CuteFTP – Life is easier with Lockstep Navigation
I’ve been using Globalscape CuteFTP Professional for a long time now.
Just this past week I rebuilt my main work machine (with a fresh Windows 7 installation), and got the opportunity to re-install all of my software. Yes, it’s annoying reinstalling, but theres a great feeling knowing you have a clean install of the freshest releases.
Yesterday I was working on a website and using CuteFTP to manage deploying my files and I saw something amazing happen…
When I changed my local folder, it would also change my remote folder. The same happened changing the remote folder, then my local folder would change.
Lockstep Navigation, where have you been all my life!
In case you don’t have this enabled, and you are running CuteFTP Pro — the option is under “Tools”, just a single option in the drop down menu.
I’m sure someone will tell me that they’ve been using it on their Linux box since the mid 90’s, but this is a big deal for me.
Every day I’m working in FTP sites, changing the local folder up one folder, then changing the remote folder up one folder (I always download a complete version of any site I work on, and toss it up on Subversion, so I have mirrored folder structures).
It saves so much time. If you don’t have it in your FTP client, and you work on the web — you need CuteFTP Professional!
And no, I’m not being paid for any of this. Actually it costs me money to buy the CuteFTP software, well worth it.
Help: Blender won’t start, “side by side configuration is incorrect”
I have Blender (an excellent free open source 3D modeling suite) running on my Windows 7 (Final) 64-bit. During the setup I ran into a minor snag, I got the following error message:
The application has failed to start because its side by side configuration is incorrect. Please see the application event log for more detail.
The fix is easy.
The Solution
For me all I had to do was download the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 SP1 Redistributable Package (x64) and install it.
It took a second, but Blender started up just great after installation (there is an installation process, give it a few minutes and installation screens start up).
Help: Windows 7 install stuck at “Expanding Windows files”
I logged onto the Microsoft site this morning then purchased and downloaded an official copy of Windows 7 (build 7600 I am reading).
Up until now I have been using the Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC), build 7100.
The Problem
After following various instructions online about how to upgrade from the Release Candidate to the final version without a complete reinstall (despite the suggestion from Microsoft that you should install a fresh copy after the RC), I ran into a minor snag.
My install forced a reboot, and is now stuck at:
Expanding Windows files (18%)…
With the following lines cycling at the bottom:
Please wait…
Gathering additional information before expanding files
My computer is not frozen, I can move the mouse, or mouse over the “close” button.
How to fix it?
Just wait. According to other sites online, all you need to do is wait for it to finish. This can take up to an hour.
I will update this post with my results of … waiting (see the update next).
UPDATE 2009-10-22 #1
After leaving my computer for an hour and coming back, the install had moved forward. The lesson is to just let Windows 7 do its thing, it will move on
UPDATE 2009-10-22 #2
It eventually got stuck on “Transferring files, settings, and programs” at 42%. I left it for 3 hours, and had no change. I restarted. At least I reverted back to my old Windows without a problem.
I have since restarted the installation seemingly without the “18%” problem this time.
While I’d like to say that you’d hope Microsoft would make sure the install went through without a hitch (it is the first impression), I have to keep in mind that I am doing something that Microsoft does NOT recommend, upgrading from a RC version to the RTM (release to manufacturing). Has anyone had the same experience doing an upgrade without altering the cversion.ini file?
UPDATE 2009-10-23 #3
Well after leaving the computer all alone, it was still stuck at 42% on the “transferring files, settings and programs” step. I’m admitting defeat and will just perform a clean install sometime next week. Too much work to do it now.
UPDATE 2009-11-12 #4
Finally, I wanted to post the final resolution. I had to install Windows 7 clean. After the previous stop points, it eventually just didn’t move (after leaving it alone for up to 24 hours at one point). I have to say, the clean version is running excellent.
Summary, do a clean install. You’ll thank yourself.
