May 15 2013
For a very long time I was annoyed that the iPhoto order language is wrong for me each and every time I order print products from Apple. I live in Switzerland, speak mainly German and English, on my Mac I use English as the system language yet the iPhoto order language is always French (which I’m no longer fluent in) instead of German. Continue reading →
May 5 2013
If you found here looking for how to fix “This movie requires QuickTime, which is not supported by this version of iTunes.”, good it’s here:
Mar 23 2013
The CSS3 text-oveflow property allows to have content not exceed a certain limit. Browsers can be asked to place ellipsis, the … “character”, after the last visible character rather than just cutting content off. It’s a nice visual indication for readers that there’s actually more content than what is shown. Later you’ll learn techniques how to use ellipsis in fixed-width or max-width table columns using HTML and CSS. Continue reading →
Feb 28 2013
In December last year (2012) an inner voice told me to be more active on Stack Overflow. More active? Ok, active at all. Up to then I had almost exclusively asked questions rather than answered other people’s questions.
I quickly got the hang of it and challenged myself every day to do more. Until I got tired of it. Here’s what I learned in the process. Continue reading →
Feb 14 2013
On December 20th, 2012 I bought an IntelliJ IDEA license from JetBrains at 75%. I have been developing with Eclipse for ages but that offer was just too good to resist. It isn’t the first time I go through “First steps with IntelliJ IDEA”. A few years ago when I was working with a couple of friends on spontacts.com I was forced to use IntelliJ IDEA from time to time because they all used it. It wasn’t an entirely pleasant experience for me. It wasn’t that I had a hard time finding the right keyboard short cuts. With every new application that’s usually something that takes some time getting used to. It was because their shortcuts are so darn ilogical! I’d be surprised if you didn’t agree with me but let’s see…
With every application that allows you to create something new (image, text, spread sheat, you name it) you’d expect to use some kind of command/control key plus ‘n’ to do so, right? That seems to be something of an unspoken rule across the western world. Just as ctrl+s for save or ctrl+p for print. For Macs you substitute ctrl with ⌘. In IntelliJ IDEA this logic of common sense is absent. A few examples I ran across in the first five minutes:
| operation | OS X | Win | note |
| new file | ctrl + N | alt + ins | real “new” (⌘+N/ctrl+N) reserved for ‘navigate’ |
| format code | ⌘ + L | alt + ctrl + L | L refers to what exactly?, ‘format’ expected to be F |
| rename | shift + F6 | shift + F6 | ‘rename’ expected to be F2 or command + R |
| delete line | ⌘ + Y | ctrl + Y | command + D is reserved for ‘duplicate line’ (ok, accepted) |
How sick is that?
Oh, and command + P doesn’t print anything – it’s undefined.
Read the JetBrains forums and you’ll find numerous frustrated users (e.g. http://devnet.jetbrains.com/thread/436062). Worse, the shortcuts are broken for non US keyboard layouts as this long-standing issue proves: http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-63779.
Users go even further and publish their own shortcuts reference because IntelliJ IDEA behaves even differently than what is documented. Example: http://victorvolle.wordpress.com/2012/05/16/intellij-german-keyboard-shortcuts-reference/
The first thing I changed in terms of formatting was to switch from 4 spaces to 2 for indentation: “Formatter -> JavaScript/Java”. Then it bothered my that the editor offered something they call “virtual space”. That means you can place the cursor beyond the actual EOL or EOF, very irritating for me. To turn this off you do “Preferences -> Editor: allow placement of caret after end of line (virtual space)”.
Feb 7 2013
…which is why there is no longer Netscape – Douglas Crockford
Douglas Crockford talking about shallow vs. deep scanning in JavaScript’s for in statement in JavaScript: The Good Parts, 18m 03s.
Feb 6 2013
(One of) My New Year’s resolution for 2013 is: learn JavaScript properly. The question is how to learn JavaScript properly.
