A Better Way

Finding a better way to get things done, a technical journey

Archive for category General

Wacom Bamboo Tablet Experience

Feb 18

Posted by Jack Lawson in Development, General, Prototyping, User Interface Design, Web Design | No Comments


My awesome first tablet design

My awesome first tablet design

(This post was started using my new tablet!)

Well, I suppose that now that I have a tablet, I oughta start practicing. You see, I’ve never been one to have exceptional handwriting skills, so it’s a good thing that I now have a computer that can understand my handwriting better than my 8th-grade Spanish teacher could. I used to get a LOT of zeros on my homework.

(At this point, I’m back to my keyboard because my hand began cramping up. I tried, at least… Typing at 90WPM  on my keyboard is superior to writing using a plastic pen on a mat.)

I’ve long dreamed of owning a graphics tablet, for quick mockups (I included my first here. Creative Commons license, feel free to derive from its awesomeness.) I picked up the Wacom Pen & Touch. Three days in, it has been fun to play with; while it hasn’t been 100% everything that I ever imagined it would be, I think that it may be more of a learning curve issue rather than an issue with the technology itself. I’m used to using a mouse that I have to throw all over a mousepad, not a pen and a tablet that maps 1:1 with my monitor (originally, it mapped to both monitors before I turned off the second monitor in the tablet settings.)

One of the troubles I was having was that it seemed somewhat laggy when I was using my pen on Windows 7 with Photoshop CS3. I noticed mostly that when I was writing, I couldn’t add small details well (look at how crazy all of the lines in my As are); it would sort of stick and think it was supposed to pull up some kind of command menu. I’d like to blame it on myself, as a user error… but it isn’t at all obvious how I fix that issue, if it is one.

Regardless, I’m going to soldier on and try a few more mockups before passing more severe judgement. There are probably some hidden settings somewhere to fix; and once I have those figured out, I’ll post a follow-up on how I did it. Hopefully I do it. Don’t crush my dreams, Wacom.

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ASP.NET Controls, How I Hate Them

Feb 8

Posted by Jack Lawson in ASP.NET, Development, General, IIS and Windows Technologies, JQuery, PHP | 2 Comments

MSDN Error
Image by ttrentham via Flickr

I’ve always, for some reason, felt innately that PHP allowed me more control over my code than ASP.NET. My brain kept saying “but .NET is more organized! It compiles! It’s faster! It’s easier to write,” but my mind kept saying “PHP lets me do what I want how I want it… screw .NET!”

What I finally figured out was that I love C#, I even like the .NET framework, but I hate is, in fact, ASP.NET.

Every time I see an example of simple, elegant code, the most complex control on the page is a label or a panel. While the intentions behind FormView may be good, writing my own forms and hooking them up saves hundreds of lines (literally- I just refactored almost 800 lines of code into 150 by removing a formview) as well as reduces complexity and maintenance (now I no longer have to maintain view and edit and whatever other modes FormView has.) ASP.NET perhaps made sense in a day before OO principles and ORMs came into play; the controls were written for the same kind of people that use the drag-and-drop design mode. Easy to slap down haphazardly, not so easy to maintain.

We replaced every ASP.NET Ajax control we used anywhere (after I evangelized it, to my chagrin) with jQuery after about 6 months of use; while the controls did what we needed on the surface, underneath there was always some caveat, like the linked DropDowns needed web services, or the datepicker control had missing options… there was always something somewhere that I needed a bit of flexibility on that just wasn’t there, or was buggy. It seemed very odd for it to be out of beta in such a state. So, I ended up starting my own control library using jQuery, and now it’s easily extensible, easy to modify from the client, and I can control the markup.

Oh, and the markup… don’t get me started on the markup. Tables for everything. I can’t rearrange the otherwise useful Wizard control because it’s so static in its display.

So, I guess the point I’m trying to make is, that the longer I use .NET, the less and less I use the complex controls and the more I roll my own. Because it’s easier.
Kind of ironic.