Software Developers: Better and worse, a big difference
In my days as a web developer I’ve probably worked with about 100 other developers. Every team I’ve been on, I always knew who would (correctly) pump out bug after bug, and who would sit with a single bug for weeks.
Think of the slowest developer you know. They usually are reluctant to learn new development methods, new software, and practices. These slow developers can spend days or weeks on a single bug, constantly absorbing your time as they stare blankly at a bug.
Sometimes there are reasons for this:
- They have never worked in this environment
- They do not want to ask for help
- The bug is actually hard
- They can’t even find where to begin looking
Just today I found a blog written in July by Steve McConnell titled:
Numerous studies have found 10:1 differences in productivity and quality among individuals and even among teams. This blog contains Steve McConnell’s thoughts about how to move toward the “10″ side of that 10:1 ratio.
How true is that statement? We’ve all been on the projects where we wish we had “5 Toms” or 3 of another developer. Why? Not only does he get it, he knows how to handle software development.
How can you improve your software development speed?
First of all, speed isn’t everything. Lets define speed, by the total time it takes you and all others involved to complete (not just submit a fix) a task.
If you get a task and submit it for approval (or even worse, just deploy it) consider the time it takes the QA team to look at the bug, boggle their head when it still isn’t working, document the bug and assign it back to either the project manager or yourself. Yes, the QA team would have looked at the bug anyway, but now they have to do it again. The project manager now has to review this bug, and reassign it to you, or you yourself have to read it again and develop again.
There is a huge delay in speed when submitting a completed task that is not complete.
To establish a baseline, it is top priority to submit fully tested and fixed bugs. Otherwise you are just wasting everyone’s time. The bug won’t go away, you know it will come back.
We are now submitting actually fixed bugs (we tested ourselves, and they work in all possible scenarios) … how can you improve your speed?
- Talk to other developers on the project, someone always has a better software package, or better way to handle those time consuming repetitive tasks
- If at all possible, automate compilation. Use Ant or a build script, but somehow, you need a way to quickly (and CONSISTENTLY) compile your work. Nothing sucks more than trying to troubleshoot a bug, only to realize you didn’t compile the same files the same way.
- Expedite testing of your tasks. Local servers are great for this (and make it easier for the rest of the team). Every time you test a change, you have to spend time doing the actual test. This takes maybe 15 seconds, but sometimes you do this 100s of times for every bug you complete (or more). 15 seconds * 100 times = 1500 seconds that is 25 min. of time. If you get it to 3 seconds, you have just gained 20 minutes worth of time to fix that bug.
- Always search for new tools. Aside from talking to other developers, you can research better ways to do what you are doing.
- Communicate with everyone. A project takes a team to complete (usually), so if you are speeding ahead and done weeks ahead of everyone, the project is not going to be done earlier. If you are ahead, help out your team members, proactively provide faster / better ways to do tasks. Additionally, it is easier for the client to react to a delayed delivery when notified of it earlier on. While it may take time from your schedule to say you messed up estimation (it happens, a lot), the client won’t have to scramble and can establish a well thought out backup plan.
- Keyboard Shortcuts. When I code I get into a groove where I hit buttons almost like playing music. There is a beat to saving, tabbing over, repeating last compile command, tabbing over again, and refreshing a web page. How many times do you save a file? Ctrl+S is much faster than using your mouse (I know, it’s a basic example, but you get the idea).
- Don’t get stuck. Obvious, but still not easy to do. When you get to a bug that you just can’t solve. Don’t. Move on to another one that you can, notify the team that you are stuck on the bug, maybe someone else can fix it who has a different perspective on the issue. Software development shouldn’t be about ego, it is about working with everyone towards a single common goal.
- Make a list. I hate lists. Ask anyone who knows me, family, friends. They are great for putting things in perspective. If you have a list of 20 tasks to do this week and are stuck on #3. You know you should MOVE ON. Getting 3 out of 20 is much worse than 16 or 17 out of 20. You also start to see groups of tasks that involve the same set of files or code and can work on them together.
