Flickr Original for Safari 5!

Wednesday 06/9/2010  –  Category: Uncategorized  –  29 Comments

Safari 5 (released this week at WWDC) now supports browser extensions! So, I've ported my popular Flickr Original Firefox extension, you can give it a try here!

I found the extension development process to be much easier than Firefox, especially with testing. The Extension Builder is built in to Safari and makes it easy to edit your extension info and content items. You can also quickly reload the extension during testing and build when you're ready to publish.

(Protip: when testing, reload the plugin first, then refresh the page. That way the page will pick up the reloaded plugin.)

I found a few differences in the development between Safari and Firefox:

• You need a Safari developer certificate to sign your extension
• You have to host the extension on your own server (no extension gallery yet AFAIK)
• Safari uses an event listener method of handling events (at least for context menu extensions)
• No XUL, thank God!

Some similarities:

• The browser checks for updates to the extension by checking an XML (.plist) file on your server
• JS is mostly the same, except for Safari specific objects (to refer to browser window, etc)

Download Flickr Original for Safari 5

iPad thoughts

Friday 04/2/2010  –  Category: Uncategorized  –  2 Comments

Buzz around the iPad has come to a fever pitch this past week--tech bloggers are writing first reviews, developers are rushing to submit their apps for launch, and people are probably starting to line up to pick up their pre-ordered devices tomorrow morning. Aside from all the hype, I'd like to share a few thoughts about the Apple's latest device.

Though tablets have been around for awhile, I would say it wasn't until the iPhone was released that touch-based technology became natural and easy to use. With multi-touch, Apple has taught us new ways to interact with a screen: expand/pinch to zoom, swipe to pan, et cetera. Kids this generation have grown up easily learning these intuitive gestures which have now become second nature when interacting with a screen.

Before touch technology, desktop computers trained us to use a mouse and pointer: slight movements of the hand translate to movement of a pointer on a screen; initiating an action requires a button press. Doug Engelbart (father of the mouse), describes the mouse as the easiest way to interact with on screen objects:

We timed how long it took the users to move the cursor to the object. It quickly became clear that the mouse out-performed all the others. Devices like the light pen simply took too much time, by repeatedly requiring the user to pick up the pointer, and reach all the way to the screen -- very tiresome.

Touch removes a level of abstraction. Instead of moving a device to move a pointer to touch something on the screen, you interact directly with a much more natural device: your finger.

However, touch technology has its disadvantages. You no longer have the same level of 1 pixel precision as a mouse, the concept of a "hover" state doesn't exist anymore, and click-drag (think: selecting text) actions are not easy. Because of this, user interfaces have to be adjusted accordingly. With the iPhone's limited screen real estate, user interaction and experience had to be redesigned in the form of iPhone's UIKit: big buttons, navigation bars, table views, tab bars are all finger-friendly.

With the iPad, the paradigm of user interaction needs to be rethought again with its larger screen size. As a developer, I'm excited to work outside of the 320x480 box and think of new applications that will take advantage of the 1024x768 display.

The iPad will bring everyday computing closer to us. If the iPhone has taught us that we can stay connected everywhere all the time, with access to anything we wanted in our pocket, then the iPad will teach us that we no longer need to sit at our desks for most of our computing needs. Browsing the web, watching videos, and viewing pictures will all be more organic experiences when we use our fingers to interact--the feedback loop is drastically shortened. For iPad owners, I'd say that the desktop/laptop will be staying on the desk, and the iPad will become the new primary consumption device.

I'm still not sold, however, on its capability to create complex content. After watching the iLife app demos, the apps themselves look great, but the actual experience of trying to create a complex presentation or report looks a bit painful. Complex apps like Photoshop don't seem to be practical on a touch interface. For writing essays, programming, or photo editing, I'll stick with my laptop and mouse.

That being said, it's hard to say if that will change: we learn fast and adapt quickly, so who knows what the next computing paradigm will be.

Good Word Free

Wednesday 03/31/2010  –  Category: Uncategorized  –  1 Comment

After just over a month, Good Word has done pretty well!

The past couple weeks have been a lot quieter though, so I've decided to experiment by release a free, ad-supported version of the app to see how the revenue compares. I've chosen to go with Mobclix and will update this post with results!

Download Good Word Free

Firefox 3.6 Extension Updates

Sunday 03/28/2010  –  Category: Uncategorized  –  No Comments

Sorry for the delay! I've finally gotten around to updating iPhoneSender, Prowler, and Flickr Original to Firefox 3.6.

• iPhoneSender 1.0.4
• Prowler 1.0.2
• Flickr Original 1.0.5

Haml Autocompiler

Wednesday 03/24/2010  –  Category: Uncategorized  –  2 Comments

On a project at work I've been using Compass, a nice stylesheet authoring tool that uses Sass. It has a nice feature that autocompiles all your Sass files to CSS whenever they change.

Since I was using Haml in conjunction with Compass, I thought it would be nice to be able to do the same for my Haml files instead of having to do haml test.haml > test.html every time.

So, here's a simple shell script you can use that will do just that. Just place it in a bin directory in your $PATH and run it in the directory you want to watch.