Theodicius

Good. Evil. Bratwurst.

Why don’t they test?

Filed under: General,Technology— arlen@ 12:32 pm

I’ve heard from some more developers on the subject of testing, who claim they aren’t allowed to do unit testing because there isn’t time. I’m not blaming the developers here, but their management for being just plain stupid. An elementary analysis of the question proves just how wrongheaded they are.

The first question to ask is do they test the software at all before they supply it to the customer. It’s possible they don’t, in which case they have a point that testing will take more time, and my only advice, to both the developers there and to their customers, is “Run Away!” It’s irresponsible and unprofessional to make people pay for untested software.
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Some Capistrano Recipes for Radiant

Filed under: General,Technology,Web Design— arlen@ 8:45 am

I’ve been dipping my toes into the Radiant CMS lately (a side-effect of my love affair with Ruby on Rails) and have run into several interesting moments. On the assumption I’m not alone in that, I thought I’d share some of my favorite recipes for deploying a Radiant app to an Apache-Phusion Passenger combination.

As I look at my deploy.rb file I’m reminded of the old Tom Lehrer ditty, “Lobachevsky”:

I am never forget the day I first meet the great Lobachevsky.
In one word he told me secret of success in mathematics:
Plagiarize!

Plagiarize,
Let no one else’s work evade your eyes,
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes,
So don’t shade your eyes,
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize –
Only be sure always to call it please ‘research’.

So here is the result of my ‘research’ (where I remember where I got the code from, I will also quote the source; where I don’t remember, I apologize in advance):
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Reactive Layout, Dealing With the Window

Filed under: General,Web Design— arlen@ 11:35 am

One of the first things our layout will have to deal with is window size. Designs too wide for the window frustrate users as they scroll left and right, but designs too narrow can also be frustrating, as they string boxes out vertically, when they would fit on screen. What to do, what to do?

Some designer’s deal with this by choosing to submit to the lesser evil. The frustration of having to scroll horizontally is higher than the frustration of having to scroll vertically, so they fix the width of their design. They choose a width that will fit within the vast majority (75-80%) of their visitors’ windows. What width they choose depends upon their intended audience: if they make it too narrow, the frustration of those with wider windows grows, and if they make it too wide, the number frustrated horizontal scrollers improves.

There’s no perfect number, so they try to balance them as best they can. So, how would someone practicing Reactive Layout approach this problem?
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Why Is Online Advertising Different?

Filed under: General,Technology,Web Design— arlen@ 10:53 am

Media Week writes about a new trend in online ads. The first question that occurs to me is: why?

The complaint is that people aren’t seeing the ads on web pages, so the proposed solution is “don’t let them see the web page until after they see the ad.” My first reaction: Your only synapse just died of loneliness, didn’t it?

Why should you expect web ads to be different from print ads? Few if any of us consciously look at print ads, either.
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Cookies, the White House, and Ignorance

Filed under: General,Technology— arlen@ 12:35 pm

I don’t usually get too involved with lunatic fringes, they’re not worth the hassle. But this one displays such rampant ignorance about my profession that it can actually make life harder, both for me and for you, but especially for me.

So we’ll take it slow and simple, just to keep things clear. And we’ll leave the politics out, so we can keep to the facts and avoid descending into silliness (or at least any farther into silliness than the post already is).
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