- Test frequently. Sweeping changes to code never work. I’ve been on countless projects, and then minute I start feeling bold and implement 2 or 3 fixes, I always have to go back and fix something.
- Learn to debug code. I cannot emphasize the importance of this one enough. Debugging code is perhaps the single greatest skill any developer can have. Usually the hardest part of fixing a bug, is finding the bug. Here are some hints:
- Binary search is amazing not just for searching, but sub dividing code. Comment out half of your program, see if the bug is in that half or not. Even if you have no idea where the bug is, you can eliminate 50% of your options with a few comments (ok, sometimes you can’t quite do this, but you can get close). Within a few attempts you will narrow down your scope.
- Don’t be afraid to get ugly. I always make sure when I’m debugging, to make things as visible as possible. If I’m debugging a flash project, I make big ugly bright colored shapes appear when code is executing. Use system.out, writeln (Pascal, there’s an old one), trace, alert, anything that will help you know more bout what you are doing
- Use debuggers. Debuggers are your friend. You can see variables, set breakpoints to inspect loops. Frequently developers think they can just “alert(’test’)” their way out, but there are many free debuggers out there (some are already on your computer).
Another big one, is don’t post blogs while working! Focus.
Usually some non code related things get me going faster too. A clean workspace, work friendly music (sometimes classical, sometimes club music, you pick your mood). Sometimes its a snack you grab in between bugs as a treat.
Best of luck everyone, check out that blog again: 10x Software Development
New Computer UI Concept: 10/GUI Multi touch
Occasionally you run across something that makes you think.
This morning I saw a video on the new interface for multi touch computers.
We use multi touch every day (well, at least some of us do) with our portable devices. That is mostly two fingers. Why would you need more?
Check out the video introducing the proposed method of handling desktop multi touch. It is provided by 10/GUI, showing how multi touch is not only feasible but presents some advantages over traditional “single touch” desktop interfaces.
10/GUI from C. Miller on Vimeo.
EEE Keyboard – Computer in a keyboard
Saw a post on the Asus Eee Keyboard on taranfx, Asus Eee Keyboard is Actually a PC: Featuring Touchscreen, Wi-Fi, Wireless HDMI, Atom.
Initially I’d say “I want this”, as I do all cool technologies. Realistically it seems like more of a distraction than a useful “keyboard”. It boils down to a computer in a keyboard, so your keyboard becomes all you need along with a monitor.
I’d rather have a laptop and just connect it to a monitor. It feels like this product is paying entirely for the (very cool) keyboard screen. I doubt the screen will result in much increased productivity — since you have to shift focus down to just use it.
Maybe instead of touch screen applications, a little touch pad instead?
It definitely demos very well:
To Tame the Perilous Skies
This is off topic for my blog in general. It is very personal, but I’m so excited to get the opportunity to play a piece of music again I had to post it.
Not really mentioned on my blog anywhere, but I play horn (french horn). I used to spend every minute of my free time playing music. This was mostly back in high school.
I got the amazing opportunity to play with some of the most talented young musicians on Long Island back in the late 90s through groups such as Nassau Suffolk Concert Band, Long Island Youth Orchestra, and Gemini Youth Orchestra to name a few.
I have so many great memories of playing with those groups. At the time I never realized it, but that was going to be the furthest I ever would take my music career. In college music conflicted with computers, rehearsals got in the way of classes, and private lessons took too much time.
Recently I’ve joined a small community band in Newport, RI called the Newport Community Band (at Salve Regina). A friend directs the band, my fiancee plays in the band, and I get to play horn. I’m very grateful I get to play horn again, and be attempting some pretty cool music (last year we managed the Divine Comedy, and it came out sounding pretty good). The band has achieved some things I never would have imagined from such a group, and always seems to surprise me.
We are going to be attempting to play one of my favorite pieces of music I have ever performed (with the Nassau Suffolk Concert Band back in 1998 I think) — To Tame the Perilous Skies (iTunes).
