Ross Hawkins

Metro theme for jQuery Mobile

Ross Hawkins — Tue, 01 May 2012 06:59:59 GMT

A few days back I mentioned the iOS theme for jQuery mobile, and today I stumbled across a Metro theme. Looks good. Feels like there’s a lot of buzz going on around jQuery mobile at the moment, and that it’s maturing nicely.

One other little thing the metro post contains is a simple (but useful) snippet of JavaScript that you can use to detect WP7 devices and switch to this sheet accordingly, giving you a nice and easy way to support iOS and WP7 on your jQuery mobile site.

What else could you want to support?

Tags: jQuery Mobile

Something simple and obvious that can trip you up when working with Google WebFonts

Ross Hawkins — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 11:50:58 GMT

It seems they don't work locally, unless being viewed through a local webserver. I’d used Google fonts many times before, however this week they simply “didn’t work”. Seems that previously when I’d been using them I’d been using a Visual Studio solution with my good buddy IIS Express, whereas last week I was throwing the relevant includes into a local file sitting on my Windows desktop and cursing at the results.

Not the most technical tip in the world, but potentially a timesaver.

iOS theme for jQuery Mobile

Ross Hawkins — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 00:09:41 GMT

Working with jQuery mobile? Targeting your site at iOS users? Well, you’ll probably want to check out this iOS theme for jQuery mobile.

I gave it a quick test on both an iPhone4 (non S) and an iPad 2, and it feels a lot smoother than the last tests I did with jQuery mobile. I’m assuming that’s to do with the 1.01 release, but either way it’s nice to feel the framework maturing.

Link: Blog post

Link: Demo

Tags: jQuery Mobile, iOS

A Domino Server migration tip for part time / ex Domino Admins

Ross Hawkins — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 22:39:37 GMT

One of the things I always loved about the Lotus Domino Server was how easy it was to move it to new hardware. Run the installer, copy the data directory (and .ini file if needed) and boom – server comes up as before, no problems.

So when I recently did a migration (for my last remaining Domino customer) where the drive structure changed I was surprised to see logging errors appear as it was trying to access the old Domino Data path. Turns out the culprit was Traveler. To fix this, simply edit the %DominoData%\traveler\cfg\NTSLogging.properties file and update the paths to be correct.

I suspect if you’re working with Domino a lot, or spent any amount of time reading Traveler documentation then this is probably pretty obvious, but for someone who hasn’t needed to touch a Domino server in a while you might get a bit thrown off by seeing a reference to the old data directory appear on your console!

Tags: Lotus, Domino

The Windows 8 editions look surprisingly logical

Ross Hawkins — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 00:20:43 GMT

The recently announced Windows 8 editions look nice and simple, removing some of the confusion around home/professional/ultimate that existed with Windows 7. Windows RT can easily be ignored because it’s pretty obvious that it’s aimed at specific devices, so we’re left with 2 editions. The list of features in the link above isn’t a full list of features, but really it looks like most people will be pretty happy with the non-Pro version, except for people who want to use the inbuilt remote desktop host, or any encryption/domain control features.

Now, can we have an ETA please?

Your ideas are worthless

Ross Hawkins — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 03:59:54 GMT

The concept of ideas and more importantly ownership of ideas has popped up many times in my life over the past few months. A few months ago I was probably in the camp that was all about protecting your ideas, and thinking that the idea itself was a large part of the value. I’ve got a load of ideas written down all over the place, some are even in various states of progression, and in the past felt the need to keep some of them in a fairly secretive sort of a state.

Not anymore. I’m coming around to the view that ideas are pretty much worthless.

Last week a friend of mine told me she had an idea for an iPhone app, and possibly got a little offended when I slipped and responded “Doesn’t everyone?”. It’s not that I wasn’t interested in hearing more about her idea, or even potentially working on it with her, but it was more the point that simply having had an idea doesn’t represent any sort of progress or cause for celebration.

Whether you agree or disagree, here’s a few interesting excerpts from some links which I found to be interesting reading.

Forming a new software startup, how do I allocate ownership fairly links to a reply from Joel Spolsky on http://answers.onstartups.com. It contains a lot of interesting information aimed at allocation of ownership for startups, but one of the more interesting points was:

Shouldn't I get more equity because it was my idea? No. Ideas are pretty much worthless. It is not worth the arguments it would cause to pay someone in equity for an idea. If one of you had the idea but you both quit your jobs and started working at the same time, you should both get the same amount of equity. Working on the company is what causes value, not thinking up some crazy invention in the shower.

