Categories
Uncategorized

Hey, Facebook: It’s Spelled “availAble”!

One area of user interface development that could stand some improvement is spell-checking. I’m not aware of any widely-used system for spell-checking a web application’s template or resource files, but good spelling certainly helps an app look more professional.

The latest spelling mistake in an application I’ve seen comes from the “Edit App” page for Facebook developers. One of the fields on the page lets you specify the “Canvas Page URL”, the URL within apps.facebook.com where your app can be found. It uses Ajax to give you instant feedback as to whether the URL is available or not as you type — but the word “Available” is misspelled:

Facebook Developer UI telling me that my chosen application URL is “availible”

Cross-posted to the Tucows Developer Blog

Categories
Uncategorized

Jing’s Approach to Installing on the Mac

In the most recent posting on Jeff Atwood’s excellent developer blog Coding Horror, the question is posed:

Why does the Mac require the user to jump through a bunch of manual hoops to install an application? Why not use a traditional installer (a.k.a. setup.exe) that automates this manual work for you?

Rather than get into the details of the debate in the comments to that article over the ease of installing apps on the Mac the manual way, let me instead show you Jing’s answer to the question:

Jing’s installer options

(I wrote about Jing in the last post.)

The Jing approach is to give you two options:

  1. The incredibly easy way: Double-click the installer script and you’ll be shown this a dialog box that tells you that you’re about to initiate an action that will:
    • Copy Jing to the Applications folder
    • Eject the disk image
    • Start Jing
  2. The traditional manual way, in which you drag the app to the Applications folder. An alias to the Applications folder is provided, so you don’t have to open another Finder window.

No options dialog boxes, no EULAs, no extraneous messages for the purposes of marketing — just install and go.

I think it’s a good solution. What say you, Jeff?

Categories
Uncategorized

The Jing Project: Screen captures, Screencasts and Sharing

Jing Project logoMy job as Tucows’ Tech Evangelist often requires me to take screenshots and screencasts. Although Mac OS X (Tiger) is my primary laptop OS and Ubuntu (Feisty Fawn) is my primary desktop OS, I shoot and edit screencasts on Windows because Camtasia is the one screen recording app that does the job for me.

TechSmith, the folks behind Camtasia Studio, have announced something called the Jing Project. Jing is software for both Mac and Windows that promises to do three things:

  • Capture images: Snap a picture of anything on your desktop.
  • Record video: Record video of what you do, or what you see.
  • Share online: Instantly uploaded. Share in email, IM, or blogs.

Here’s what they have to say on the site:

What is this thing called Jing? Video tour.

The concept of Jing is the always-ready program that instantly captures and shares images and video…from your computer to anywhere.

It’s something we want to give you, along with some online media hosting, to see how you use it. The project will eventually turn into something else. Tell us what you think so we can figure out what that is.

Try it, you’ll like it. Find out more in the FAQ, or on the weblog.

I’ve been hoping that someone would make decent screencasting software that ran on the Mac (and so have the people at 37signals). I’m hoping that this — or whatever springs forth from the project — is it.

Categories
Uncategorized

Guitar vs. “Guitar Hero”

Guitar Hero comic
Click to see the comic on its original page.

Trust me, kids: learn to play a musical instrument reasonably well before college.

As for accordion playing, the “coolness graph” looks like this:

Accordion coolness chart

Categories
Uncategorized

One Lapdance Per Child

OLPC with screen that reads “IM IN MY DEVELOPIN CNTRY WATCHIN UR PRON”

Sometimes I write a blog entry just for the sake of getting a funny title out there. This is one of those times, thanks to this report: Nigerian pupils browse porn on donated laptops.

(With apologies to the fine people at the One Laptop Per Child project)

Categories
Uncategorized

Facebook is the new…

Jason Kottke wrote that Facebook was the new AOL. Dave McClure disagreed and said that it’s the new Visual Basic, Brandon Paddock disagrees with both of them and says that it’s the new Windows.

According to a Google search for the phrase “Facebook is the new”, Facebook is the new…

Categories
Uncategorized

Facebook is the next…

According to a Google search for the phrase “Facebook is the next”, Facebook is the next…