User Experience Engineering and Front End Development

Twitter Updates

Photoshop needs the ability to control filter parameters based on a mask. #PhotoshopMon Feb 08 20:55:27 +0000 2010
@kwestin I recently reset my phone after being jailbroken. Performance was driving me crazy.Fri Feb 05 15:56:04 +0000 2010
Spray-on liquid glass is about to revolutionize almost everything - http://bit.ly/aYZ4ka - Just like the Shamwow did!!Thu Feb 04 23:16:43 +0000 2010
@kwestin and then Jack will totally go kick their ass. He can beat up Chuck Norris, I hear.Thu Feb 04 16:57:03 +0000 2010
@kwestin all you need to do is open a socket, then send it to Chloe's screen, and she'll get video from a security camera at their location.Thu Feb 04 16:56:24 +0000 2010
@kwestin i bet most apps R plagued w/ issues HipHop cant solve-poor data modeling, lengthy db calls, tons of http reqs, bad javascript, etc.Thu Feb 04 07:33:05 +0000 2010
@kwestin or is it going 2B peoples excuse for writing shit code? And will it even make that much of an impact in performance for most sites?Thu Feb 04 03:54:00 +0000 2010
It's going to really interesting seeing what happens with HipHop and PHP in the next few years.Thu Feb 04 03:49:04 +0000 2010
I'll never get tired of the fight scenes in Ong-Bak. haha - so rad.Wed Feb 03 22:43:21 +0000 2010
Trying to decide how I feel about Die Antwoord. Afrikaans Rap/Rave - http://bit.ly/8RNkYj Music is interesting, packaging kinda sucks :)Wed Feb 03 17:07:13 +0000 2010
I bet I can count the number of reasons why I care on zero fingers!Tue Feb 02 21:47:47 +0000 2010
@dancryer all too true.Tue Feb 02 18:34:41 +0000 2010
@dancryer Yeah, I was thinking more the development being open rather than the end result.Tue Feb 02 16:43:49 +0000 2010
Happy 2 see Google Docs finally dumping support for IE6. Personally, I think every web site should redirect IE users in general to goatse.cxTue Feb 02 16:27:07 +0000 2010
As rumored +1 for innovation, -1 for not open sourcing it. RT @rww: Facebook Gets Faster, Debuts Homegrown PHP Compiler http://bit.ly/b2xtDLTue Feb 02 16:03:52 +0000 2010
facebook ad FAIL: http://tweetphoto.com/10179607Mon Feb 01 18:32:39 +0000 2010
iPad nano : http://bit.ly/ax7XjxMon Feb 01 16:35:07 +0000 2010
In response to the Doppleganger trend on facebook: http://tweetphoto.com/9890467Fri Jan 29 14:52:26 +0000 2010
Seriously amazing work: http://bit.ly/d3BV1LFri Jan 29 14:41:23 +0000 2010

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News Feeds

Pseudo 3D tricks from old computer games for all your Canvas needs

It is quite interesting to see how technology moves in circles. With canvas being the new fun toy to play with for creating browser-based games we have to find solutions to fake a 3D environment to be really fast (sure there is Canvas 3D but it is overkill for most games). The trick is to [...]

Román Cortés and Ajaxian make up with amazing CSS demos

We have been long term fans of Román and the fantastic demos and samples that he puts together, usually involving CSS goodness. We messed up the other week though when we linked to his work on a scrolling coke can. I do these postings as a labor of love, and since Ajaxian isn't my day [...]

Mozilla Labs? Weave can become a platform for us

Mozilla Labs has released the magical 1.0 version of Weave and the doors are now open for developers. When I was a part of Mozilla Labs day to day, I always loved the vision and team behind Weave. I kept wanting the implementation to match the vision, but it is a tough problem and it takes [...]

AT AT Walking with CSS

Anthony Calzadilla has a fun Friday example for us. He has a tutorial on how he animated an AT AT using CSS. He goes over the different areas and how he uses animation and transforms. For example, the head of the beast: PLAIN TEXT CSS:   @-webkit-keyframes rotate-head{   0% {-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg) translate(0px,0px);}   40% {-webkit-transform:rotate(10deg) translate(15px,5px);}   80% {-webkit-transform:rotate(-5deg) translate(8px,5px);}   100% {-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg) translate(0px,0px);} } #atat #head [...]

jsContract: Design by Contract library

Fan of Eiffel or the design by contract pattern that it espouses? Řyvind Kinsey is, and he just created jsContract an alpha library to give you some pre and post condition abilities. Here is an example: PLAIN TEXT JAVASCRIPT:   function _internalMethod(a, b){     Contract.expectNumber(a);     Contract.expectNumber(b);     Contract.expectWhen(config.mode === "divide", b> 0, "Divisor cannot be 0");     Contract.expectWhen(config.mode === "multiply", [...]

