HTML5 - Also offline
Java 8 is around the corner
With Java 8 lurking in the corners about to make its coming out, here is a comprehensive list of the new features anyone can expect in there. Functional interfaces, lambdas and functions are probably the most interesting ones.
www.qwant.com - how not to design a website
I was reading in the news the birth of www.qwant.com, a new French search engine. So I said to myself "ok, let's go and have a look." I was in my bath with my iPhone. First impression isn't very good since the website doesn't have a mobile template so you have to zoom in and out to read anything. So I launch my first search and zoom in to read the results. And then, some piece of JavaScript overlays huge column headers on top of my screen - covering 100% of the screen. I can't see the page anymore.
So here is my first impression: it is broken. It's just that the website is not usable with a phone. They have column headers that "float" on top of the page whenever you scroll down and whenever you zoom in, they take up 100% of the screen so nothing works. At all. You cannot even see the search results. Note that it doesn't work at all on Android or anything else with a small screen. Granted, with big-screen Android phones (think the 1280x720 variety), it is just clunky and somewhat usable since you don't have to zoom as widely as with a smaller screen phone.
This is in my opinion the exact opposite of what a website should be about. I mean, what value are you bringing if users cannot see your website?
The column headers that overlap the entire display does bring minimal value to desktop users and annoy phone users to the point of having your entire website useless. Why have them?
Presto is about to die
And Opera will run WebKit
Yes, Opera will soon be using WebKit as its rendering engine instead of the custom built Presto.
Now, for the average web developer that didn't bother testing on Opera (desktop and/or mobile, and/or mini) it will not change anything. For web developers that bothered, well, it will make things simpler.
But but... variety is good, right?
Well, actually, variety is good and bad at the same time. Opera's efforts toward their engine will now be directed towards WebKit, and will then be used by quite a few browsers: iOS's, Chrome and Safari (hopefully Android's default browser will eventually die and be replaced by Chrome so I won't count it.)
Thanks to all the folks at Opera working on Presto for the past 15 years. I'm sure the future will hold lots of great stuff for you guys.
How to build your own magic wand
Inspired by Harry Potter's universe
We went with my wife and kids to see the Harry Potter studios in the UK. I have to admit that we all were fans of the books and movies, but I wasn't prepared to what went on over here. Being there, immersed in Harry Potter's universe as we had seen for so long onscreen, was truly overwhelming. So much in fact that when we went to the shop at the end of the tour and watched the magic wands there for sale, I stated to my family: "We are all going to have our own." At £25 a pop, that's £125 worth of magic wands! Well, magic seems to exist after all...
To be fair, those wands are really nice, heavy, beautiful, in nice boxes. Real collectibles, not the plastic crap I feared we would be presented with.
And off we went home, with our nice wands. I even went to the trouble of printing custom labels for all the family as you can see after the break. But as the label states, well, those are not toys. The kids got it and reacted nicely. Sometimes we get them out but we don't let them play with them on their own - and even less carry them around with friends.
But this week was Mardi Gras and one of my girls was to have a costume of ... Hermione Granger. So she needed a wand, for school. And there was no way to let her take the collectible - she even agreed with us. So I started the task of home-building custom wands for toys. A second set of wands actually as my other two kids were quick to point out.
How is my website doing?
How to monitor JavaScript exceptions
It's a question that everyone with a website should have in mind all the time, and often a question that is pretty hard to answer. I mean, how do you know how your website is doing? You can open it up, but that says nothing of what it looks like to your users.
For one, you can look into your server logs. Errors are usually logged in one or more files and this is a good place to start when checking the health of your website. That takes care of the server side of things. What about the front? How can you know if in that particular browser your website is not blowing up in JavaScript errors?
Well, fortunately, you can trap JavaScript errors. All errors on a page. And then, you can call a specific URL on your server in order to log those errors. You may want to log the date, the User-Agent string along with it.
So, how does that work?
A new job means a new keyboard
And a new CAPS LOCK key
Well, I changed jobs a (very) little while ago and with a new job comes a new keyboard. And with this new keyboard, invariably, comes a new CAPS LOCK key. So I usually wait a few weeks, not to come out too weird up front, and then I pop out the CAPS LOCK key. Because the CAPS LOCK key is evil.
Now, why is it evil? Well, it's just there, serving no purpose, annoying you whenever pressed, and located at a place where you will invariably hit it from time to time. jUST PLAIN MEAN. Lots of websites report on this problem out there such as capsoff.org or uncyclopedia. We are not alone here and we will prevail. Lowercases forever!
What should you do about it? You too can help, by removing your CAPS LOCK key from your keyboard. Pass the word around. Have no fear of any kind, your cause is just, strong and serves a higher purpose.
iOS UI elements in HTML - part 2
The tab bar and buttons
In this second article, we will focus on the buttons bar at the top of many iOS apps. Below one live example:
We will see the toolbar, buttons (in two states: active or not), and tabs. Hop on to see the details.
Looking to brush up your resume?
When it's time to update my resume, I always wonder if I should stick with the boring headings and bullet points. And now, I just stumbled on this website: http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/inspiration/creative-resume-designs/
Many designs, enough to give anyone some ideas as to how to present one's resume. Is the presentation that important? Maybe, maybe not. But I'm sure it's going to be entertaining.
End of Public Updates for Java SE 6
You haven't migrated to Java 7 yet? Well, it looks like you will have a bigger incentive soon. Java 6 will have its last public release on the 19 February 2013. After that, you'll need to pay to get the security fixes and bugfixes. That's what you get with Oracle.
In the old days, when Sun shone on Java, all updates were public. Alas, money is the keyword now.
But in anything, there is something good. Java 7 is the latest and greatest Java, and it's been out for more than a year. It's time to move forward.