Next, we have 5 Ideas For Your Next Startup is just that – some ideas for startups, posted publically and freely. There’s nothing like someone “giving away” ideas as proof that the idea no longer needs to be protected and hidden away – read the introduction paragraph:

It feels like every week that I read some post on Hacker News or some random blog post extolling the virtues of free love with our ideas. People say that ideas are cheap, it's execution that matters. They say that nobody is interested in stealing your crappy idea. And if your idea is worth anything, you will have to shove it down peoples throats.

I think that ideas are floating around in the collective unconscious, and it is rare that you are ever the first or last to think of something. Consumers are fickle, markets fluctuate, and ideas are always floating around, waiting for the proper execution. With that in mind, here are 5 ideas to add to the pool.

Finally, one I don’t have a link for, but is something I’ve read about countless times in the context of new business ideas, startups and product ideas in general, and that’s the popularity of the business model of taking something that already exists and simply making a better version of it. In some ways the thinking there is the same, except rather than dealing with an unproven idea you’re working with a proven one.

So, got an idea? Great work, but don’t let it end there – get out there and do something with it!

Adjust an iframe element’s height to fit its content

Ross Hawkins — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 02:53:43 GMT

Anything related to iframes falls into the category of “things you wish you’re never going to have to know”, but odds are at some point you might. Given that iframes are now being used by many modern sharing technique there’s a much higher chance that you’re going to run into them – just when it looked like they were going away.

All of this preamble is basically an excuse as to why I’m much more prone to pasting the occasional iframe related link these days.. and speaking of those, here’s one I prepared earlier!

Link: How to adjust an iframe element’s height to fit its content

In an ideal world there would always be a clean way of displaying data supplied by a third party on your site. Two examples would be getting the data in JSON or XML format from a Web Service and having an API to code against. But you don’t always have any of those options.

Sometimes the only way of incorporating data from a third party is by loading it in aniframe element. A few examples are financial reports, e-commerce applications, and ticket booking applications. Using an iframe is not ideal for many reasons, one of which is that it can make multiple sets of scrollbars appear on the page. Not only does it look ugly, it also makes the site less user-friendly. But there is a workaround.

The author of this article feels the same need for disclaiming as I do, as you can see via the title of the last section “Avoid the iframe mess if possible” – good advice.

(I feel bad tagging this post as Web Development – maybe I should have used “Bad Web Development” instead?")

Tags: Web Development

Juice UI: Open source ASP.NET Web Forms components for jQuery UI widgets

Ross Hawkins — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 04:12:22 GMT

This morning at MVP Summit, Scott Hunter just announced a new open source project fromappendTo called Juice UI. Juice UI is a collection of Web Forms components which make it incredibly easy to leverage jQuery UI widgets in ASP.NET Web Forms applications. You can start using it right away by adding the JuiceUI NuGet package to your app, and you're welcome to go nuts with the source, which is dual licensed under MIT and GPL.

Basically this is a version of the AjaxControlToolkit powered by jQuery and jQueryUI.

I’m kind of torn on this. On one hand, I can see the place that toolkits like this have in the development ecosystem – they enable people to add shiny Ajax-like functionality to an ASP.NET website without needing a great deal of JavaScript knowledge.

However on the other hand, they enable people to add shiny Ajax-like functionality to an ASP.NET website without needing a great deal of JavaScript knowledge.

An important thing to remember is that often the worst abuse of toolkits like this came alongside our good friend the UpdatePanel. If you take that out of the mix then things might not be so bad, however I often saw them go hand in hand together.

Anyway, while the first comment nails what this is (“A wrapper (Juice) of a wrapper (jQuery UI) of a wrapper (jQuery) of a wrapper (JavaScript). That's what ASP.NET WebForms needs, more abstractions.”), there’s still a place for toolkits like this in the world, especially if they’re well done.

Plus, they do look pretty neat:

Link: Juice UI: Open source ASP.NET Web Forms components for jQuery UI widgets

Tags: jQuery, JavaScript, ASP.NET

30 new OS X Mountain Lion features in 2 minutes

Ross Hawkins — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 01:33:38 GMT

A load of stuff I can’t get too excited about, but one or two gems in there (specifically having Notes sync with my iOS devices) and a lot more integration with iCloud and in general more sharing options.

Hopefully it’ll also have cleared up all the nagging issues with Lion that some people have mentioned too.

Tags: Apple, OSX

Seven tips for starting a small business

Ross Hawkins — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 00:04:54 GMT

Seven tips for starting a small business contains.. well come on, you’ve probably worked it out by now – some of the tips are pretty obvious, but it could be a useful guide for someone starting out and not knowing where to start. The first 2 are particularly relevant for startups – research, and have an elevator pitch. If you can’t tell people quickly what’s unique about what you’re doing, then there’s a chance that you shouldn’t be doing it.