Andrew Jaswa

Software, Daily

ajaswa — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 20:54:16 +0000

I recently had a harddrive crash in my MBP and it got me thinking about the software I use on a daily basis, since I had to restore all of it.

Chrome, probably one of the best browsers out there today.
Firefox, still use FF from dev work and some sites.
Coda, a great all around code editor.
MacVim, my co-workers have gotten me hooked on MacVim, though there are still some things I like about Coda so it won’t be taking over as my full time editor, maybe 50/50.
Adium, what is there to say? All around best IM client there is?
Transmit, another great tool from the guys at Panic, you can mount (s)ftp servers as local drives and other magical things with this tool.
Clusters, compresses files on your harddrive seamlessly. I’ve already saved 15.6 gigs.

That pretty much sums up the software I use every day. I have to admit, when I started this list I thought it would be longer. I guess I use more websites and cloud services than I thought.

Internet Explorer and line breaks

ajaswa — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 19:59:39 +0000

Recently I’ve run into an interesting issue where Internet Explorer won’t break on some lines when there is a string followed by a space followed by a period followed by a string. For example: “I’ve written some text here .So that I can illustrate this issue.” I’ve made a mistake and put the period on the wrong side of the space, I’m not the best typist in the world so this happens to me from time to time.

.exe .jpg .gif .php .html .flv .doc .pages .zip .pdf .torrent .mp3 .mov .wmv

My issue steams from hit highlighting in search results. Our back-end database automatically adds code similar to this for the search term “foo”:

Found In:&lt/span> ...foo ...foo ...foo ...
Now normally this wouldn’t be an issue and probably would go unnoticed but there are some cases where the search term is rather long. ( I’ve been working on a Finnish site and the term I’m having issues with is “Kappaletavarakuljetukset”. ) When the search term is long we want the text to wrap on to the next line. Which in IE it won’t unless you force it by adding or another space after the period.

You might be able to imagine there are some legitimate places you will want to place “text .text”. However as in my case its not really legitimate and due to the Microsoft (!) back-end we are using to produce the code/text its rather difficult to change the generated code.

Update: Since the bug isn’t overly apparent in non-IE browsers… Screenshots:

Non-IE:

IE:

Update2: It seems that doesn’t work in all cases. Sadly in my case in IE8, I had to add an extra space.

Markup Conditionals

ajaswa — Wed, 13 May 2009 22:30:03 +0000

I loathe conditional comments and browser targeted code. But there comes a time when you have to support an old and out dated browser (I’m looking in the direction of IE6 at the moment). So what do you do? You have to make it look the same and function the same as other browsers. You also shouldn’t use browser hacks to target them. I’ve touched on this subject before and figured conditional comments were the best route to go. Even if I don’t like them.

I’ve recently started working with a new company and have picked up on some of the bright things they do. I’m not sure why I never thought of this before since it seems so simple (and I can’t take credit for it).

Let say you have your standard body element and a few other things on a page:


    
        Some text

Typically to target the paragraph element for, say IE6, you might use a simple hack like the underscore hack. So you might write some CSS like so:

p {
    width:150px;
    _width:200px;
}

I mean you might do that, some other hack or you might use conditional comments to provide a style sheet just for IE6. I’m sure you’ve seen code like this before:

That’s all fine and dandy, but do you see what you did there? I did and I don’t like it. You’ve just created another HTTP request. Shame on you. And to think about how many CSS rules are typically in a file like that? 10? 50? It also creates a maintenance headache. You’ve now split up rules for one element into two files. Yes yes I know that is what the cascade is for… But you could make it easier on yourself and people that come behind you.

What I’ve found is to use conditional comments to specify a class on the body element when the browser is IE6 or 7 or even 8.

So taking our markup example from above I’ve modified it to have conditional comments in it:



    
        Some text

You’ll need all those extra comments to make the page valid. It is also pretty easy to add as many combinations as you like as long as they can be read by the browsers…
And our CSS from above:

p {
    width:150px;
}
.IE6 p {
    width:200px;
}

Of course this only works with IE but really you shouldn’t need this at all since you build awesome websites that are already cross-browser compatible, right? And there is no chance ever that a client will want a site to be usable in IE5.5, right?

On being left handed

ajaswa — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 23:12:11 +0000

I consider myself to be left handed. Though I think I’m more mixed handed. But alas mixed handedness gets cut out of the picture most of the time since the focus tends to be on the dominate writing hand.

I like being left handed, it means I might have a gene that makes me left handed, but they aren’t sure about that yet. I also notice quite a bit when other people around me are left handed. It makes me feel special. I’m an oddity (I’m sure most people would agree with that). Being left handed also makes me adept at using my right hand better then right handed folks can use their left hand. Some call this ambidextrous, but truly, I am not. I’m not equally dexterous on both sides of my body which is why I’m more mixed handed. I can’t throw things with my left arm and I play baseball (as well as most sports) with my right arm. I am also right footed and right eyed. There are few things that I can only do well with my left arm/hand.

What I don’t like is when people don’t consider the left handed folks when designing things.

Spurring on this rant was a recent discussion on a well known and widely read interaction design mailing list. The discussion was around mouse clicks on a web app/site. More to the point they were talking about the use of contextual menus being accessed via a “right click”. I’m sure you might be thinking this is a little nit-picky and perhaps it is. However the problem persists, people do not think out side their own means. They tend to think of what they can do and not what others do or can’t do. For crying out loud these guys design interfaces and interactions. What happens if they design something strictly for their means not considering how others may use it and someone dies?

