Participate in our 2012 Rails Hosting survey!
Rails Hosting Survey 2012
30 May 2012
Development Posts
Google+ Fuss
24 May 2012
Guy Kawasaki releases What the Plus!, in which he explains what “makes Google+ as special as Macintosh”.
I was a little surprised when I first read about this, as my experience of Google+ so far has been like walking down a deserted street, complete with tumbleweed and whistling wind. In all honesty, I’ve probably not been fair with it and wrote it off quite quickly. However, when somebody as well-respected as Guy Kawasaki makes such a bold comparison it did make me want to go take another look at it.
One of the points he makes is the clean interface, with plenty of white space. Google’s interfaces are not for everybody – often being described as utilitarian, but my feeble brain tends to prefer this style. The most important aspect though is whether or not there is any activity, and several months on (with admittedly small circles) I’m still seeing barely any activity. Going there makes you feel like you chose the wrong party. The few people there are standing at the edge of the room, and its all disturbingly quiet.
My prediction? The next Wave.
Tizen Developer Conference
11 May 2012
Tizen is a new mobile software platform that is part of the Linux Foundation and runs HTML5 based apps. They held a developer conference down in San Francisco. I flew down to find out more information about this new operating system.
Considerations To Make For Your Mobile Website
6 Apr 2012
We have been working on a number of mobile-focused projects lately and have come across some issues we don’t normally deal with when producing sites for desktop browsers.
Pairing Devices and Debugging With Adobe Shadow
7 Mar 2012
I just saw a video introducing a new Adobe Labs product- Adobe Shadow. Eric claims to have found the video this morning, but I ask- where’s the proof? Anyway, Adobe Shadow seems like a handy little app capable of wirelessly pairing a desktop/laptop to multiple devices- and sharing browser screens among those devices. I am particularly curious about the built-in Web Inspector that could be used to alter the HTML/CSS being served to the different devices on the fly. Web devs/designers out there- thoughts?
Observations of an Android to iPhone convert
23 Jan 2012
I bought a Motorola Droid in the summer of 2010. I wanted a smartphone so I could check my email on the go, replace my aging GPS, and browse the internet occasionally. I bought a Droid because Amazon had a great deal (it was basically free), and I wanted to be able to do whatever I wanted with it. I rooted it within a week of getting it since that was the easiest way to get the updated version of the Android OS at the time.
I was really happy with the extremely easy and tight integration with all of the Google services I used (email and calendar mostly). But my wife really wanted a smartphone as well, specifically an iPhone. I was against the idea because I knew she’d have questions about how to use it, and without one of my own I’d be in the position of supporting two kinds of devices. When I started working for Planet Argon where everyone has an iPhone, I encountered my first small disadvantage…
Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse - a mobile workshop
17 Jan 2012
Last night, I was fortunate enough to participate in a dry run of Jason Grigsby and Lyza Danger Gardner’s WebVisions New York mobile workshop- the somewhat awkwardly titled “Zombie Apocalypse of Devices Preparedness 101.”
Migrating from our projects from LESS to Sass
2 Nov 2011
When I joined the team here at Planet Argon, LESS was being used to code and compile the current CSS files. When a new client project came along, we started the transition to using Sass. The decision was made to use Sass when it was included in Rails 3.1. Being a Rails shop, we wanted follow the conventions that were being advocated by leaders of the Rails community. The differences between the syntax of Sass and LESS are minor, but the process of transitioning our largest project to SASS has had its issues.
Mad Men intro using CSS
5 May 2011
Really impressive! Looks best in Chrome or Safari.
Google Apps transition Help Center
22 Apr 2011
We recently received notification that our google apps account was transitioning to be more like a regular google email address. It contained this wonderful line:
“The Help Center also has answers to many common questions (note that you won’t be able to view the full Help Center until you’ve been transitioned).”