Sometimes you have a t-shirt idea, but there is no way to try it out – until now. Introducing OnAShirt.net. It is a simple app I coded in a couple of hours today that allows the user to place text over a picture of a t-shirt, or even to conduct t-shirt conversations with themself.
Thanks to jQuery for making this sort of thing so easy.
In a little over 5 weeks Dr Nic and the Fair-brothers will begin their Homeric rickshaw running adventure from the Himalayas to the south of India. Their adventure is raising money for some worthy causes so please give generously.
As you can see, Greg was kind enough to send me a mocra off railers t-shirt. It is very comfortable. Thanks Greg and good luck!
Today I had a twittersation about build servers, and how closely they should match the development and production environments. Damian’s position was that the build server should match the development environment, while I held that the build environment should be as close to production as possible. Martin Fowler’s Continuous Integration article says:
Test in a Clone of the Production Environment
The point of testing is to flush out, under controlled conditions, any problem that the system will have in production. A significant part of this is the environment within which the production system will run. If you test in a different environment, every difference results in a risk that what happens under test won't happen in production.
As a result you want to set up your test environment to be as exact a mimic of your production environment as possible.
I can provide an example of why this is a good idea. I am currently working on a project that is using Asp.Net MVC 2, which is installed on developer’s machines as a standalone MSI. The same article I mentioned before also says, “everything you need to do a build should be in there [repository] including: test scripts, properties files, database schema, install scripts, and third party libraries”. Being fallible, I made a mistake and failed to include one of the required MVC DLLs in the source repository. Because the build environment matched production we quickly detected the error because the build broke. If the build server was similar to the development environments then it would have had the required DLL in the GAC and the bug would have gone undetected.
Here are the things that I consider to be important for a build environment:
- The build server should, as close as possible, match the production environment
- The build server should be fast. Rapid feedback is important
- The same build that runs on the build server should also be runnable on the developer’s machines
- When a build fails, everyone should know
I have written about about WebAii before. It is functional but the API sucks. I have written about NGourd too.
I am currently working on a project that is using the combination of NGourd and WebAiii for automated acceptance testing. We start with a story:
Feature: Search
As a user
I want to search for items
so that I can find data that I am interested in
and then write some scenarios like:
Scenario: Search for a compensation agreement
Given I am at the home page
When I select the Agreements perspective
And I search for 'agreement 1'
Then the search results should be displayed
Within the test project we have the following directory structure:
Search.feature is a text file containing the previously listed feature and scenario definitions. For each scenario step we must have a corresponding step definition. For example the step ‘When I select the Agreements perspective’ matches the following step definition:
[Step(@"select the ([\w\s]+) perspective")]
public void select_perspective(string perspective)
{
CurrentBrowser.Click(CurrentBrowser.Find.PerspectiveButton(perspective));
}
Note the use of regular expressions to parameterise the step. Because this step is an action we put it in the ActionSteps file. Everything that we need to do for our tests falls into one of the three categories: Action, ContentAssertion or Navigation. The goal is to avoid defining the same step twice so that the set of steps form a domain specific language that can be used by business analysts and the like.
NGourd is a Cucumber knockoff, but without many of the features. However, it is surprising how far you can get with just the basics. So far it is working nicely.
Atlassian is the company that I wish was mine. They make cool web products, they have a unique voice and they are successful. But recently they lost their minds, and starting giving their software away (almost).
If you are a small organisation like me you can buy the main atlassian products (jira, confluence, greenhopper, bamboo, fisheye & crowd) for US $10.00 each. User limits apply.
We are using Jira + Greenhopper for agile project management, and confluence for our project wiki. Confluence is VERY nice. It is the best wiki I have worked with. Simple, powerful and it works. It also is very good at converting word documents to wiki pages which is something that our BA has appreciated. JIRA + Greenhopper is a workable solution for agile project management if you don’t want to go with walls and post-it notes. At times it can be a bit confusing because Greenhopper is a JIRA plugin that adds mingle-like functionality to a bug tracking application. Jumping between JIRA and Greenhopper is not entirely smooth, however, it is still one of the better solutions I have tried, and I have tried them all. This is the first project I have been on that has had a burn down chart, and I am finding Green Hopper’s burn down to be an excellent big visible chart / information radiator. JIRA reminds me of Gemini, and Greenhopper reminds me of Mingle. Not sure who copied who. The good news is that unlike Mingle, JIRA does not require a dedicated super computer.
The only disappointed I have is that Atlassian’s code review tool, Crucible, was not included in the deal.
Dictionary<TKey, TValue> is a generic type that stores collections of KeyValuePair<TKey, TValue>. It is used heavily (actually the IDictionary<TKey, TValue> interface) in Asp.Net Mvc as a parameter to view helper methods.
I am writing this post because I have a tendency to forget the collection initializer syntax for this type of collection, so here it is:
IDictionary<string, int> collection = new Dictionary<string, int>()
{
{ "rows", 7 },
{ "columns", 2}
}The nice part is that it supports specifying the collection members as anonymous types, instead of having to instantiate new instances of KeyValuePair<TKey, TValue>.
Brisbane ALT.NET beers is happening Thursday 5th November from 6pm. The venue will be the riverside pig 'n' whistle, same as last time.
