Shrt Dv Thts

MVC Helper-Helper

Haven’t done this blogging thing for a while. I’ll throw up some code that helps with MVC helpers that I just made and thought was Neat-O.

public enum TagType {Script,CSS}

  public static class QuickTag {
    public static TagBuilder GetTag(TagType tagType) {
      TagBuilder builder;
      switch (tagType) {
        case TagType.Script:
          builder = new TagBuilder("script");
          builder.MergeAttribute("type", "text/javascript");
          break;
        case TagType.CSS:
          builder = new TagBuilder("link");
          builder.MergeAttribute("rel", "stylesheet");
          builder.MergeAttribute("type", "text/css");
          break;
      }
      return builder;
    }

More technical details about Google Chrome Frame

jimray on Chrome Frame:

The Sunspider benchmark for Chrome Frame in IE 8 just ran faster for me than Chrome (4.0.211.7) itself.

IE 8 for reference.

Google acquires reCAPTCHA

jimray:

Seems like a somewhat natural fit with Google’s “digitize the world” mission

I think that this is slightly more interesting in that, as far as I know, Google has been algorithm driven with no human input or correction.

For example, Paypal is partially human driven (fraud and rebates etc.) while Google Checkout has much less human intervention. Google Voice transcriptions are, poorly, computer transcribed while competing services, who do a much better job and even allow you to spell out words and both are about the same speed.

Embeddable Google Document Viewer

43folders:

“Google Docs offers an undocumented feature that lets you embed PDF files and PowerPoint presentations in a web page. The files don’t have to be uploaded to Google Docs, but they need to be available…

A bookmarklet that opens all linked pdfs to take advantage of this:

javascript:(function(){dl=document.links;for(i=0;i<dl.length;++i){if(dl[i].href.substr(-4)==".pdf"){window.open("http://docs.google.com/gview?embedded=true&url="+dl[i].href);}}})()

or to just transform links:

javascript:(function(){dl=document.links;for(i=0;i<dl.length;++i){if(dl[i].href.substr(-4)==".pdf"){dl[i].href="http://docs.google.com/gview?embedded=true&url=+dl[i].href;}}})()

or a greasemonkey userscript: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/57453

(via: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=814642 )

Going to start writing here more again… The usual excuses: vacation, busy, looking for a job, and graduating took away motivation. Now that I’m at DevTeach learning again, I’ll post some of the stuff I’m writing for that.

I’m going to DevTeach 2009 in Vancouver! I’ll be covering it here: http://bit.ly/DevTeach09

If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, you need Instapaper. Even if you don’t and you still read a lot of articles online that aren’t necessarily bookmark-worthy or if you just want a better way (formatting and readability) to read and save them it’s still totally a cool site & app.

In the post about it’s current status:

instapaper:

…

iPhone app: The next major version is in final beta testing. Very little work is needed to finish and release it. I expect this to happen within 1-3 weeks. It’s a major upgrade and I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Instapaper Pro will be upgraded first, with Free following a few weeks later. Either release may be further delayed if Apple rejects their submissions for whatever minor, inconsistent, or nonsensical rule they’re enforcing that day — but I expect approval delays to be short.

…

I like it how developers are building in random often not understood app store rejections into when their apps are available.

Ctrl-F5ers

Why do (some) people say “Press Ctrl+F5 to run it.” I know what the difference is, I’ve just never understood why they don’t take 5 seconds and clarify the difference when they don’t even say “Use F5 if you actually want to see your exceptions.”

This post brought to you by the sigh after my rant after someone said “How do I see the exceptions rather than the program just quitting?” It’s not his fault, just the people who only told him “Ctrl+F5”.

stevenf:

A few people whose opinions I hold in high regard have told me that the Office ribbon interface is actually pretty good, and that I shouldn’t draw my conclusions from a static screenshot.

It’s a good point. What we refer to as “user interface” extends well below the surface appearance, and I should know better than to go off about something without even trying it first. What I posted was basically a gut-level reaction to that one screenshot, and should certainly not be considered expert commentary about anything, because as I have said before, I am not a designer.

But isn’t that type of gut reaction the very definition of the new user experience, though? Someone looking at a window full of icons and controls for the first time?

Part of the reason my reaction was so negative was that, in my mind, I was trying to walk through a phone conversation with a hypothetical family member who was struggling with that window. It’s not hard to imagine: “OK, now click on the delete button. It’s in the upper left of the window. It says Delete, but it’s not the big black X, it’s the smaller red X to the left and below that. No, not the red circle with the slash through it, that’s a different kind of delete. You want the X. No not the big X. You don’t see it? Are you on the ribbon tab that says Message, or the other tab that looks sort of like four interlocking rectangles? The ribbon is the main part of the window at the top. OK, why don’t I just drive over there.”

But it’s true — usability is a different aspect of the UI “problem” than (for lack of a better word) “obviousness”. As people much smarter than me have observed, a round steering wheel is kind of a strange, non-obvious way to orient a car’s wheels, and stems from a historical mechanical requirement that probably no longer exists. But nobody would really describe a steering wheel as being hard to use, and if you manufactured a car without a steering wheel you’d promptly be ejected from the industry.

Exactly. (For some reason,) This reminds me of a recent talk with a friend; she sometimes talks about her experiences reintroducing people who have been incarcerated for 5 to 50 years in that new ways of doing things are introduced sooner or later. For example:

• refusing to ride on the Skytrain because there is no driver
• being totally perplexed and baffled by “the cords coming out of people’s ears” referring to headphones
• cell phones
• mp3 players

Really, it’s just a matter of learning a new way to interact with things. Sometimes you have to let the past go and enable people to do things better, faster, more efficiently and/or more effectively.

About Office’s ribbon: I never really disliked it, if initially only for the poor reason of “a huge and highly profitable company who makes a significant portion of their revenue from this product isn’t going to introduce a worse method of doing something than there was before.” I now find the ribbon out of my way most of the time, and when I need to do something, it’s logically organized and ends up doing a better job than the previous system.