For years, I’ve kept a personal (and unfortunately, unwritten) list of books I think every manager, programmer, and [insert category here] should read.
A book every programmer should read
The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master. Every programmer I hired was required to read this book. It’s a great resource for people managing programmers too. The book [...]
I was surfing John Gruber’s Daring Fireball, and he linked to an article on programming and journalism.
The article itself didn’t do anything for me, but the way John described the link connected some synapses for me. (I wish I could recover what it was—something about exposing government APIs to journalists.)
Utah does pretty well with [...]
The Senate Site asked about a good way to quickly post a gallery of images. I’m a programmer, so I answered the query by rolling my own solution. (If your only tool is a hammer…)
I happen to like Litebox, although it requires a bit of manual setup: moving specific files to the web server. [...]
Do you want to know how to integrate Mantis and SVN? I did, but could never manage the right Google query to return a page written for someone unfamiliar with customizing Mantis. (I’m still learning SVN too.) This is the documentation I wish I’d had. This process is easier if you know [...]
CAPTCHA (an acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”) has been on my mind ever since Phil Windley suggested a graphical CAPTCHA would make a good web service. I thought there might be those willing to pay to use it. Well, it’s been done.
There is a need for this [...]
I’ve been working on a Javascript project where it’s necessary to create input elements (radio buttons and checkboxes) dynamically. With a functional DOM, it takes only a couple of lines of code, and works fine in Firefox and Safari. Too bad IE isn’t as DOM compatible as it claims to be.
After several searches, I discovered [...]
While trying to track down a Javascript bug in Safari, I was lamenting the lack of a Javascript console and DOM explorer. Then I found a tip on MacOSXHints.com, explaining how to enable the Debug menu. From the terminal command line, enter the following:
% defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu 1
We just resolved a series of related bugs in the web product we’re developing. I’m hoping by documenting the symptoms and solutions it may ease someone else’s fruitless search.
The application has a “skin” feature allowing non-technical users to customize colors, font, and a handful of other things easily accomplished with CSS. Rather than edit more [...]
<label>sIn a past article, I mentioned that the lack of <label> tags bothered me, and managers don’t always know what to look for when evaluating delivered code.
<label> tags are, unfortunately, one of least understood tags among amateur and self-taught web developers. I suspect it is because there are no obvious visual indicators when used. Differences [...]
It bothers me that so many web developers don’t understand basic accessibility concepts. HTML is a funny thing in the education world. When I studied computer science it was never discussed, but we were expected to use and understand the basics for several assignments. (The same for XML.) Most of the professional web developers I [...]
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