Making, 2009.
Tools, hacks, side projects, this site
- jPlayer sprites SVG
For a little side project, I’m using jPlayer, a nice jQuery-based audio player. I wanted to skin the buttons a to suit my project, and while jPlayer does support jQuery ThemeRoller skins, I liked the basic look and feel of the standard jPlayer controls. So, I just traced the default sprites in Il...
- Scribefire is so awesome
I can’t say enough about ScribeFire. It’s a Firefox add-on that gives you an in-window blogging client. Here are just a few reasons why it’s awesome: You’re blogging from within Firefox, and you can move among webpages while keeping your blog post editing window open. This comes in really handy w...
- New theme, and it's slightly less simple
During Theo’s morning nap today, I updated this blog’s theme. I’m going to attempt to start using the blog more regulalry, as sort of an “open lab notebook,” and (in the true spirit of procrastination) figured I’d start by updating the theme. So here it is; I’ve ditched by previous Undesign for mo...
- Melkjug Fluid Icon
If you use Melkjug as a Fluid app, like I do, then you’ll love this: (Melkjug fluid icon) Continue reading
- Help! Can't drop
When I couldn’t sleep the other night, I started mocking up a zippy drag-n-drop front end for Trac, based on the snappy UI of tools like Things (working title is FasTrac). Then, bam! Bitten by a weird, seems-like-a-bug w/ jQuery UI drag and drop. It appears that droppables aren’t discoverable by d...
- Introducing The Board
A few weeks ago, I created a small web app for scheduling project teams at TOPP Labs. At any given time, we’ve got anywhere between 10 and 20 active projects, so keeping track of it all is difficult, and planning ahead requires a good clear overview of everything that’s happening. Why create someth...
- Crowdsourcing my schedule
I had a great crowdsourcing experience yesterday. Here at TOPP Labs, we’re doing a 6-month check-in on our annual employee reviews. What that means for me is a 30-minute interview with each of the folks on my team (about 20 in total), where we look back on the past six months to see how we’re… Cont...
- Map drawing UX is still too hard
At work today, we are exploring the process of drawing routes on a map, thinking ahead to a few upcoming projects involving bike planning. So Sonali set up a Google MyMap and asked a few of us to mark our routes to work. In a nutshell, it was basically a flop, with two out of… Continue reading
- Backpack TOC Greasemonkey Script
Hot off the presses: Backpack TOC Greasemonkey script. Continue reading
- Chandler and Constraints
I spent most of this morning looking back through old posts about the Chandler Project and OSAF. I’ve thought about this a lot, due to the many parallels with my work at The Open Planning Project. For newcomers, those parallels are: Massive funding from a visionary with a dream (in OSAF’s case, Mi...
- 'Do You Know Me?' Authentication
For a recent personal project (I won’t say which since that would defeat the purpose), I was in need of a new kind of authentication. My wife and I wanted to create a website where we could post photos and news for our family and friends, while keeping that information off of the broader intertubes....
- New App Idea: Dude, Where's My Car?
Even though I shouldn’t own a car, I do, and as every car owner in NYC knows, dealing with alternate-side parking is a hassle. That, combined with my recent itch to write a small mobile app, has lead me to the following idea: the “Dude, Where’s My Car?” app for mobile. Here’s what it will… Contin...
- Too much structure makes for useless data
Over at TOPP, we’ve been talking recently about the “spectrum of engagement” — in other words, providing a variety of ways that people can engage with a website, ranging from quick & easy (e.g., thumbs-up-ing something) to slow and involved (e.g., writing a blog post or signing up for an account). ...
- Goldilocks and the RSS Theme
For your reading pleasure, the Broadsheet Wide theme for the Vienna RSS reader. Continue reading