Digital(Analog) http://digitalanalog.net Occasional Thoughts on Social Computing, Visualization and User Interface Wed, 04 Feb 2009 13:40:08 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8 en hourly 1 Script v. Program http://digitalanalog.net/2009/02/04/script-v-program/ http://digitalanalog.net/2009/02/04/script-v-program/#comments Wed, 04 Feb 2009 13:40:08 +0000 fjania http://digitalanalog.net/?p=95 Here is how wikipedia describes a scripting language:

… “Scripts” are often treated as distinct from “programs”, which execute independently from any other application. At the same time they are distinct from the core code of the application, which is usually written in a different language, and by being accessible to the end-user they enable the behavior of the application to be adapted to the user’s needs. Scripts are often, but not always, interpreted from the source code or “semi-compiled” to bytecode which is interpreted, unlike the applications they are associated with, which are traditionally compiled to native machine code for the system on which they run. Scripting languages are nearly always embedded in the application with which they are associated.

They do go on to make a concession:

Historically, there was a clear distinction between “real” high speed programs written in languages such as C, and simple, slow scripts written in languages such as Bourne Shell or Awk. But as technology improved, the performance differences shrank and interpreted languages like Java, Lisp, Perl and Python emerged and gained in popularity to the point where they are considered general-purpose programming languages and not just languages that “drive” an interpreter.

I don’t like it. I think that this is one of those cases where language has evolved in a way that hasn’t been captured completely.

So tell me… when you hear (or use) the word ’script’, what connotation comes along with it for you?

]]> http://digitalanalog.net/2009/02/04/script-v-program/feed/ 4 IE6, Sprites and Transparency (a follow on) http://digitalanalog.net/2009/01/19/ie6-sprites-and-transparency-a-follow-on/ http://digitalanalog.net/2009/01/19/ie6-sprites-and-transparency-a-follow-on/#comments Tue, 20 Jan 2009 04:59:57 +0000 fjania http://digitalanalog.net/?p=66 Long story short, IE 6 is a nightmare. Slightly longer story. If you want to use a sprite technique to reduce the number of roundtrips the browser makes to generate your page, it’s fairly straight forward… unless you use IE6.

If you’re making large sprites, with varied images that might be transparent, you might get away with using an 8 bit gif or png, but depending on how many colors the individual images contain you could easily fill up your color table. So, you’d be best off using all 32 bits of the RGBA PNG.

That works fine on IE7, FF2 and FF3. But we all know that way too many people still use IE6. There are some hacks to get transparent pngs to show up, but they don’t work for images in the background which is, of course, what you need for sprites.

In the midst of my preperations for hari-kari, I found this post on Julien Lecomte’s blog. It was a great step in the right direction, so I started hacking and got some stuff working. Here are some things that weren’t in Julien’s post worth sharing…

A simple example. Here is the markup that Julien showed, with an additional wrapper. Note one other difference, the clip:rect(...) statement doesn’t use commas between the dimensions. (More on this later)

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<html>
<span class='ie_sprite_wrapper' style='width: 66px; height: 71px;'>
<span class='sprite_image'
	style='clip:rect(233px 71px 304px 5px);
	top: 233px; left: -5px;' ></span>
</span>
</html>

Before you try this, you should read how to arrange the dimensions in the clip:rect(...) statement. It’s not terribly intuitive.

Here is the corresponding CSS. We use the filter hack to get the transparency to show, and we style the wrapper.

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<!--[if lte IE 6]>
<style>
.sprite_image{ 
	width:66px; height: 2361px;
	position: absolute;
	background-image: none;
	filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(
		src='/images/sprite.png', sizingMethod='crop');
}
 
.ie_sprite_wrapper{
	position: relative; 
	overflow: hidden;
}
</style>
<![endif]-->

A couple of notes. We position the wrapper relative so that it flows naturally in the layout, but also acts as the reference coordinate system for the span inside (which has been positioned absolutely). If we didn’t do this, the inner span would be positioned with reference to the first positioned parent element. If there were none, the browser frame would become the reference.

