Sam’s random musings

Prototype 1.6.0 and script.aculo.us 1.8.0 released: “

New versions of the JavaScript libraries that ship with Rails, Prototype 1.6.0 and script.aculo.us 1.8.0, have been released. You can find out about the numerous changes on the Prototype blog and on mir.aculo.us. If you’re running Edge Rails, just svn up and run rake rails:update:javascripts to install the latest versions into your application automatically.

Also of note: Christophe Porteneuve’s Prototype & script.aculo.us book is now out of beta and available for purchase from the Pragmatic Programmers. It’s up-to-date with all of the new features in both libraries, so be sure to check it out if you’re using Prototype and script.aculo.us in your applications.

(Via Riding Rails.)

PagePacker Open-Sourced: “

I am celebrating the arrival of Mac OS X 10.5 by making the source code to PagePacker available. Here is the compiled application.

Don’t know what PagePacker is? Check this posting.

This is cool app to use to make paper GTD and calendars and stuff, but the nice thing is the source is a great little learning tool for Cocoa

(Via Big Nerd Ranch Weblog.)

Creating a Visual Language:

Amazon has a clear visual language for shopping-related buttons. (Figure 1) While the buttons vary in size, color, text, and iconography, they clearly share enough of the design elements that the variety enhances their purpose rather than complicating it.

• Color
• Iconography
• Context & Flexibility
• Copywriting

Worth reading if you do things like buttons and pretty things in your work. I tend not too, I’m the guy who builds the pigs I don’t put the lipstick on them

(Via Garrett Dimon.)

lAsk 37signals: What is the best way to get customers who signup to actually use a product?:

This reminds me of the old “hosting a party” metaphor for web apps. Just because you’ve invited someone over to your house/app, doesn’t mean your hosting duties are over. You still need to welcome your guests, show them around, offer some introductions, and make sure they get into the flow.

That’s why the blank slate, the first screen people see, is so key. If it’s unwelcoming, people may not stick around.

This is a big deal for services/sites that have self sign, or have anykind of unguided experience. It is said that a ui should be self teaching, but have you ever seen one. The on the web we are so free to make unique user experiences that are not tied to interface guidelines or even native control widgets. In this is a great danger there are advantages to things like the Apple Human Interface Guidelines as limiting and restrictive as they may seem. To be able to leverage the vast experiences that your user has had (remember that a user is a human not a thing) has immense value. It speaks to using native widgets (or at least try to give the same sense of purpose as the native widget)

But let it be said that what you do for your user on their first experience in your app will reap great rewards (I mean $$) if you leave your user hanging they will not ‘hang’ out and find all your cool stuff. Assume that your mental model of how the app will be experienced is wrong, show them they way.

(Via Signal vs. Noise.)

Multi-Safari: Testing with 10 versions of Safari at once:

Michel Fortin has created special versions of Safari that allow you to run them all on the same machine. This allows you to test your Ajax application in a variety of versions.

There are similar things for explorer and firefox so this is a great addition to the developers tool box…

(Via Ajaxian Blog.)

PHP on Cruise - Assuring compatibility with new PHP versions:

This is definately something I really want to add to my workflow, but I need to tune it to work with SimpleTest that I use with my PHP Projects….

(Via Sebastian Nohn.)

Sample Code: MassiveImage:

Shows how to use a CGDataProvider to save a very large image with Image IO

Some sample code to have a good look at, since I seem to be dealing with ever LARGER images every day….

(Via Apple Developer Connection Headlines.)

Navigating the HTML email jungle:

We’re ramping up our emailing efforts and decided to start sending out HTML newsletters to customers. (We’ve always sent out plain-text emails but figured some minimal styling would help liven things up a bit.) So we designed a nice, simple email using clean code. The first one is this brief Basecamp Newsletter.

It took a while to get to this version though. First, we ran our simply styled email through Mailchimp Inbox Inspector (demo), a useful tool you can use to view HTML newsletters in a variety of email apps.

It came up perfect everywhere except Outlook 2007, Windows Live Mail, and Lotus Notes. Strangely, it looked fine in Outlook 2006 but busted in Outlook 2007.

The reason? As Campaign Monitor put it, Microsoft decided to take email design back 5 years.

If you do find yourself inclineded to do html email generation it does behoove you too check out the mailchimp inspector and take the time to read some of these links…

(Via Signal vs. Noise.)