User scripts becoming more portable with Greasemonkey support in Chrome

Aaron Boodman created Greasemonkey back in the day. He also worked on Gears. And most recently he created Chrome Extensions. I have a funny feeling that folks were pinging him daily "hey, when ya gunna give me Greasemonkey on Chrome" and he just delivered: One thing that got lost in the commotion of the extensions launch [...]

LunaScript: A new language and platform to take your Web 2.0 apps to the moon?

A Googler and a Facebooker were in a pub discussing the complexities of building out a rich modern Web application. There are a ton of dependencies, and you need to be proficient in multiple languages and tools (JavaScript, HTML, CSS, SQL/NoSQL, backend languages, build tools, etc). Well, they may not have been in a pub.... but [...]

New Version of SVG-Edit

SVG-Edit is a nifty open source editing web app that uses SVG and doesn't need a server-side: The SVG-Edit team recently announced SVG-Edit 2.4, code named Arbelos. New features include: - Raster Images - Group/Ungroup - Zoom - Layers - Curved Paths - UI Localization - Wireframe Mode - Change Background - Draggable Dialogs - Resizable UI (SVG icons) - Convert Shapes to Path Try out the demo [...]

Google isn?t Evil. Flash isn?t Dead; Thank god the Open Web doesn?t have a single vendor

The following post is a reprint from my personal blog. It is editorial in nature and even delves into random politics. I apologise. You can deal with it though :) Steve Jobs didn't hold back when talking about Google and Adobe. That is great. Life is so much more fun when people speak their mind. I [...]

fullscreen API coming to browsers near you?

What can you do if you want to enable a fullscreen experience on the Web? You can't. Or, use Flash. Some claim that you shouldn't offer this ability as it is a security liability. Someone can put a fullscreen view that tricks the user into giving it information. However, as much as I think user security [...]

Addmap.js ? automatically analyse a text for geo locations and add a map

As part of an upcoming article on geo location I am putting together a few Geo Toys for myself and here is the first one. Addmap.js is a JavaScript that analyses an elements text content, finds geographical locations and links them to Google Maps. It also adds a map preview and a list of the [...]

Canvas Benchmark

The Freeciv.net crew has benchmarked a path in their canvas game. It is one data point, and tests more than just Canvas itself because a lot of code is running in the game. Thus, it ends up testing the union of a particular JavaScript path and the rendering of the canvas. Here are the results: With Bespin [...]

Rolling a coke can around with pure CSS

Román Cortés is having a lot of fun with CSS tricks these days. He just built an example rolling CSS coke can that uses background-attachment, background-position, and a few other tricks to get the effect. No fancy CSS3 needed here! The key pieces used: PLAIN TEXT CSS:   p {         background-image: url(coke-label.jpg);         background-attachment: fixed;   [...]

JavaScript running on the GPU

I love programmers like Alex Miltsev. He won the Jetpack 0.5 content by prototyping access to the GPU from JavaScript! Alex?s work is an alpha-prototype that shows the feasibility of the project and it requires a custom build of Firefox to use ? it?s not easy to demo. However, the code sample below shows how the [...]

A Titanium Tablet?

Appcelerator has published an interesting study on the Apple Tablet. You know, the iPhone OS based one that we will Steve will show us on Wednesday. The study asks some interesting questions revolving around the development side of the tablet. Are developers going to develop for it? What are they looking for? What are they excited [...]

Taking a stance: Comparing video codec issue (H.264) to ActiveX

Sometimes you need to compromise, but at others you need to lead and take a stance. Our politicians do far too much via polls, and I often find myself wishing for more leadership. I could start talking about Obama and the healthcare issue in the US..... but this is a technical blog so I won't [...]

