was successful(ish). We got on TV, made a few records and supported some big bands. Most of the members went on to be in Simian.
I won a drawing competition in primary school that I didn’t even enter. It was someone else’s picture but I just took the credit (and the prize) regardless. Evil.
In university a friend at the time hired some thugs to do a drive-by shooting on some gangsters. Harsh, eh? That’s not something about me is it? Oh well. I’ve no idea where that friend is now.
I’ve met Ozzy Osborne, Ice-T and, erm…Lauren Laverne.

And for the bonus: I’ve never voted in any kind of election. I’ve traditionallly been pretty disallusioned with politicians but I’ve been reading loads of Noam recently and I’m getting politicked up so this might change. God knows who I’ll vote for though, they are all arseholes.

Tagging some of the JavaScript Mafia and some London Rails peeps:

To those I’ve tagged, I apologise. Don’t feel obliged to carry this plague on.

And finally, if you are in London on thursday, Pub Standards beckons. Partake of the Fat Man In A Box and be merry.

In The Words of Neil Young...

2007-01-02T17:39:00Z

Piece Of Crap! Yes, my MBP has bought the farm. It is an ex-Mac. Dead as a ZX Spectrum. I’m pretty new to Macs and before moving over I always had this impression that they were less reliable than your average PC. Everyone who owned one always seemed to have stuff failing on them. When I got my MBP a few months ago I hoped that I’d just got the wrong impression and this wasn’t the case. But alas, the hard drive has died right in the middle of a really busy period. Needless to say, if I see Stevie Jobs he’s going to get a good kicking. I really wish OS X would (reliably) run on none-Apple hardware.

Anyway, rant over. Happy New Year and all that. I think this year is going to be pretty good. Roll on SXSW!

Proper useful content will resume shortly. Watch this space.

I'm Sorry About This But...

2006-12-14T12:25:00Z

...some things are just too funny. Contrast with this other version.

Names Are Important (AKA I've Got New Kicks)

2006-11-21T15:23:00Z

While writing the suckerfish dropdowns article for A List Apart years ago Mr Griffiths taught me a valuable lesson: It’s really bloody important to come up with a catchy memorable name for things (even if they are to do with geekery). Why call something CSS / JavaScript Hybrid dropdowns when you can call them Suckerfish Dropdowns? Ruby Web Framework? No…Ruby on Rails. XMLHttpRequest? Ajax….you get the idea. All of this is really obvious of course but doesn’t seem to be a lot of the time to us programmer types who create something good and want to shove it out to the rest of the world. We tend to just call it something uninspired like Unobtrusive JavaScript plugin (oh, um, er…) or even worse an acronym like UJS (oh, er, arr, hmm….). So, yeah, what I’m saying is that it’s really important to think of good names for libraries, techniques and such. Go on, do it. Do it now. Name your code and name it something memorable (ActiveWhatever is not going to stand out in a crowd is it?). You get the added advantage of it being easily googlable too.

When I first wrote Low Pro I thought quite hard about a name for it. I really didn’t want to call it Unobtrusive Prototype or UP or whatever. After thinking for ages I came across the name completely by accident. I was on Ebay searching for over-priced trainers as is my current fetish and it was staring me in the face: ‘Nike Low Pro SB’....Perfect. Short catchy and strangely appropriate.

But, I suppose, the real point of this post is that I’ve finally got a pair of said trainers and some Heinikens at that. I’m most pleased and I want to show you a picture of them whether you give a shit or not. So, here it is…

IN OTHER NEWS: Low Pro 0.3 is on the verge of release with a whole load of bug fixes and some more work on Behaviour classes which are turning out to be extremely great. More on that soon.

I'm Back

2006-08-25T17:53:00Z

After lying dormant for about two years, I’ve finally got around to redesigning danwebb.net. I’ve gone for a complete change of look and feel from the last design as, although I quite liked it, it was just too hard to read. As I’m planning much more content for the new danwebb.net I have gone for a really easy to read design (and soon, a good print stylesheet).

For those who are interested, it’s the blog is built on Mephisto which is really shaping up. It’s a really great little RoR blog system with a much slicker UI, easily extensible templates based on Liquid and much less general bloat than Typo which we used for the The Web’s Bollocks.

There’s not just a blog either. I’ve got all organised and set up my own subversion and projects site so I can keep on top of all the projects I’m working on. So, if you are using any of my software and you find a bug it would be great if you can drop a bug into trac and I’ll get it fixed ASAP.

I decided a few months ago to get danwebb.net going because my entries on The Web’s Bollocks were just too technical for what is supposed to be a general company blog. It’s looking a hell of a lot like a Rails / JavaScript blog which was never the intention.

So now, I think, is a really good time to get this site going as things are getting really busy. Event Wax is nigh, UJS For Rails is going really well and there’s a whole raft of conferences coming up over the next few months so there’s going to be a load to write about no doubt.

All feedback on the new site is welcome as always. This site is definitely not finished, I’m planning on adding more features over time including some whizzy (but not in a bad way) DOM scripting action, a search page, proper archives and more integration with Upcoming and maybe Flickr once I get my plugin writing mojo back. For the moment though, I’m pretty happy with my del.icio.us and last.fm plugins that you can see in action on the home page. Once I’ve added docs and tests I’ll give them a proper launch.