February 6th, 2009 By Theo
I found the nastiest bug the other day. I’m working on a small piece of code that will live inside ads made with Flash and reports some stats like the size and position on the page. I discovered that under some very localized conditions my code would make Safari crash. Hard.
December 14th, 2008 By Theo
The Adobe MAX sessions are online, and among them is a presentation by Jim Corbett about how Adobe and Google’s new Flash indexer works. I think it’s great to get such a thorough explanation from Adobe, but it’s a shame that they didn’t do this at the same time their PR people were busy hyping it a few months ago. Since it’s release it’s become obvious that it’s very limited, and there’s still no evidence that it works any better than the old swf2html method. Jim’s presentation makes it clear why this is — and I maintain my previous assessment that we’re better off using progressive enhancement/graceful degradation until there’s significant changes in the Flash Player to overcome the problems.
December 13th, 2008 By Theo
In this installment of the Architectural Atrocities series I’ll continue on the Cairngorm theme. This time it’s something that is truly an architectural atrocity if there ever was one, and one of the ugliest things I’ve seen in such a high profile piece of software that Cairngorm is (a fact that still baffles me): Cairngorm’s Service Locator.
September 30th, 2008 By Theo
Over the last few weeks I’ve put together an example application that shows how to build document-based applications with Mate. I’ve also started a Google Code project for Mate examples and extensions, and if you’re interested to contribute please contact me.
September 11th, 2008 By Theo
Jeff and John were kind enough to have me on the Flex Show to talk about Flex and SEO. If you follow this blog you’ve read it all already, but it never hurts to hear it again.
September 10th, 2008 By Theo
The last few weeks I’ve been busy working on an app for creative writing, called Copybox. On monday it was finally launched publicly at the TechCrunch50 conference. Below is a video of the presentation, which explains the motivations of the application, and how it works.
The splash screen of the video is a bit odd, it has nothing to do with anything, I don’t know why.
You can watch the video at blip.tv too.
Copybox was build in Flex, using the Mate application framework. It’s going to be deployed both as a hosted version running in the browser and in a desktop version running on AIR. We’re currently in private beta alpha, but if you’re a copywriter go to the Copybox site and sign up, because we need your input.
September 9th, 2008 By Theo
Writing testable code isn’t just about writing code that is easy to test, writing testable code is also a way to write higher quality code. If you can test it it is likely to be reusable, loosely coupled and easier to maintain.
The Google Testing Blog, mostly written by Miško Hevery, is amongst the most brilliant things I’ve read on software engineering. If you’re not convinced about the benefits of writing testable code after reading Miško’s articles I think you may be a lost cause. These are my favourites from the last few months:
The articles explain testing and good practices in software engineering in a simple, accessible, to-the-point manner without droning on about theory. Great writing and great insight. Read it.
September 7th, 2008 By Theo
Today, while refactoring some code, I had an epiphany I’d like to share. It’s why you should chose clean code over apparent performance, because your gut feeling is usually wrong.
August 31st, 2008 By Theo
This is exactly why I’m a freelance consultant. I want what I do to be more important than where I am. Being employed is all about where you are for the eight hours that you owe your employer.