Chrome OS the Web based OS of 2010? Nah, Win 3.11 :)

This is a Friday post that happens to show up on Monday ;) 2010 will have a lot of Web based OS products, including the much anticipated Chrome OS. Why wait for that when you can use Windows 3.11: Browser Edition? Or, check out webOS on mobile, Jollicloud on Netbook, and many others.

YouTube and Vimeo turn on HTML5 video tag

At Google I/O the team showed a demo of YouTube running video right in the browser, instead of in the rectangle of Flash. Now, that URL takes you to the beta, which you can opt-in too. I am torn on what to write on this showcase though.... so, especially since it is Friday, here are two [...]

De-fusing JavaScript Natives with the Fusebox

John-David Dalton has released Fusebox, a library that allows you to sandbox natives: Extending JavaScript natives gives you the power to customize the language to fit your needs. You can add convenience methods like "hello world".capitalize() or implement missing functionality like [1,2,3].indexOf(2) in JScript. The problem is that frameworks / libraries / third-party scripts may overwrite [...]

Jaml: An HTML builder a la Haml

There have been a few HTML builder APIs out there, but Ed Spencer (new lead of Ext JS) has put together something that looks and feels similar to Haml from the Ruby side. Jaml lets you write HTML like this: PLAIN TEXT JAVASCRIPT:   div(   h1("Some title"),   p("Some exciting paragraph text"),     br(),     ul(     li("First item"),     li("Second item"),     [...]

Content courtesy of: ajaxian

Tron Legacy Trailer

Oh man. I was super excited to see that there’s a Tron 2 in the works. I was a huge fan of the original movie. I hope they don’t disappoint. Official Site trailers: http://www.flynnlives.com/media/video/0xendgame.aspx

Facebook is using your photos?

Facebook recently decided that it was going to start using your photos in select advertisements. You can opt out, but by default – you are opted in. This is what Facebook has to say: “Facebook occasionally pairs advertisements with relevant social actions from a user’s friends to create Facebook Ads. Facebook Ads make advertisements more interesting [...]

Controlling iTunes remotely

So I just got this shiny new MacBook Pro. Absolutely love the thing. I’ve been away from the Macintosh platform for far too long… Anyway – I’m sitting in my office listening to music and realized that the speakers, while okay for what they are, suck by most standards. So I pop over to my PC [...]

gZip your JavaScript

Most browsers these days (with the exception of Safari, I think?) will accept gzip encoded content. This means you can drastically reduce the size of all those bloated javascript libraries you might be using on your web site. So how do you serve gzipped js files? There a few methods out there. I chose the one [...]

IE and responseXML issues

After working on a small AJAX library, I decided to test it in IE. Everything worked great, except when requesting XML. The responseXML property of the XHR was null. I’ve had this issue in the past where the server isn’t returning the appropriate Content-Type (text/xml). But that wasn’t the issue this time. I checked my [...]

Force directed node interface 2

Here’s an example of the force directed node interface that I’ve been talking about. It’s not complete. It’s just a working prototype. You still cannot load project details, but I’m waiting to add that if I decide I want to take this any further. Since the dimensions of the interface have been reduced to fit in [...]

Force directed node interface

I’ve been working on the experimental Flash front-end I spoke about in the last post. The idea is to use a force directed or force based system for displaying categories, keywords, projects and their relationships. I was curious about what kind of user experience that would create. Here’s a video of the force directed layout interface [...]

PHP5 + JSON + as3corelib = a beautiful thing

I’ve decided to play around with an experimental front end for viewing projects in Flash. Since I OOPified (yes, that’s a technical term) the site and modeled the data, all of my objects can be easily serialized into JSON strings and passed back to the front end. Then using the as3corelib’s JSON classes, I can [...]

Wordpress XML Parsing Error

XML Parsing Error: XML or text declaration not at start of entity > Warning: MagpieRSS: Failed to parse RSS file. (Reserved XML Name at > line 3, column 38) in [...] > > Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in [...] Yesterday it was called to my attention that the RSS parser that was pulling the feed from my blog [...]

Free web based imaging software

Aviary has recently released another web-based application. Raven, which is still in beta (all of their applications are. that’s so web 2.0!), is a web-based vector editor. Their product suite consists of four applications at the moment: Peacock – a visual laboratory Raven – vector editor Phoenix – image editor Toucan – colors watches Peacock is kinda cool. Image generation [...]

Content courtesy of: /dev/null