December 2008
Pathfinder Development » App Security: Throw Out the Org Chart!
"Only administrators can add users-- no exceptions! ...except Bob in accounting, but that's because he's covering for Sally. But only until February. And this sort of arrangement might happen again. But most of the time, it won't. I mean.. ninety-nine point nine percent of the time. But there might be exceptions... ".
May 2007
Will JBoss Rules 3.1 Do for BRE's What mySQL Did for RDBMS'?
by 1 otherWhile JBoss Rules 3.0.x has been a great step from its predecessor (the unfortunately named Drools) -- providing a rule editing environment, universal and existential quantifiers (the "not" A is the same as "for all" ~A), and Domain Specific Languages...
BRE Patterns III: Collaboration Cop, Part II
by 1 otherIn explaining this pattern, I wanted to take a step back and explain where and how OO and BRE's intersect. To start with, this excellent post over at Mark Proctor's blog makes the following statement: Assert all your objects as...
Recommendation Search Engines: Liveplasma.com
by 1 otherSimilar to Amazon’s suggestive selling, e.g., “people who bought X also bought Y,” these sites group recommendations around a target book, band, or film. Liveplasma.combills itself as a “discovery engine,” providing searches in multiple language
Don’t Confuse the User
by 1 otherYou’re the team lead for developing the next killer app, and word is passed along that the marketing campaign is being built around the user-centric design of your new app. Unfortunately, no budget has been allocated to hire someone with...
The Evolving Web
by 1 otherSemantic Web. Web 3.0. The Intelligent Web. Whichever terminology you want to use, it's a vision for the Web in which information is given explicit meaning, making it easier for machines to automatically process and integrate said information. Currently,
This is a test
by 1 otherThe fundamental rationale that underlies the direct and observational techniques of user research is that a user’s actions speak louder than their words. As a matter of fact, as usability specialists we are trained to go beyond the surface of...
Nice Reference Tool
by 1 otherThere I was the other day, skimming through the New York Times online when I mistakenly double clicked on a word (which is why I shouldn’t continually mess with my mouse settings, but that’s another post). The next thing I...
1 Picture == 1,000 Words
by 1 otherFor most of us, visual presentation has a greater immediate impact than text or numbers alone. Graphs are effectively used in presentations for that very reason: they quickly convey that Column A is larger than Column B, or that Line...
The boundaries of personas
Leisa Reichelt has recently published a thought-provoking post on her site, disambiguity, titled Yes, you should be using personas. She states that she's come to the opinion that personas are incredibly valuable, but not for the reasons many people think.
Usability testing in the agile environment: an overview
by 1 otherThe growing partnership between user-centered design practices and the array of agile methodologies faces an impasse when it comes to usability testing. In a traditional waterfall approach, a formal usability assessment generally occurs close to release a
Prototype 1.5.1 Out
by 1 otherPrototype 1.5.1 is now out. Looks like they put quite a bit more stuff in there than you would expect for a minor version number, in terms of bug fixes and new features. From their highlight list: Incredible Selector speedup...
Tibco GI 3.4 - New Home Page and SVN Repository
by 1 otherI just checked out Tibco GI from the new SVN repository (see the new GI home page). It comes to 51MB with 242 Javascript files with roughly 84000 lines of Javascript code and comments. That makes it the most substantial...
Zimbra Desktop - One Way of Handling Offline Processing
I'm a very happy user of Zimbra, the Ajax heavy Exchange replacement. Aside from the Google RSS reader, it is the one Ajax application I use the most. It is responsive, featureful, and gives you the feel of a desktop...
JavaFX - Another Ajax Killer
by 1 otherEveryone is trying to kill Ajax. Apollo, Project Flair, Silverlight, on and on and on...but..Ajax...just...won't...die. Sun is giving it another try with it's JavaFX. JavaFX Script takes advantage of the Java Runtime Environment's (JRE) ubiquity across de
Mashup Styles
OK, the Pet Store Application must die. ;-) Actually, its kind of comforting the way Sun keeps working the old war horse into it's publications, and the new article series, Mashup Styles, does not dissappoint. All kidding aside, this series,...
The Problem with JSON
I've been tracking the whole insecure JSON debate over the past couple of weeks with some interest. I've been promoting the use of JSONP for a while, so I thought I'd provide a summary of all of the action and...
gwt4nb - GWT Support for NetBeans IDE
by 1 otherIn the world of GWT IDE support, you knew that NetBeans wouldn't long be behind. And, of course, a beta of gwt4nb is available. From the info site, gwt4nb offers the following features: Using GWT with new or existing Web...
InstaCalc - Shared Calculations
by 1 otherYou may have already seen InstaCalc talked about elsewhere, the sharable online calculator. Lots of the comments on Ajaxian (admitedly a tough crowd) back in March were largely negative. Why bother?; Not slick enough.; Too simple to be useful, were...
GWT and Comet - Using GWT with Jetty Continuations
by 1 otherLet's review: Comet basically means keeping an HTTP connection open between the server and the browser so the former can stream messages to the latter without polling (see the Ajax Patterns page on HTTP Streaming for info on how it's...
GWT in Action - Two Sample Chapters
by 1 otherRobert Hanson has been an early adopter of GWT and was one of the first to release third party widget libraries and demonstrate how to integrate Javascript libraries like Scriptaculous. His blog has been a source of aid and comfort...
April 2007
Too many chiefs
I’ve recently been working on a handful of websites whose philosophy is directly derived from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s observation that “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” What these bedeviled sites have in common is a decentral
Community Spirit
Although the concept of community has become an integral, high-profile component of the vision of Web 2.0, as an online system of communication and collaboration it is an elder statesman of the internet, preceding the birth of the World Wide...
Oops! Our Bad.
There are two ways of producing error-free software. But only the third will work. ~ anonymous There comes a time in the life of any application when an error occurs. Ideally, the software should be written in such a way...
Avoiding the edge in redesign
Commenting on the debut of a recently redesigned metropolitan newspaper, blogger Steve Rhodes articulated a concern that certainly must strike a chord with many IAs: . . .[T]he real problem is one that every redesign faces - that old lipstick...