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A Switch to Chrome (Mostly): A Followup

Jan 21

Posted by Jack Lawson in General, Google | No Comments

performance-google
Image by nDevilTV via Flickr

A follow-up to my original post from July, a mere 6 months ago.

I have, now, totally switched to Chrome. And yes, it was exactly for the reason I fully expected to: extensions came out. Sort of like Google’s this big Overmind that watches all…

Then again, I guess it is, isn’t it.

Anyway, the performance difference between FireFox and Chrome is clear. In direct contrast to one comment left on my original post, I have as many extensions in Chrome as I do in FireFox, performing the same activities (with one caveat)- and it is noticeably faster. I load up FF when I do IE: to test the differences in rendering engines across browsers, so that I can fix the CSS and Javascript bugs. To be fair, FF has the best debugging (that version of FireBug is far superior to anything I’ve seen yet), which makes testing so much easier. But, FF is on my machine only for that. For debugging. Not for browsing.

Honestly, I see absolutely no compelling reasons to use anything but Chrome; it’s what I install on all of my relative’s computers, and it’s what I use every day at work and home.

All hail the Overmind!

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On Agility

May 30

Posted by Jack Lawson in General, Team Dynamics | No Comments

...structures and vehicles of all sizes...
Image via Wikipedia

The most important quality of any IT company- web-based or otherwise- is the ability to quickly change, to turn on a dime. The openness and ability to foster innovation is absolutely critical, even expanding past IT companies; without change, you fall behind. And when you fall behind, it is only a matter of time before the inevitable collapse.

I read an interesting article in Wired yesterday about car companies. It suggested they become more like the computer industry, setting standards for components and allowing hundreds of parts manufacturers develop these sort of plug-in devices. These manufacturers would be smaller and agile, developing new, efficient parts, which not only helps the company sell more, but also gives consumers the chance to purchase better products. The big car companies would be like Dell, offering a sort of base upon which to customize and put together these parts.

The key here is that in a vertical company, where all processes are overseen by a massive beauracracy, is unable to change, while the hundreds of small parts manufacturers, overseen by a standards commitee, are each able to introduce breakthroughs in their respective areas. It is the same way with any IT company; one who is overseen by a large beauracracy is never going to stay with modern times. They are the ones still using IE6, to support their apps and unwillingness to change, while small 5-man companies are able to revolutionize the web with things like Youtube, Flickr, Twitter. When was the last time a large company built an app like that?

A lot of this requires upfront planning. The huge company is reluctant to change after investing millions in a system that is rigid; a properly planned system is one that is flexible; one should never think that you can build the perfect long-lasting solution. You can get close, but five years down the road, something will inevatably be superior and your app must be rewritten. Modularize your development and make this possible, because it is a matter of when, not if.

It is imperative that innovation is prized, that a company does demand absolute, 100% control, because when this happens, a company loses its character and becomes dead in the water.

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When Does a Framework Become a Language?

May 26

Posted by Jack Lawson in Development, General, Javascript, User Interface Design | No Comments

Kleenex logo
Image via Wikipedia
A friend of mine posed this question a few days ago: at what point does a framework become ubiquitous enough to be a language on its own?
This came after a brief discussion about jQuery, where the point was made that we hardly ever use traditional, raw Javascript anymore. We use jQuery to write the core of our applications,  jQuery to do UI effects, jQuery for validation. We hardly ever even use the word Javascript. But, the question he posed is, is jQuery the same thing as Javascript? Is it different enough to be considered something else, or should it just be considered a framework – the same way .NET is a framework to C#, or Rails is a framework to Ruby?
Our conversation came down to semantics. The same way we (or at least I) call tissues not by tissues, but by Kleenex, or the way Texans call soda “Coke”, and although jQuery does not (in a technical sense) replace  Javascript (rather, extending it), perhaps it is simply cognitive recognition that presses us to call anything Javascript related jQuery. Someday, will everyone call Javascript by jQuery? It very well could be.  We’re still not calling it ECMAScript.
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