As a horn player, of course I like David Holsinger music. I still get goosebumps up my arms every time I listen to the song, and it can’t be loud enough.
Below are parts 1 and 2 of a band performing the piece (not us). It’s not the greatest quality but they do a fantastic job. Give the music a chance, it’s really great stuff.
Part 1:
Part 2:
IE6 and IE7 limit CSS links to 30
Help! Working in Drupal and having trouble getting stylesheets to work? Did they break all of a sudden in Internet Explorer only?
I can’t see my stylesheets anymore in IE6 or IE7!
Internet Explorer limits the number of stylesheets included with a LINK tag
That’s right. If you include an additional CSS file beyond 30, it will break other CSS files.
This problem is only in IE6 and IE7. Officially I’m sure Microsoft says the fix is to upgrade to IE8.
What code causes the problem? Perfectly valid code below:
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="stylesheet.css" />
Just repeat that 31 times, and you will see an error.
The Solution
While <link> tags may have issues beyond 30 stylesheets being included, you can cheat with using @import.
For example, include CSS using the following instead:
<style type="text/css">@import url('stylesheet.css')</style>
If you’re working in Drupal, there’s a module that implements this fix for you, IE Unlimited CSS Loader.
Properly Reacting to Statistical Problems, an IE6 Realization
As a web developer, I closely associate “IE6″ with bad things.
CSS — IE6 will ruin it.
Nice AJAX effects — won’t look right in IE6.
Transparencies — IE6 is always finicky.
Simple “No Table” code — IE6 will break something.
I have said to clients before that including IE6 in any technical requirements probably means an additional 15-20% in terms of cost of developing any complicated UI elements. It’s probably more than that.
Digg.com, the news aggregator, has posted in their blog an article, Much Ado About IE6 by Mark Trammell. Read the article, they wrote it up much better than I did. My point is different, I wanted to highlight the brilliance of really digging into statistics. Traffic reports are just numbers, you have to find out what they mean.
Frequently statistics have an “obvious” reason. While that reason is “obvious” it may not be accurate.
Always ask questions, your users will appreciate it.
The Situation
Digg leverages AJAX in such a way that you almost don’t even notice it’s there. They have perfected the use of buttons that make calls without full page refreshes (imagine the CPU / bandwidth load that saves!). In developing features they see that their IE6 usage is at approximately 10%. That’s still quite an audience to ignore.
IE6 was released EIGHT years ago, and people are still using it. What technical toys are you using now that you had in 2001? Remember your MP3 player back then? Mine was the Creative Labs Nomad II MG with 32 MB of built in memory (please don’t buy it). My computer monitor back then was HUGE.
People still use IE6.
The Details
Digg has 10% visitors using IE6. So they had coded all their functionality for the quirks in IE6. It was stealing time from their dev team who should have been working on other features, instead of coding today’s website for the browser of a decade ago.
The smart folks that make up the Digg team decided to look a little further into this. They found that while IE6 users made up 10% of all page views, it only made up approximatly 1% of the diggs/buries/comments. They do not provide details on the numbers for non IE6 browsers, but we would see that they make up increasing percentages of all interactivity on the site.
One option is to prompt all IE6 users to upgrade, after all, it is about time.
Taking it a step further, they research why the people are using IE6 with a poll on their site and come up with:
It turns out IE6 users are only IE6 users because their workplaces haven’t upgraded really. So if Digg implemented the “reminder” function on the website, the would have just told people to upgrade who weren’t allowed or able to.
The Conclusion
I was thinking it too, just eliminate IE6 as a requirement, or force them to upgrade.
That would have pissed off a bunch of people for no real results.
If something is important to you, dote on it. Spend time thinking about it. There are obvious answers, those are for people who are not willing to really dive into something.
