Archive for January, 2010

The Fancy Web – 30/01/2010

Trend: Apple iPad first hands-on

http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/27/apple-ipad-first-hands-on/

CSS Trick: Rolling a Coke can around with pure CSS

http://ajaxian.com/archives/rolling-a-coke-can-around-with-pure-css

Javascript: Find The Right JavaScript Solution With A 7-Step Test

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/01/21/find-the-right-javascript-solution-with-a-7-step-test/

Semantic Web: Using SVG For Flexible, Scalable, and Fun Backgrounds (Part 1 & 2)

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/using-svg-for-flexible-scalable-and-fun-backgrounds-part-i/

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/using-svg-for-flexible-scalable-and-fun-backgrounds-part-ii/

Trend: Hyphens, Underscores, or camelCase?

http://css-tricks.com/poll-results-hyphens-underscores-or-camelcase/

Technology: Designing applications for cloud deployment

http://gojko.net/2010/01/25/designing-applications-for-cloud-deployment/

SQL: When should you store serialized objects in the database?

http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/2010/01/21/when-should-you-store-serialized-objects-in-the-database/

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Versioning your software

These are the guidelines I follow in order to providing meaning to version numbers for any software. I found it simple to follow, hardly had to revise it and should be a matual guide to be shared with other developers.

Rule of thumb

  • Versioning format is always: [major].[minor].[bulid].[revision]
  • There’s no jump to version x.9 even if you are close to major release.
  • Each number doesn’t have to be a single digit. You may have version 1.13.0 if minor release iterative continues.
  • Hide revision number from non-developer release as the large trailing number tends to frown users. For example, release as 1.2.4 not 1.2.4.7658

Version Numbers

Version 0.1 – The public alpha

This is the very first version you annouce to general public. You should not yet push user to try out your software on this stage as the product is not complete: alpha serves as a concepture outlines of your software. It can sometime be used as a sample or teaser for marketing purpose.

Version 0.5 – The public beta

When you have captured and lockdown milestones for version 1.0 (and future roadmap), you should be ready for beta. This version contains all demostrable features set for version 1.0. There should still be many to-dos in your implementations such as validation, alternative scenario and exception. In beta, user should be able to have a go on all the features in version 1.0.

Version 0.9 – The release candidate (RC)

Upon completion of all implementations, give yourself sometime for perfomance tweak and bug fixes before jumping into version 1.0 as users will be expecting perfect working software. After release candidate, you should be focusing on stabilisation, performance and documentation. You may start encourage user to try out your product on RC.

x.0 – Major releases

For version 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 so on… They are major releases and should be either for major code refactor, introducing new features or provide significant functional updates. Anything minor such as functional adjustment, bug fixes are not qualified as a major release.

x.1 (except 0.1) – The dot one fix

Major releases tend to introduce new scenarios that hasn’t been tested and therefore bugs are released before spotted by users. It become more common now that software release so call “dot one fix” 1 month later to close majority of bugs and errors.

x.5 (except 0.5) – Half way check point

This release should contain major achievements since its major release. It also acts as a maintanace fork while working on the next major release. For example you may have just release 2.5, have 80% of your time working on 3.0 milestones while spending other 20% fixing bugs and therefore fork out to 2.5.1, 2.6 so on.

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SE Trick – Modify RSS Feed URL using jQuery

This is a simple tutorial (to the original question) on how you can replace your existing StackExchange questions feed link with a third-party feed tracker service such as FeedBurner.

By default, your questions feed should look something like: http://{SITE_NAME}/feeds where you will also have answers feed: http://{SITE_NAME}/feeds/question/{QUESTION_ID}, user feed: http://{SITE_NAME}/feeds/user/{USER_ID} and tags feed: http://{SITE_NAME}/feeds/tag?tagnames={TAG_SLUG}&sort={SORT_VERB}.

Using simple jQuery, you can replace existing questions feed link to specified URL without effecting other feed links:

$(document).ready(function()
{
    if($("#feed-link-text a").text() == "recent questions feed")
    {
        $("#feed-link-text a").attr("href", "{NEW_FEED_URL}");
    }
});

Done!