Why is ‘properly’ emphasized? I read and wrote my first lines of JavaScript back in 1998. So, I’ve been using it on and off for 14 years- and it always felt bad. All those years I felt kind of ashamed that I never learned it properly. I somehow suspected that the code I wrote wasn’t really good although it did what it was supposed to do. Then I watched JavaScript: The Good Parts on YouTube. It was eye-opening in three ways. First, Douglas Crockford of then-Yahoo!-now-PayPal discusses why so many people are in the same situation like I never learning the language properly. Then it confirmed my suspicion that I new barely anything about JavaScript. And lastly, Crockford awoke my interest by admitting there are bad parts in JavaScript but at the same time showing all the good parts some of which I didn’t get. But…
I’ve been writing software for a living since 2000 (based on a “BS in software engineering”-foundation). Hence, I’m experienced and familiar with computer science. A JavaScript book that starts with Adam & Eve won’t do it, though. On the other hand for the various “Advanced JavaScript”-style books my JavaScript know-how wasn’t good enough. Also, attending a JavaScript course didn’t feel right to me considering my background. So, I set out to a self-study endeavor – with the help of Douglas Crockford’s material.
There will be a dedicated post about Crockford’s book “JavaScript: The Good Parts” later. All I want to say here is: go get it! It’s an easy read in a way that it’s nicely written but it takes time to really comprehend the material presented. Reading it chapter by chapter and experimenting with the code samples was tremendously rewarding.
At the same time I also bought “JavaScript Patterns” by Stoyan Stefanov. Didn’t start reading it though.
Starting in 2010 and through 2011, Douglas Crockford delivered his acclaimed series of lectures on the history of JavaScript, its features, and its use. They contain some talk about about the new ECMAScript5 and a nice computer science history lesson, leading up to the invention of JavaScript. I highly recommend these videos – they’re very informative and entertaining. Aaaand the production quality is much higher that the previous three series listed below.
Below are some older videos from a 2007 trilogy which are just as informative but in lower quality. Needless to say that you’ll see a lot of the same material in both series.
There are variations of the most of the above videos available on YouTube. Crockford is a frequent speaker at conferences and gave the same or similar talks.
Jan 18 2013
Is it Spring proxy self-invocation or Spring proxy inter-object calls – or something completely different? I don’t know but I hope it makes sense to you anyway.
https://jira.springsource.org/browse/SPR-8450 and http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5152686/self-injection-with-spring show several options for self-invocation. For details follow the two links. Here’s just the hints:
Dec 20 2012
Today, and only today we’re told, JetBrains offers a 75% discount on their products such as IntelliJ IDEA. Hurry…but wait, be patient. Apparently their web shop is overrun be eager developers who want to buy their own Christmas present. In fact you may not be able to order at all.
I’ve tried for hours until I finally got through. In the meantime I got this nice screen:
Dec 17 2012
AngularJS @Devoxx 2012I attended the AngularJS workshop @Devoxx – a blast. AngularJS has really opened my eyes as for how to build modern web apps. I think I became angularized in an instant. Then I went home and to told our CTO and a few colleagues at work. A few days ago we started building our first Angular app for customers. No, not because of my intervention…the team had already been thinking about using Angular. What I’m really excited about is that for once I’m not the only one who is looking forward to introducing something new. A pity I’m not part of the team that uses Angular.
Btw, you can watch the AngularJS talk (not the workshop) at Parleys if you have an account. If not you’ll find lots of AngularJS videos on YouTube.
I like the fact that Angular is backed by Google. You may or may not like Google but having Angular backed by a strong web-centric company like Google gives me confidence that it won’t just go away because the originators decide to abandon it. This is essential for corporate adoption.
The Angular website is super clean and allows for a quick but gentle introduction to Angular. The documentation and the tutorial are hard to beat. I warmly suggest you go through the tutorial the next time you have some spare time. No, wait. make some spare time to teach yourself Angular!
If you’re interested to learn what others do with Angular check out the apps over here: builtwith.angularjs.org. What my colleagues are building is ultimately going to be public but we’ll have to wait and see if our customer will approve talking publicly about the fact that his app is built with Angular.