If you have not been before, ALT.NET beers is an informal pub-based meeting of ALT.Neters. Beer and wedges are likely.
Please RSVP at the new EventBrite page: http://altdotnetbrisbane.eventbrite.com
This is part 2 of my series on the jQuery UI Dialog. Part 1 – The Default Dialog covered the most basic usage of the dialog widget. In this second part I will demonstrate a simple modal dialog.
A modal dialog is a dialog that takes focus, and disables the rest of the application until it is closed. They are used to force the user to acknowledge something, or to gather some input. It is worth pointing out that modal dialogs can be annoying for users so you should consider carefully if it is absolutely necessary. User Account Control (UAC) in Windows Vista and Windows 7 is an example of an annoying usage of modal dialogs.
The dialog widget is usually configured by passing the dialog() method an anonymous object containing a set of key value pairs that describe the options required. The anonymous object is created using javascript’s object literal notation. My favourite javascript author, Douglas Crockford, describes the notation:
In the object literal notation, an object description is a set of comma-separated name/value pairs inside curly braces. The names can be identifiers or strings followed by a colon.
A simple code example is:
var myObject = {
firstProperty: 'value 1',
secondProperty: 2
};The options I will use to create a modal dialog are:
| height |
The height of the dialog |
| modal |
Boolean indicating if the dialog should be modal |
| overlay |
Creates a partially transparent modal overlay layer. Very web 2.0. |
View a Demo
And here is the code:
<!-- See part 1 for html preamble -->
<body>
<p>Some text on the page.</p>
<div class="make_me_a_dialog">Content of div</div>
<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function() {
$('.make_me_a_dialog').dialog({ bgiframe: true,
height: 200,
modal: true,
overlay: {
backgroundColor: '#000',
opacity: 0.5
}
});
});
</script>
</body>
</html>
This series is going to document increasingly complex usages of the jQuery UI Dialog widget. This first part of the series will demonstrate how to display the default dialog.
Other series members:
jQuery UI Dialog: Part 2 – The Modal Dialog
The jQuery UI Dialog is a powerful client-side dialog control. It is bundled as part of the jQuery UI suite and as such it is available on the Google CDN. Some of its more interesting features are:
- Modal / non-modal dialogs
- Support for resizing and dragging
- Support for buttons
- Support for Theming
- Stacking
- Partially transparent modal overlay layer
The simplest usage of the dialog control is to select a div, and call the dialog() function.
View a Demo
Here is the complete code:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
<title>Default dialog</title>
<link href="ui-darkness/jquery-ui-1.7.2.custom.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.2/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jqueryui/1.7.2/jquery-ui.min.js"></script>
</head>
<body>
<p>Some text on the page.</p>
<div class="make_me_a_dialog">Content of div</div>
<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function() {
$('.make_me_a_dialog').dialog();
});
</script>
</body>
</html>
Maybe you are like me and regularly work on multiple projects. If not, please send me a cheque for the $0.00001 worth of bandwidth you have wasted.
Sometimes a week or two can pass between looking at a project and I find when I go back to it I lose a couple of hours just trying to work out where I was up to. To solve this problem I have started a development journal for my more neglected projects. At the end of every coding session I record a few key pieces of information to help orientate me the next time I come back to it. Here is an example entry:
----------
2009-08-19
----------
WORKING ON:
Testing the graph navigator code that produces cycles. Discovered and addressed a few edge cases such as non-cyclic journeys where the shortest spanning tree visits every node.
NEXT THING TO DO:
Complete the scenarios in BuildingCyclesTests using the style of the first two already completed scenarios.
TESTS:
63 passed, 0 failed, 1 skipped, took 13.21 seconds
It is just a plain text file that I have added to my visual studio solution items so that I can edit it in visual studio.
The traditional, Paul Graham style of technology start-up is:
- Someone has an idea
- They try to validate their idea
- The idea is implemented
- The idea is communicated to the market
While the importance of step 2 has always been emphasized the weakness of the above remains that the product may not gain significant visibility to the market. The products never reach critical mass and so they fade gradually into obscurity.
Recently I have noticed a new model emerging that promises far less risk at the tail end of the product cycle:
- Build a personal brand. This is usually done by making open-source contributions.
- Develop a product that is related to your brand.
- Use your brand to reach a market
The advantage here is that the market is ready and waiting and has a degree of trust in the entrepreneur. Here are some examples of development tool isvs that are using this strategy:
I am sure there are others but that is all I can think of right now. Personally, I think it is great that these people are able to leverage their excellent contributions to produce a viable business.
WebAii is a proprietary, but free, functional testing framework from ArtOFTest. It has become more visible since telerik started bundling it with their ASP.NET AJAX UI Controls framework...
Between 2nd October and 18th October my current team was using Team Foundation Server for source control and integration. On Sunday I merged the changes from TFS back into our old subversion repository, effectively throwing away the two weeks of work that one of the guys spent setting up TFS. Why did we make this decision and what did we learn?
Executable specifications are the holy grail of software development. The idea is to specify the behaviour of a system in some structured way that can be automatically verified. It is something that I am interested in so I have been keeping an eye on the options that are available for .NET...
There has always been an employment back-channel. Maybe there was a time when people would pick up the phone when they needed to fill or find a job. More recently people might have sent an IM in that situation. But now it seems that twitter is the medium on which employment transactions occur...