I’m going to think about making browser decisions differently in future projects myself.
iPhone 3G – OS 3.0 Notes
iPhone 3.0 Home screen - Notice new icons, and additional "page" indicator by the dots
I have an iPhone 3G, and have upgraded it (early) to the 3.0 version of the operating system.
I will not disclose how I upgraded, you can find that out for yourself elsewhere. It isn’t a big secret. If you want to know, you may find the hints I saw on my twitter page, www.twitter.com/seangw
We all know the big things Apple has announced, but when we install, what changes will us 3G users still notice?
- There is the new search screen
- You can hit the Home button when on your “Home” screen, and you will go to the search screen
- Email / contacts all have search above the initial top of the page (just scroll up an extra bit)
- Installation of the “Voice Memos” app moves all of my icons around (I had added a few icons to my home page, Apple forces it on the home page)
- New icons for Messages, Stocks, Phone and iPod. Maybe the Glass button effect is wearing thin, and Apple is introducing a textured glass button?
- All the new horizontal screen displays for apps that we type into (it seems like most, if not all, have this layout now)
- Notes now sync to outlook (and vice versa)
- Safari seems to launch a little quicker
- Overall performance was a bit slower after the update, maybe I just need to restart it
- The upgrade was much easier than the 2.0 OS, I didn’t have to back up everything and restore
- Call history now displays which “number” the person dialed from (”Mobile” or “office”)
- Call Detail tells you not only when the calls were made, but also how long each call was (something that always annoyed me)
- Copy and Paste is there, but we all know we made much more of a fuss about it, than we are likely to realize now that we have it.
- Selecting cursor location in text actually seems to be trickier than before the copy paste upgrade
- Switching Screens SEEMS to be faster. This could be those psychological upgrade effects.
It’s amazing how little has been upgraded if you aren’t getting the new 3GS. Features that we are missing on our iPhone 3G are (but not limited to, if you know more, post a comment and I will update the article):
- Voice Dialing
- Video Capture
- Faster Hardware (obviously)
- Auto focus camera
- Compass
- Driving Navigation Software (?, not sure if it doesn’t have a compass)
While Tethering and MMS seem possible on the 3G, there is no word if Apple and ATT will enable it. Technically it is feasible as a number of users have already enabled MMS (as well as tethering) on their iPhone 3G with a minor tweak to the carrier files (again, I’ll leave it to you to find this one – not hard).
I’m going to be waiting for my “upgrade eligibility” which goes into effect in mid July. For now I remain a somewhat unimpress, and minorly frustrated longtime iPhone user (seems like all iPhone 3G users are being told to wait a month before getting theirs for the full discount, this sounds like a business decision to get people in that don’t already have the $30 / month plan — while initial inventory is still there).
Vendor Client Relationship in real world situations
My friend Jarrod, at www.jarrodmichael.com, posted this video on his blog, and I wanted to share it with all of you web developers out there. I’m sure you can all relate to these conversations:
How you can fix IE8’s slow “View Source”
I installed Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) on my main machine a few weeks ago, and have been using other browser’s “View Source” since IE8’s default View Source editor takes forever to load.
With all the work, I didn’t have time to figure out how to fix it, but YOU CAN!
IE8 uses an internal viewer by default, but you can easily change it:
- Get into the Developer Tools screen (F12 or Tools->Developer Tools)
- File->Customize Internet Explorer View Source (yeah I know, weird)
- Set to Notepad (like it used to be) or “Other” and use your viewer (I used TextPad)
Now, can anyone recommend a better “View Source” application? I haven’t looked into this, but it may be a great opportunity to improve efficiency doing HTML and debugging.
Google History: Distorts Search Results (Warning for SEO experts)
A growing sector in web development nowadays is the SEO “expert”.
With the blossoming effects of social networks and rapidly developing online presences, many people consider themselves SEO experts because they can gain visibility for your site.
One could argue, that’s exactly what SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is, making sure your site gets visibility.
