Timeplot: Canvas-based Specialized Charting Tool

Link is to the Ajaxian post where I found it, but this is a really sweet looking app. Real link is here. Take that, Flash!

technorati tags:charting, canvas, timeplot

I haven’t done any work with JSTL in a little while, but some work with JSP brings it back. It reminds me that JSTL is a pretty powerful little taglib, espcially JSTL core (the old c: guys). Here are a couple references that I found helpful when first learning about and working with JSTL and JSTL core, all those many years ago:

• JSTL in Action: Great book. Gives you a good understanding of what you can do.
• Sun’s JSTL reference is a little Java Doc-y, but works well.
• IBM Developerworks (is that one word or two?) has some good info as well.

Personally, I have to make a concious effort not to write eRB-style Ruby templating code, but I’m coping pretty well.

technorati tags:jstl, jsp

The Product Development and Management Association is perhaps the leading professional association for folks in its field. It’s a world that Adaptive Path has been getting closer and closer to as we shifted our focus away from marketing and toward product development, particularly product development that makes sense for the people using those products. The website of the conference is a disaster.

peterme.com :: Talented bad web design

You’d think that an organization supposedly focused on developing great, usable products would have created a usable site. Especially one for its chief conference. One focused on building usable products.

“Great-looking” and “novel” don’t equate to “usable” and “successful.”

technorati tags:design, pdma

Let’s say you want to remove a node from a Document. Like, for example, a pesky div from its container after an update. Of course, to remove that node from the Document, you’ll have to use the removeChild( ) method of its parentNode. How do you quickly and easily get that reference and wipe out the node?

Here’s a one-liner that works:

document.getElementById('myId').parentNode.removeChild(document.getElementById('myId'));

technorati tags:javascript, node, document, removechild

Getters and Setters allow you to build useful shortcuts for accessing and mutating data within an object. Generally, this can be seen as an alternative to having two functions with an object that are used to get and set a value…

John Resig - JavaScript Getters and Setters

Well, this is something I did not know.

technorati tags:javascript, getter, setter

@foo = @bar = [ ]

That causes foo and bar to refer to the same Object, and essentially be the same. After I did it in my code, I wondered why @foo and @bar yielded the same values when I iterated through them in my view.

It’s because I tricked myself.

@foo = [ ]
@bar = [ ]

That works like I was expecting. Should have remembered that…

technorati tags:ruby, rails

Need to find images available under the Creative Commons license that are OK to use in commercial applications on Flickr? I did for a few presentations, and Flickr conveniently buries this type of search under more than enough clicks to make doing it kind of annoying.

So, I built a Mozilla search plugin that makes it a heck of a lot easier. (I screwed up my first upload, so it’s the second one on the page if two results show up – the one with the Apple icon). Just type in the tag you’d like to search for, and get those CC and commercial use images back.

technorati tags:flickr, mozilla, plugin, creativecommons, commercial

Awesome Box is a very simple and unobtrusive Javascript that loads images in the same window, overlaid over the page’s content.

AwesomeBox : Paul Armstrong Designs

Awesome Box is a lightbox based on YUI and looks spetacular.

technorati tags:javascript, lightbox, awesomebox, photos