monkeys on typewriters

I’ve got a new blog design. It looks many, many times better. I would describe it, but it’s probably easier for both of us if you just play around with it. I’ll change a few things in the next few days, but the basic design is there.

Anyone who has programmed widgets knows that it can be a pain to implement preferences. You have to:

1. Load the preference value, taking care to check for a null value.
2. If it’s null, set the default value.
3. Create the necessary DOM elements through HTML.
4. Set the appropriate value on said DOM elements based on the preference value.
5. Monitor the DOM elements for changes so you can update the preference value.

You get the idea. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just instantiate a class to do the work for you, much like you do with the AppleGlassButton. If you’re saying “Golly gee, Galen, that’d be great!”, keep reading. (But first stop watching those 50’s films.)

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working (intermittently) on a chunk of code to do just that. It’s all part of a larger chunk of code that will go into an even larger chunk of code which is our next big widget. I decided that it just wouldn’t be fair if I didn’t offer it to all my faithful readers too (all 4 of them).

Here’s the JavaScript: widg_prefs.js.

And, here’s a demo widget that uses these preference types: draft.zip.

If the demo widget doesn’t quite explain it for you, there’s some documentation at the top of widg_prefs.js. These classes require prototype and script.aculo.us.

Now, before you go and plop this into your next big widget, take a look at the demo widget. You see those three examples? Two of them are commented out. (Only one works at a time. You can tell how much time I spent on this demo.) That constitutes the entirety of the testing done. I’m not kidding.

As I use these classes in our next big widget I’m sure that I’ll find and (hopefully) fix bugs in them. I’ll put up the revised version when that widget comes out. Until then if you use these classes and find a bug, feel free to tell me all about it: galen dot winey at tacowidgets dot com.

The fine print: Use this at your own risk, free of charge. Credit to me and/or Taco Widgets would be nice. Don’t sue me.

So… after being stubborn as usual, Austin finally talked me into getting a Twitter account. You can follow the latest from the lead Taco developer (that’s me, people!) at twitter.com/galendw.

I’m a little slow on the draw but…

In the words of someone famous: “I don’t know who your designers are, but you’re not paying them enough.”

Time recently did a short piece about Twitter, that love-it-or-hate-it web service that is the next up-and-coming star of Web 2.0. The article is a really good read, and it brings up several interesting points.

Since then, the fawning attention to the seven-month-old service [Twitter] has come full-circle as reviewers have begun to realize how boring most people’s lives really are. (As if YouTube’s gallery of puppy and kitten videos hadn’t already driven that point home.)

Well, there you have it. That’s about what Web 2.0 all comes down to.

Whenever I do web development, I always make sure that the sites that I build will look good on an 800×600 screen. I know that almost no one has that size screen anymore, but I still think its a good thing to check.

But how do I check this, you ask? Good question. Well, I use a bookmarklet that makes a new window with the current contents at 800×600.

Just a nice little piece of code to put into the bookmark bar for use when making web sites.

Very excellent:

The Programmer Hierarchy (PDF link)

Programmers always have to feel superior to other programmers. Via Daring Fireball

Some quick stats about tacowidgets.com from this year so far:

• Ratio of Firefox users to IE users: 2.85. There are almost three times as many Firefox uses as IE users on this site. (Hooray.)
• Breaking IE down, ratio of IE 7 users to IE 6 users: 0.45. Not surprising, but still a little disappointing.
• Almost exactly 4 times the number of Camino users as Netscape users.
• 73 hits from Firefox 3 (yay early adopters!), and 3 hits from … MSIE 2.0. That is not a typo.
• More hits from NetNewsWire than OmniWeb and Opera combined (sorry Omni).
• 1 hit from iTunes. WTF?

I think that explains more about our site than I could ever hope to do on my own.

In an article from Coding Horror:

That’s the other problem with the Mac vs. PC debate: it completely misses the point. Computers aren’t couture, they’re screwdrivers. Your screwdriver rocks, and our screwdriver sucks. So what? They’re screwdrivers. If you really want to convince us, stop talking about your screwdriver, and show us what you’ve created with it.

Over the past few days, there’s been a discussion (1) (2) (3) over the comparison of the role of scripting languages (Ruby, Python) and programming languages (C and family). Basically, it boils down to this: Ruby and Python and all the other mammals of the scripting language world have started to steal the dinosaur’s (that is, C’s) eggs.

Originally, everything was done in Assembly Language; first generation programming. Then C came along. This was the second generation. Now, we’re starting to talk about using stuff like Ruby to write full-scaled applications. Third generation.

…

Mike Elgan (Computerworld), writes:

The first-generation UI was the command line. Apple didn’t invent it, but used the concept for early Apple computers.

The second-generation UI is the icon-based, folder-driven, resizable overlapping windows interface that we use today. Again, Apple didn’t invent it—Xerox did. But Apple was the first major company to build it into a consumer product, the original Macintosh computer, which came out in 1984.

He then goes on to discuss the third generation UI; the one ushered in by the iPhone. (A real touch-screen.)

I spent half an hour trying to phrase this last sentence, but this is the best I could do: Coming soon to a computer near you.

Update 2007-02-21: John Gruber links to even more discussion about this topic. All good reads.