We’ve also set the overflow to hidden. Since this hack just clips out the part of the sprite image that we want to see, IE6 still considers it as occupying part of the page. If you don’t hide the overflow, and your sprite strip is longer than the page, you’ll see scroll bars.

So what about those commas in the clip:rect(...) statement? Well thank the flying spaghetti monster for Google. I played with this code isolation, got it working, then brought it over to a page I that I was going to use it in and FAIL. After some hunting and reading on google I found out that when you set your browser’s compliance mode, e.g.

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<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 
	Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

IE6 has a cow and doesn’t like the way your clip:rect(...) statement is formed with commas. The only solution is to get rid of the DOCTYPE statement, or get rid of the commas in the clip:rect(...) statement. I’ve also noticed some funky treatment of how this final sprite image get’s floated by IE6 when the compliance mode is set. More on that some other time when I can take a proper look at it. For now I’m just really glad to have this (mostly) sorted out.

]]> http://digitalanalog.net/2009/01/19/ie6-sprites-and-transparency-a-follow-on/feed/ 0 The tip of the long tail http://digitalanalog.net/2009/01/03/the-tip-of-the-long-tail/ http://digitalanalog.net/2009/01/03/the-tip-of-the-long-tail/#comments Sat, 03 Jan 2009 14:39:47 +0000 fjania http://digitalanalog.net/?p=60 I just got this in the mail…

Toesocks

When I was a kid, I remember going into one of those giant “Hudson News” stores in Manhattan – the one with thousands of magazines. I thought to myself “wow! There is a magazine for EVERYTHING!”.

Of course, the web opens up the space even more so that there is a site for EVERYTHING. (I like exotic soaps, so a year ago I thought about starting a site all about soap. I was a bit too late)

So I’m not surprised that this email landed in my inbox. There is an entire group on flickr, with over 1,000 photos, that are just of toe socks. (Those socks that have little pockets for each toe).

Who could have known that there was a community of people that reveled in the glory of the toe sock? No one perhaps :-) But all they seemed to need to congregate was a space, and it looks like flickr has provided that space for them.

I <3 the web.

]]> http://digitalanalog.net/2009/01/03/the-tip-of-the-long-tail/feed/ 1 The new iPhone is here http://digitalanalog.net/2008/07/23/the-new-iphone-is-here/ http://digitalanalog.net/2008/07/23/the-new-iphone-is-here/#comments Wed, 23 Jul 2008 11:51:10 +0000 fjania http://digitalanalog.net/2008/07/23/the-new-iphone-is-here/ I got my new iPhone 3G yesterday. I just found out about the wordpress application, so I figured I’d give it a try.

Here is a picture from outside my window:

photo

]]> http://digitalanalog.net/2008/07/23/the-new-iphone-is-here/feed/ 2 The Resume-as-Tag-Cloud Meme http://digitalanalog.net/2008/06/28/the-resume-as-tag-cloud-meme/ http://digitalanalog.net/2008/06/28/the-resume-as-tag-cloud-meme/#comments Sat, 28 Jun 2008 14:19:57 +0000 fjania http://digitalanalog.net/?p=56 I’ll follow the crowd here as well… Thanks for the fun app Johnathan!

Resume Tag Cloud

]]> http://digitalanalog.net/2008/06/28/the-resume-as-tag-cloud-meme/feed/ 2 IBM GLBT Event in Second Life http://digitalanalog.net/2008/06/20/ibm-glbt-event-in-second-life/ http://digitalanalog.net/2008/06/20/ibm-glbt-event-in-second-life/#comments Fri, 20 Jun 2008 16:25:35 +0000 fjania http://digitalanalog.net/?p=55 The IBM GLBT group (Eagle at IBM) had our first event in the new dedicated Second Life space. It was a great time seeing some new people turn up, and exploring all of ThomThom’s creative building. We had some conversation in the clubhouse lobby:

Eagle in Second Life

Then we did a little dancing at the disco. (I played DJ for a bit – thats me with the blue spiky hair)

Eagle in Second Life

]]> http://digitalanalog.net/2008/06/20/ibm-glbt-event-in-second-life/feed/ 0 50 Ways to Leave Your Bookmark http://digitalanalog.net/2008/04/10/50-ways-to-leave-your-bookmark/ http://digitalanalog.net/2008/04/10/50-ways-to-leave-your-bookmark/#comments Thu, 10 Apr 2008 13:49:18 +0000 fjania http://digitalanalog.net/2008/04/10/50-ways-to-leave-your-bookmark/ Thanks to Andy and Suz for blogging (and blogging) about the 50 Ways To Leave Your Bookmark article that we co-wrote for developerWorks.

Andy’s got a great description of the premise, so I’ll lift his shamelessly :)

A little while ago my colleague Frank Jania posted a crazy thought on his internal IBM blog. The idea was that since Dogear (our internal social bookmarking system, and also part of Lotus Connections) has an API based on the Atom Publishing Protocol, and that just uses HTTP POST, it should be pretty simple to come up with a range of different ways to add bookmarks to Dogear using different technologies.

The gauntlet was thrown down, so a number of us started to contribute to Frank’s wiki page, coming up with our own code examples.

Thanks to everyone who participated!

]]> http://digitalanalog.net/2008/04/10/50-ways-to-leave-your-bookmark/feed/ 0 Why solitary workers can be faster workers http://digitalanalog.net/2008/03/27/why-solitary-workers-can-be-faster-workers/ http://digitalanalog.net/2008/03/27/why-solitary-workers-can-be-faster-workers/#comments Thu, 27 Mar 2008 17:27:00 +0000 fjania http://digitalanalog.net/2008/03/27/why-solitary-workers-can-be-faster-workers/ collision detection: Why solitary workers can be faster workers

From the article:

“For years, I’ve worked in isolation — either sitting alone in my office, or, recently, sitting in a rented cubicle in New York. I haven’t had a job that required me to work physically alongside coworkers since 1998.

And maybe that’s been a good thing for my productivity — because according to a new study, when you can see other workers performing different tasks out the corner of your eye, it slows you down. Tim Welsh, a kinesiologist at the University of Calgary, organized a nifty experiment in which he asked a subject to perform a task on a computer, alongside a partner performing a different computer task. Then he’d get
the subject to perform the task while his partner went off to another room…”

]]> http://digitalanalog.net/2008/03/27/why-solitary-workers-can-be-faster-workers/feed/ 2 Done with: MySpace/Friendster http://digitalanalog.net/2008/03/25/done-with-myspacefriendster/ http://digitalanalog.net/2008/03/25/done-with-myspacefriendster/#comments Tue, 25 Mar 2008 20:16:48 +0000 fjania http://digitalanalog.net/2008/03/25/done-with-myspacefriendster/ I’ve made the cut. Along with unsubscribing to a shockingly large
number of newsletters in my personal email account, I’ve canceled both
my MySpace and Friendster accounts. I’ve had them for some number of
years and they’ve lied fallow in comparison to my activity on Facebook.

I have some friends that are primarily active on MySpace or Friendster,
but maintaining updates on both of them was just really more than I
wanted to do. So we’ll see how all this works out. I’m still on
last.fm, Facebook (of course), flickr, dopplr, fireeagle, etc etc, but
the sites that were primarily a personal profile have been
consolidated. Ahhh.

]]> http://digitalanalog.net/2008/03/25/done-with-myspacefriendster/feed/ 0 “Sort Of” http://digitalanalog.net/2008/03/17/sort-of/ http://digitalanalog.net/2008/03/17/sort-of/#comments Mon, 17 Mar 2008 19:31:54 +0000 fjania http://digitalanalog.net/2008/03/17/sort-of/ “Sort of” is the new “like”.

Listen for it.

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