Posted in web 550 days ago
Bulletproof Ajax is a newly released book from New Riders and author [and fellow WaSP member] Jeremy Keith. Devoted to teaching the proper way to design for and use the technologies behind everyone’s current favorite buzzword. If you’re looking for a step by step guide on how to recreate your companies Flash application click for click this probably isn’t going to help too much (other then perhaps help push you into the direction of rethinking your approach, or just going back to your old friend), but instead it does a wonderful job of breaking down the systems that make Ajax work and putting them in context — that being a new dynamic way of enhancing, interacting with and manipulating web documents.
Bulletproof Ajax by Jeremy Keith
Bulletproof Ajax
People who are new to the concepts of Ajax, or may have rusty JavaScript chops will find the introductory chapters quite useful although I found I breezed through them. For the developers who have been using these technologies for some time, or those whose experience is primarily via using a specific library or toolkit and simply learning its API the books coverage on some topics that you may not have put much thought to is worth the read.
This is where the book shines. While other venues may be touting Ajax for their wiz bang animations, or flashy page updates Jeremy makes sure that core topics like progressive enhancement, unobtrusive Javascript are covered. Throughout the book he covers using the new wiz bang technologies appropriately and in ways that don’t compromise accessibility, overall browser compatibility and other benefits that come with good web development practices.
Having been knee deep in a few projects with Ajax usage from heavy to light over the course of the last year or two I was left feeling like it could have offered just a bit more in the way of complex coding examples. Without recreating some monstrous desktop application and running the risk of flying in the face of the advice found in earlier chapters, I think it would have been helpful to see some examples or suggestions on how to deal with situations where multiple parts of pages or updated or you would have to reinitialize events on multiple objects. Perhaps that area is best left up to a text on proper object oriented JavaScript coding, but I find they come up quite often when dealing with more complex interaction, and it certainly has a good deal of impact on how one architects an Ajax based site.
On the flip side of that, by its nature and scope Bulletproof Ajax would be a book I’d encourage non-coders — those who plan, design, and work with web sites — to spend some time with the book [possibly skipping specific coding examples on the way] to get a grasp on the fundamentals.
At the end of his review, Gary Barber also notes that the book does not cover server side implementation in depth, which is also true, but I cannot say that I noticed it was gone until it was brought to my attention. Its a topic much like general JavaScript coding topics that couldn’t be covered in a complete manner in this book, but just maybe could have been given a little more bandwidth.
But for a 200 page book it covers what it sets out to do extremely well and I’d highly recommend it to anyone working on the web.
Posted in photo 598 days ago
For digital photographers, particularly people shooting any sort of volume of RAW files you may find you need a better workflow for ‘development’ and organization of the photographs then simply storing the files on your file system and then opening a few at a time in Adobe Photoshop. Into that gap has come a few new applications including Apple’s Aperture. More recently, Adobe has finished work on its Lightroom application and moved it from a long public period to an official 1.0 release.
With that release two professional photographers and bloggers, Micah Walter and Michael Clark, have committed their time and expertise to putting both Aperture and Lightroom through the paces on a typical week or so of shooting and editing.
Both photographers have started posting their day to day thoughts after working with he applications, and the articles are both interesting and informative. Versions and Stacking, for example. Contrast that with posts like Aperture in Somalia, may be a little light on the details that feed your curiosity about the applications they are rich in story and images.
My own application of choice since the first time I used a beta has been Adobe Lightroom, but I have been planning on looking at both Aperture and Nikons own Capture NX before pulling the trigger on the 1.0 license.
Posted in design web 776 days ago
Last Thursday I had attended the one day course on presenting information by Edward Tufte.
The full day lecture style talk consisted of jumping through 4 of his books (which are included in the cost of the day) as he takes you through his thesis about how to present data and information so that it is understandable, credible, and in context.
Review of Edward Tufte's Course
Some may only know Tufte for his anti-powerpoint position (or those who don’t know him, key in on PP like in these slashdot comments), and he surely is that, but its only as part of a bigger thesis about presenting information in ways that aid digestion and understanding. A big part of which is the notion that data is inherently multi-dimensional and textured and partial sentences as bullet items or 3D rainbow bar charts filled with “chart junk” are too “low resolution” of a device to convey any of that.
The 360 dollar question for me going into the day was that though I was sure it would be an interesting day, would it at all be relevant to me as a web site builder. Its now a few days later and I’d have to say a qualified yes, tough not always directly. If I had the need to prepare a lot of presentations or regularly work in a data heavy industry (vs. more marketing or application type products) I’d say the answer was easily yes. But while I don’t, the day did solidify some things about general information consumption as well as plant a few seeds in my head. It also peaked my interest in a few new tools like sparklines, and a really new tool called paper—both used to convey a high density information in small spaces.
If you have the opportunity I’d definitely recommend attending one of his future lectures. Though much if not all of the material was covered in his books (one of which I was already familiar with), I thought the emphasis and complete picture provided by Edward Tufte in person was worth the time out of my typical work week.
Now, I just hope I don’t take too much more time out of my day reading through his site’s message board.
Posted in web meta 840 days ago
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I’m happy to announce the release of version 1.0 of my Textpattern Microformat plugin pnh_mf. This release adds support for the hReview microformat and works in a few small bug fixes. Downloads and change notes available from the pnh_mf page.
hReview is the most complex format included so far. Though straight forward, the format calls for defining the thing (event, company, product) you’re reviewing by including one of a few different other microformats. So like I’ve done previously with hCard + adr to add the tags needed for an hReview + hCard or hReview + hCalendar is a two step process.
As always, if you have questions about what type of information is expected in each microformat consult the plugin help docs via the TXP admin interface or microformats.org and if you have questions about the plugin ask away in the comments here or on this thread on the textpattern forums.
Aside from bug fixes or small usability related tweaks, this will be the last release until I can find time to work on enhancing Textpattern’s built in tag builder and make some of the input forms more flexible—taking care of these nesting cases more cleanly as well as providing easier input for names, dates and other details.