Stop the Obfuscation~!

Once again, I have to agree with you Brandon. There is another point to this as well. In the build that I run, with so many thousands of classes, each with hundreds (if not thousands) of lines of code, this obfuscation process takes quite a bit longer to run in the build. Anything that takes longer in the build, but doesn't offer clear developer benefit can deter developers from running the build (and tests) before check-in because it just takes too long.

Thanks for the great post Brandon.

in reference to: Java Programming Tip: Why Not to Obfuscate - mechanicalSPIRIT (view on Google Sidewiki)

Spanky's closed down?

After my wonderful experience at Spanky's following my 7 year old daughter's driver's ed course, I fell in love with Spanky's. So did she. Their environment was comfortable, clean and friendly, and their food tastes great.

I was really sad though that for her birthday, they were unexpectedly closed. I visited yesterday in hopes for delicious lunch. Again they were closed. Called today too. But they appear to be closed.

What is going on Spanky's? I am in need of your Fresh Delicious Guacamole Burger!

in reference to: SPANKY'S EXPRESS (view on Google Sidewiki)

Sketchy designs

Many of you may be looking for a comparison of a lot of the mockup / sketchy design tools. While I haven't tried all of these tools out, and I really do love Balsamiq, this may be a nice place to start! Now if I could just find that cool data graphing design tool I saw yesterday...

in reference to:

"Comparison of Computer Based Sketchy ToolsSoftware developers are starting to recognize the importance of computer-based sketchy wireframes, and there is a growing assortment of tools to create them. This is a quick breakdown of how each of the major tools matches our criteria for a complete computer-based sketchy tool:"
- Sketchy Wireframes - Boxes and Arrows: The design behind the design (view on Google Sidewiki)

your mockup prototype as a PDF

OK, so this feature is super awesome. Providing a way to export a mockup, with clickable interaction. This is awesome. Today in fact, I sent off a screen full of mockups to some stakeholders, wishing I could demonstrate the flow better than just a bunch of mockup screenshots lined up in a row.

in reference to: Balsamiq Exports Multi-Canvas Mockups to Single PDF | Konigi (view on Google Sidewiki)

SketchFlow vs Balsamiq

Sketch flow looks very neat, and I do really wish that Balsamiq would add the ability to sketch out some of the workflows, and I wish that it would provide stakeholders a player in which to view my mockups, and make their own sketches and marks and comments on it for a bit of historical marking.

in reference to: Why SketchFlow Is not a Mockup Software | .NET Zone (view on Google Sidewiki)

The Ponzi Scheme that stole my house in Highland

Some of you may have read earlier in my blog http://www.fishtells.com/2008/04/lure.html concerning the investments that went sour for me. Well, this is where my money ended up finally. Misused and abused by Mr. Rick Koerber. I'm glad he is being indicted and prevented from scamming even more people.

in reference to: Rick Koerber pleads not guilty to new criminal charges (view on Google Sidewiki)

drag-select controls inside container

I just wrote up my pet peeve:

The other thing I wish Mockups would do is give me an easy way to select the stuff inside of a dialog box, or other container. I.e. when I want to select the items in a dialog, I often end up selecting the container instead. I think it would be a little nicer to make the insides of the dialog box not so clickable. Maybe just the edges of the dialog box clickable would be well enough, then I could group select the controls inside.

This is meant to solve my problem, but in my latest version of Mockups, this doesn't work. When I shift drag, I don't get a lasso at all. In fact, it just appears to annoy me. Also, I liked the smiley face application icon in my task bar better. the one you got there now doesn't really look like anything.

in reference to:

"holding SHIFT when the mouse is over some controls will ignore them so that you can drag-select other controls. This is a small change but it’s pretty handy, here’s a quick video demonstration:"
- Balsamiq Company Blog (view on Google Sidewiki)

Even More improvements for Mockups

Balsamiq just released their newest version of Mockups, which includes some things that I've wanted, but didn't tell them I wanted. Somebody else told them though:
- Move dock ui library left, right, top
- dock the properties inspector (it gets in the way sometimes)

The one I think is the most useful is
- Stretchable Geometric Shapes

Seems dumb, but when I was making some more general purpose projects for cards night, I wanted some shapes, but I didn't want them to look so blocky. Now my shapes will look more natural. Way to go Balsamiq!

Coming up, they have a feature to fix an annoyance I encountered today... moveable document tabs.

Now, if I could just get them to make a really nice way to do UML. I alway feel like I'm piecing things together.

I realize of course that they made Mockups for screens, but I love to use it for my class diagrams, sequence diagrams and general flow diagrams as well.

in reference to: Balsamiq Company Blog (view on Google Sidewiki)

A DSL for processing Web Service Results

My latest project included the requirement to process web service results in a generic way. I thought to myself... This is a job for Groovy Script!

But it became somewhat troublesome as these scripts would be written by non engineers, and it also opened up some security risks.

So, now the question remains, how would I then secure these results processing scripts, while also making them easier to write from 'services' types of folks?

in reference to: A Domain-Specific Language for unit manipulations | Groovy Zone (view on Google Sidewiki)

Follow the blog

I just added the follow my blog functionality. Why not follow my blog. I post on lots of stuff to make your development more productive. Just click on the follow link on the side. Then when I post something new, you'll be notified, and maybe you can put something great into your project too.

Design Mockups, realtime, real easy

A few months ago, I introduced Balsamiq mockups into my project because using Excel spreadsheets to design my screens was just stupid. I couldn't really 'communicate' with the rest of the team in India.

I still remember the night when I pulled this out. I remember Amit from Intelligrape in India happily exclaimed, with hope in his timbre, "Oh Brent, this is going to be so much better for us. Thank you."

He was right. It has increased the team velocity tremendously. We are able to work through the screens in realtime over YuuGuu, drilling down to the finest points of the design.

Here are a couple of the screen shots. We even use it for some class diagrams and sequence diagrams.

in reference to: Balsamiq Mockups Home | Balsamiq (view on Google Sidewiki)

Getting a signed in user in Grails tests

I found this to be helpful. I just needed one more piece of information.

def subject = [
isAuthenticated: true,
principal: "admin"
] as Subject

SecurityUtils.metaClass.static.getSubject = {-> return subject }
Subject.metaClass.getPrincipal = {-> return "admin" }

This way, when I needed the user later on in the code, when I called getPrincipal, I got it. E.g.

JsecUser currentUser = JsecUser.findByUsername(SecurityUtils.getSubject()?.getPrincipal());

in reference to:

"void setUp() {       def subject = [           isAuthenticated: false,           ...       ] as Subject       SecurityUtils.metaClass.static.getSubject = {-> return subject }       ...   }"
- Nabble - grails - user - JSecurity-Plugin and Integration-Tests (view on Google Sidewiki)

Class Diagram needs class groups selector

I love this plugin, but it really needs a way to graphically select some domain classes and delegate them to a diagram I could select from a menu or pick list or something.

in reference to:

"You may change diagram preferences defaults in your projects configuration file (Config.groovy)."
- Grails Plugin - Class diagram plugin (view on Google Sidewiki)

Seems pretty cool.

I think I like this Side Wiki. Now, if it would only let me highlight stuff for context, etc, I would love that.

in reference to: Google Sidewiki (view on Google Sidewiki)