Blogging Roller

Crammed into one post...

After a month of blog neglect, my automatic Latest Links from my Delicious.com account started to pile up. Back in the glory days of this blog, I blogged about things instead just saving links or tweeting about them. I realized that, by adding some commentary/opinion for each, I could turn a month's worth of links into a month's worth of blog posts and thus gain total absolution for my sin of going a full month without a post. So that's what I did.  [Read More]

Just learned from Tim's blog that Greg Borenstein just came up with a cute logo for the Atom Protocol Exerciser (Ape), which, in case you don't know, is the closest thing we have to a compatibility test for Atom servers. The logo is featured on the Ape's home page.

The Raleigh Bloggers meet-up has morphed into a more inclusive RTP/Triangle-wide gathering, not just for bloggers and not just for Raleigh. We're still meeting on the 2nd and 4th Tuesdays, but we've moved the location from Raleigh Times Bar to the more centrally located Serena, a nice restaurant/bar with free WIFI. And we've established a community page at Ning. Our first meet-up in this new configuration is tonight so come on down and join us at 6:30PM tonight.

It was a nice weekend: I had dinner and went to a musical (The Full Monty at the RLT, quite good) with my parents, played some Heroscape with the kids, got a little work done and on Saturday I attended DCampSouth. DCampSouth was a lot of fun. Thanks to Jackson Fox and friends for creating just the right environment for a barcamp experience. Here are a couple of notes on my experience. [Read More]

I feel bad blogging about this so last minute. I really should have mentioned it weeks ago.

I just signed up for DCampSouth, a BarCamp style unconference for "anyone interested in design and user experience" that's happening here in Raleigh, tomorrow June 2 from 8:30 - 4PM. The attendee list looks interesting and the venue certainly looks pretty far out (literally and figuratively): the School of Communication Arts housed in "three Monolithic hurricane proof, clear span concrete domes."

It's a busy week but I'll definitely be able to make it to the morning and some of the afternoon sessions.

Joe Gregorio announces a new Atom Publishing Protocol Spec (draft #12) and he says it might end up being the final. I guess it's time for a new Blogapps release with APP draft #12 and ROME 0.9 support.

Plus, Joe has put together a set of new planet sites for towns in the Charlotte, NC area; all based on feeds from Google Base, Google Blogs, Google News, Craigs List, Flickr and the Weather Service. The sites look useful, but the ads combined with the minimalist design make them look a little spammy on first glance. Perhaps a short "about this site" paragraph is in order.

Roumen: Visual tools for web development are a double-edged sword. They have their advantages and disadvantages. Some users love Visual Web Pack for what it provides but some of them go crazy because by using visual tools they lose a bit of control or they don't fit their development environment. So I'd like to discuss this topic, so that you can decide whether Visual Web Pack is for you or it is not.

A very thoughtful and balanced post from Netbeans evangelist Roumen Strobl that examines some of the reasons you might or might not want to use the new Netbeans Visual Web Pack.

Kurt Williams: Just one problem. Web 2.0 is done with Web 1.0 technology

Yep. If everybody used Firefox everything would be cool, but there are armies of series four browsers (IE, Netscape, Mozilla, etc.) out there just waiting out there to break your latest JavaScript creation.

After Rick Hightower posted a positive review of Java Server Faces, the alternative framework zealots decended on him like a rabid pack of OS/2 fanatics. He fought back valiantly here, here, here, and here. Along the way he was able to plug his company's training class, drew lots of attention to his JRoller hosted SourceBeat blog, and ended up as a feature story on Java Developers Journal. Score: RickHigh 1, Zealots 0.

Matt has the RollerWikiPlugin up and running. He has also created a very nice new JSPWiki theme and started his own Wiki to support his weblog, AppFuse, and StrutsResume projects.

I've always been interested in UI design, but I have never been very good at it. My previous UI development experience involved Windows via MFC and Java via Swing. Webapp UI design is quite a different beast and I would like to (at a minimum) understand the basics. So I searched around a came up with a couple of key links:

• UseIT - Jakob Nielsen
• Dive into Accessibility - Mark Pilgrim
• Microsoft MSDN's User Interface page
• IBM DevWork's Usability page

And a couple of books:

• <a href= "http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0789723107/104-2810709-4065544"> Don't Make Me Think - Krug and Black
• <a href= "http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/156205810X/104-2810709-4065544"> Designing Web Usability : The Practice of Simplicity - Neilsen
• <a href= "http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0789723700/104-2810709-4065544"> The Art and Science of Web Design - Veen
• <a href= "http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596001967/104-2810709-4065544"> Web Design in a Nutshell - Niederst

Those books seem to emphasize website UI design more than webapp UI design. I'm more intested in creating usable web apps than in creating beautiful web sites. If you have some other website and book recommendations for webapp UI design, I'd like to hear about them.