Mentalized comments

Comment on The case against single line CSS

2010-05-18T10:43:19Z

I couldn’t agree with any of the reasons you stated. What it comes down to is this: if you have widescreen monitor it is better to write single-line css, if you don’t have one stick with multi-line, everything else is just not that important especialy refactoring and subversion control. I mean, really, is it possible for two people to work on a same css file intensivly and get no conflicts? Answer to this question is so obvious..

Comment on Idea: fontstack.com

2010-05-18T11:15:46Z

I like this idea - typedia is good, but does not go as far as suggesting good font stacks. Anyone implementing this would have to get around the issue of displaying the fonts though - typedia uses a kind of sIFR approach, whereas myfonts uses images - how they were generated I don’t know.

Comment on The case against single line CSS

2010-05-18T11:28:29Z

It is most definitely possible for 2 or more people to work on the same CSS file. Sure, it might not be easy, but with a bit of discipline and conventions it can be - and has been - done.

Comment on Idea: fontstack.com

2010-05-18T11:51:29Z

It seems like Typedia relies on users uploading type samples. That would probably be the best way to go about this - shy of buying all fonts and generate images from them :)

Comment on Heroku, Rails 3, and Sass

2010-06-07T18:32:57Z

I strongly suggest using ruby 1.9.2 instead of 1.9.1 with Rails 3 :-)
Again, thanks for the post, it’s exactly what I needed, I might use this for development purposes for a while and wanting to run the app on a server for demo, but when going production I will probably just convert the stylesheets and use .css.

Comment on Introducing Progress Wars

2010-06-07T21:15:30Z

so simple yet so brilliant and yes sadly I think a face book app would take off.

Comment on Heroku, Rails 3, and Sass

2010-06-10T13:15:13Z

Unfortunately Hassle doesn’t seem to be working with the Rails Beta3 and Wojciech’s solution doesn’t work either. I think the problem is this line:

ActionController::Dispatcher.middleware.use(Rack::Static, :root => “tmp/”, :urls => [“/stylesheets/compiled”])

I have tried a couple of things to get this working but without much luck yet.

Comment on Heroku, Rails 3, and Sass

2010-06-10T14:54:26Z

Jeroen, use my fork of the Hassle plugin. In your Gemfile:

gem 'hassle', :git => 'git://github.com/koppen/hassle.git'

or whatever the correct syntax is.

Comment on Feed the trolls: Launch your project now

2010-06-15T08:15:48Z

Hence the “perpetual beta” label, touted by web pioneers like Google: Release early, often and in small iterations. Obviously, this is also a boon for the users, who generally will see their feedback taken into account much more immediate.

To me, working in such an environment actually makes it hard to imagine working any other way - 1 major release every one or two years with bug squashing and intense guessing about what features are needed to make the users want to both stick to your product and upgrade to the next, shiny version… jeez.

Oh, and nice to see one of my heroes, Paul Graham, cited btw. :)

Comment on Feed the trolls: Launch your project now

2010-06-16T00:58:37Z

From a business point of view, releasing as early as possible is also cost effective; for internal use this delivers value faster, and for external use can generate cash flow earlier.
Baskerville and Truex examined the subject in 1999: http://vingus.com/course%20work%20data%20files/IT%208125/Growing%20Systems%20in%20EMergent%20Organizations.pdf

Comment on Heroku, Rails 3, and Sass

2010-06-17T00:15:59Z

I played around with both of these solutions and it seems just generating your stylesheet(s) in a controler like so:

class StylesheetsController < ApplicationController

SASS_PATH = Rails.root.join(‘app’,’stylesheets’)
APPLICATION_TEMPLATE_PATH = File.join(SASS_PATH,’application.sass’)

def application
template = File.open(APPLICATION_TEMPLATE_PATH).read
engine = Sass::Engine.new(template, {:load_paths => [SASS_PATH]})
render :text => engine.render, :content_type => “text/css”
end

end

would allow varnish to take care of the caching rather then the tmp files.

Comment on Heroku, Rails 3, and Sass

2010-06-17T15:23:51Z

I receive an error complaining about Rails.root being nil If I add hassle to my gemfile.

Solved it for now by committing the resulting css files and by using:

Sass::Plugin.options[:never_update] = true

in my production environment. Sass doesn’t try to update the css files this way.

Seems to work …

Comment on Heroku, Rails 3, and Sass

2010-06-19T03:30:07Z

The best way to use Compass with Rails 3 is to use Wojciech’s method. You’ll need to add this to your config.ru file:

require ::File.expand_path(‘../config/environment’, FILE)
use Rack::Static, :urls => [“/stylesheets/compiled”], :root => “tmp”
run MyApp::Application

Comment on Feed the trolls: Launch your project now

2010-06-30T05:52:48Z

Comment on Your browser wants its back button back

2010-07-14T09:45:40Z

Great point about both the print functionality and the back button. The case against back buttons is even greater in cases, when the implementation uses the Javascript history.back() function for this, which exactly mirrors the functionality of the back button.

Fringe cases would be something like image galleries, where the full width image opens on a separate URL. In this case, a “Back to Jakob’s gallery” link would help user from Google find their way to the gallery view.

In the above case, you wouldn’t necessarily have to explicitly make a “Back to gallery” link though, since other parts of the UI could communicate the hierarchy. Your point still stands.

I love the way you code your interfaces btw. I’m guessing it’s intentional to not support IE, right?

Comment on Your browser wants its back button back

2010-07-14T09:54:53Z

For the gallery example, it’s not really a “Back” button as much as it’s a “More images from Jakobs gallery” button. That’s a good idea, in particular when users arrive from search engines, and something I’ve done on (among others) Lokalebasen

For application interfaces it rarely makes any sense, though, as they aren’t Googleable.

I love the way you code your interfaces btw. I’m guessing it’s intentional to not support IE, right?

Uh… yes, “intentional”, let’s say that… ;)

Comment on Your browser wants its back button back

2010-07-14T15:05:17Z

Interesting how you should bring this up a few days after my crusade at work to not have us rebuild functionality that browser makers have spent many years perfecting.

Comment on The case against single line CSS

2010-07-15T13:52:28Z

I completely agree. I am constantly having a holy war in this office over the “benefits” of single line CSS (I’m very much multiline). I find that those that are “into” multiline CSS seem to have less experiance or confidence with actually using their editor.

It’s gotten to the point that I now check all front end developers’ CSS files and those that do commented, indented multiline are put to the very top.

Bizarrely I am often told that the single line css is done because its “more efficient”. These people seem to think that a couple of hundred extra newlines is going to cause some sort of massive slowdown. When I suggest they minify their CSS for production instead and keep it human readable I get a blank stare.

Of all the holy-wars in web-dev this is the one I’m most likely to get completely wound up by.

Comment on Your browser wants its back button back

2010-07-15T21:06:59Z

I agree but how do we convince our clients? I often hear them saying that we need to add a back button because people don’t use the built in one.

Comment on Your browser wants its back button back

2010-07-16T08:17:22Z

If a client claimed people don’t use the built in back button, I’d probably start by asking them what they base that assumption on. Then gently inform them, that they’re wrong.

Tons of websites wisely do not add their own back buttons. Users still use them without problems.

Then redirect them to all the research and articles that clearly put the Back button as a usability “lifeline”: http://www.google.dk/search?q=back+button+usability

If that’s not enough, start namedropping. Google.com doesn’t have their own back button, neither does amazon.com, apple.com, facebook.com, or youtube.com for that matter.

If that’s still not enough, sigh deeply, and remember they might be wasting their money, but at least they’re wasting them on you.