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List of Customised StackExchange Sites

Ever since StackExchange went public beta in September 2009, there has been a growing number of sites running on StackExchage platform with a touh of creativity. If you still not sure what the StackExchange is, take a walk through StackOverflow, ask a question and you will be amazed by its awesomeness.

Now you know what a StackExchange site looks like, here is a show case on some of the StackExchange sites using very creative elements.

Epic Advice – Q&A for World of Warcraft

http://epicadvice.com/

  • Custom icon next to tags
  • Present reputation as experience bar
  • Allow customised user field and display corresponding icons
  • Able to embed YouTube videos

doctype – Q&A for Web Design and Development

http://doctype.com/

  • Community theme
  • Display web page screenshots next to the question
  • Customised avatar display

petnibs.com – Q&A for pet related

http://petnibs.com/

  • “ask a question” box on homepage
  • Customised page header

Travel Gurus – Q&A for Traveling

http://www.travel-gurus.com/

  • Image background
  • High contrast theme

PhoneHow – Q&A for SmartyPhone

http://phonehow.com/

  • Customised question metadata layout
  • Customised header

Lastly, a StackExchange site that uses few tricks that may worth mentioning…

ZergOverflow – Q&A for StarCraft

http://zergoverflow.com/

  • Customised icon in front of tags bar
  • Image background
  • Able to embed YouTube videos

Like me to mention your StackExchange site? leave your details in comment as I will may a batch 2 sometime.

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A Look Back at the Decade on the Web

tv-banner

We are officially in 2010 completed the first 10 years of the new millenium, let us take a look back at the Internet: our information highway of last decade.

1. Google It.

You can not skip talking about Google when discussing Internet in 21st century. The up rise of a new breed of search engine began way back in mid 90′s, however people did not start ‘googing it’ until 2004 where you begin to see google everywhere and as everything. Google now provides more than 100 products from Browser, Operation System to Net-phone, mobile phone.

2. eShopping

Before online payments was mostly for purchasing Internet based subscriptions, but eBay and Amazon.com have introduced us to a brave new world of online shopping. Purchase item online now seems easy and personal; no need for spending 1 day doing grocery when you can finish shopping online within an hour. With 3rd party payment gateway, you won’t need a credit card to make online payments, which potentially drop the average age of eShoppers.

3. Freemium

Free online services with charges on advanced features, that is the game of multi-million dollar companies that provides free products. It is no surprise when you see match makers, social networks and web applications give you access to their services/products for free and allow you to pay premium when you crave for more.

4. Social is Everything

With tremendous numbers of success in social business, Internet has truely took human social to a new level. MatchMaker.com, MySpace, Facebook are few example of websites that connect people to people. As for tech savvies, we have digg, StackOverflow, Wikipedia to keep our knowledge streaming.

5. Connectivity between Services

Similar to online social network, the Internet we in today related everything to everything using widgets and 3rd party services. We now able to list our tweets and flickr photos in personal blog, find (or suggests) your friends when joining a new social service (OAuth) and use 1 credential to access multiple sites using OpenID.

6. Read and Write

Online articles are getting personal, with multiple perspective angles and less professional? Problem with news, articles, whitepapers are they become out of date and lost in touch with time and audience. Information is now coming from blogs by jounalist, software developer and mother of 4. And as the amount of information increases, the details we want to absorb shrinks down to 140 characters as twitter introduced micro-blogging.

7. User Generated Contents

Similar trend to blogs, informative websites are high in voluntary writers and low in running cost. The best way to attract traffics from viewers is to provide them with contents generated by users of their own.

8. Standard Standard Standard

In the dev world, cries for standardisation for web technologies have been continously answered: HTML5 proposed and shipping toward; Web browsers enters another war for standardisation; CSS frameworks were introduced to prompt tidier stylesheets and Javascript frameworks were developed further explore protential of client-side events.

9. Back is going nowhere

As more websites practise high interactive web technologies like Flash and AJAX, the fate of ‘Back’ button in web browsers is to become worse than useless as client side events are not captured by web browser and navigators are provided on the webpages.

10. Applications gone to Web

We now have more and more applications that made available without need for installing or for some: paying for it. Simply use your web browser, you now can open word document, speadsheets or slideshow from any computer, in any operation system.

Do you have your favorite 10 look backs? I would like to hear from you!

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