Taking this a little further, there has been research on the effects of left handed people using right handed mice. It can cause some issues with posture. Which makes you wonder if ~10% of the worlds population is cared about by the other 90%. It seems that the 80/20 rule shouldn’t apply for handedness. But alas it does and designers, business people and right handed folks don’t see the value in accommodating the southpaws of this world.

We might be an edge case in some people’s minds but wouldn’t people with disabilities considered edge cases? It basically the same thing, people with psychical disabilities could have a hard time doing things that people without disabilities do with ease. People who are left hand dominate could have difficulties with things that are designed for the right handed world.

Equality for all? No. Not until the right handed world stops being selfish.

iPhone safe fonts

ajaswa — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 22:03:47 +0000

I was pondering the other day as to what fonts could be used in mobile Safari. I came across an article about this very subject on Daring Fireball. There is even a chart of exactly what fonts are installed on the iphone. It’s a great resource, but it seems a bit overwhelming. We all know that browser and OS support for fonts isn’t as great as we would like. Which is why things like SIFR and image replacement are used. There aren’t a lot of fonts we can use

While Daring Fireball’s list is comprehensive I wanted something that would be a quick reference. So I created my own test based on commonly used web fonts. A quick rundown of the fonts that can be used on MobileSafari:

Arial
Courier
Courier New
Garamond
Georgia
Helvetica
Times/Times New Roman
Trebuchet MS
Verdana

I didn’t test the other fonts that Daring Fireball listed because I’m pretty sure they aren’t “web-safe”. Interestingly enough Daring Fireball doesn’t have Garamond listed. There could be an explanation for this though. Their post is from July 2007, if Apple added Garamond later that would explain it.

February’s Article on 13things

ajaswa — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 17:46:11 +0000

The second 13things article is now published. Zach Young gives a great explanation as to the uses and mis-uses of an often neglected html element. You should go check it out.

You can also follow @13things on twitter to get updates about new articles and new developments on the site.

Wordle

ajaswa — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 05:57:31 +0000

We’ve all seen tag clouds. I even considered putting one on my site, but I realized that tag clouds don’t really look nice. The other day I discovered Wordle.

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes.

I started playing about with it and was quite impressed. I put in the RSS feed for this site and my delicious bookmarks.

andrewjaswa.com

ajaswa’s delicious

They way Wordle displays the collected words is rather interesting. More so then just a straight tag cloud. Now to create something like this on the fly and embed it on a site…

Wordcamp Denver

ajaswa — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 05:34:47 +0000

Yup. I’m going.

And for $20 who wouldn’t? That’s a steal. For 12 speakers in one day. Oh hell yes. And I think I get a t-shirt out of it.

13things

ajaswa — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:23:53 +0000

Well where do I start?

I guess it started back in March of 2008 when I attended An Event Apart New Orleans. Jason Santa Maria gave an excellent talk about web design or rather a talk about how current web design all looks the same in the form of blogs and content management systems. The example he used that stuck in my head was that of Wired Magazine. In their print publication they have very captivating designs but when the article is taken online it loses its design and just becomes another article. This actually inspired me in two ways. The first was to learn more about design (as my background is in development) and the other was to create a website that was essentially what Wired was to print. With my lack of design skills and time, I filed it away almost to the point of being forgotten. Seeing as how 2008 was a very busy year for me it should come as no surprise.

In late October of 2008, after I had gotten settled here in Denver, I wanted to build a website. I played around with a few ideas and then remembered that 24ways would be starting up soon. 24ways is an awesome website run by Drew McLellan and Brian Suda that only publishes articles during advent. This gave me the idea to create a website that had a restricted publishing schedule.

In the end I settled on building a site that published articles in a very set fashion, highlighting various parts of website development each with a unique design reflecting the content. 13 articles a year once a month with a yearly review.

Well… after much work, it happened. The first article of 13things is now published.

You, Yourself

ajaswa — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 21:32:53 +0000

You. Who are you? Do you know how you are perceived by others? Do I know you? Do other people know you?

A year or so ago I was reading something about making good impressions with resumes. While it was aimed at fresh college graduates it did have some good pointers for anyone who wants to be a professional. The one point that that still sticks in my mind was their comments about email addresses. They suggested getting a email address based on your name rather then partyperson247@example.com.

Hi. I’m the marketing Director for a Fortune 500 company. IM me at “shavedkitty2008” – Ryan Brunsvold

While that is an extreme example of this I still know quite a few professionals that use screen names and email addresses that aren’t of the professional nature you want to be known for. Now don’t get me wrong I’ve had my share of strange screen names and email addresses in the past, but I realized that if I want to be taken seriously then I need to act accordingly. Nearly all my screen names/email/accounts are some variation on Andrew Jaswa. This not only makes it easy for me to remember but it also helps others know who I am. By making my account names some variation on my real name I’ve opened the door for more communication, both good and bad. People now know that idiot posting is me and not some teen age boy with nothing better to do.

Numbers in your user name might be an easy way to get that “loverboy” account name, but it doesn’t look professional. I blame AOL for this. If you have a common name, such as “John Smith”, I would try everything possible to get something that is close to it. User you middle name if you have to.

If you use some fleeting interest you had at the time in your screen name, you have to realize that you might not like that thing later and change your screen name. Who likes changing established screen names? Not I.

If you are a public figure or have professional aspirations then you need to have a good public face and the start of that is to have a good name you are known by online. Make your online identity universal and always relevant to you. But please, please don’t use “shavedkitty2008” (Ryan already has dibs on it).