I’m going to stay neutral on that subject, but say that SEO should generate organic traffic to your site through cooperation with modern search technologies. Proper SEO shouldn’t be a Boom and Bust scenario, but a constantly growing user base.
With all of these new SEO experts comes a group of individuals who are NOT skilled in all the fundamentals on the internet.
Google History
One warning I wanted to throw out there, is Google distorts search results for users based on sites they have clicked on previously. Take a look at Google History, and you’ll see what I mean.
Google History takes your previous browsing behavior and organizes it. That information is used to tailor your search results, and I’m sure for Google to customize their search engine performance overall.
When doing SEO you frequently search for a few search terms every day, and may click on the results you like.
SEO experts should know that the results they see may differ wildly from the rest of the world.
All SEO experts should use “neutral” browsers without Google Toolbar installed such as Firefox or Safari (yes, it’s available on the PC too — and it works pretty well) to test the search placements of their clients.
Additionally, if you have hired an SEO expert, be sure to cross reference their results with searches on indepedent computers. Your SEO expert may say your site is now “top 5″ when it is in fact only in the top 20. This is because their computer is biased based on that user’s history.
Google Calendar Sync – Easy Calendar Backup
I run Microsoft Outlook 2007 as my main email / calendar application. Say what you want, but I love it (I’m always open to suggestions if anyone has them).
The problem that I encountered last week, what happens when your entire calendar / datebook for the next year is lost to a computer crash?
How do you recover?
I introduce, Google Calendar Sync. Yes, it’s meant to give you access to your calendar online, but a useful secondary feature is that it’s an online backup.
The Situation
My iPhone syncs with my Outlook calendar, my Outlook calendar syncs with my Google Calendar, and all data is shared.
Last week with my computer failure, I had to reinstall everything. I knew having my email hosted at Google would make it easy to both access it while the computer was down, as well as let me sync up when the computer came back up.
I never realized how easy it would be to re-import all of my calendar information into outlook. I thought it would be some combination of iPhone syncing (which has my full calendar) and exporting from Google Calendar.
The solution
After getting my empty outlook installed, I went to Install Google Calendar Sync. It works in Windows 7 64-bit for me, even though Google says it won’t.
It is an easy install, and seconds later my entire calendar was back in my Outlook!
I don’t have much to write, it’s just so easy.
The Conclusion
You have important data. It is so convenient to have access to your calendar online, as well as on your computer, or on your iPhone. It’s also a great way to backup and recover rapidly.
Windows 7 Tips and Tweaks
Now that I have a new operating system, Windows 7 64-bit, I must tweak.
My first few ventures out on the net looking for information returned the following 2 helpful articles:
- 20 Windows 7 Tweaks & Tips – Every Secret Uncovered to Date
This covers a good number of the tweaks and tricks I had seen out there, including some very helpful and cool keyboard shortcuts. - Start Explorer in Drive View
I hate having explorer open up to “My Music”, “My Videos” etc. Who uses that really? This tells you how to get it back to how it should be. - The Bumper List of Windows 7 Secrets
A bit dated (January 2009), but still includes many hints about how to use Windows 7 to its fullest.
Some Keyboard Shortcuts That are Awesome
- Windows + Up
Maximizes the window - Windows +Down
Lowers the window height, Max -> Restore, Restore -> Minimized (be careful, you can’t go from Minimized to Restore with Windows + Up, only Restore to maximized) - Windows + Left
Great for Side by Siding, this makes the window take up the left 50% of the screen it is on - Windows + Right
Exact opposite of Windows + Left, duh - Windows + Shift + Left
Great multiple monitor support — moves windows to the next monitor on the left - Windows + Shift + Right
Take a guess? It moves windows to the monitor to the right - Windows + Home
Hides all “other” windows (hmm, just like on OS X) so you can focus. - Windows + [Number]
Just like in Vista, Windows + 1 corresponds to the first icon in the taskbar, Windows + 2 the 2nd, and so forth - Windows + Shift + [Number]
Haven’t seen this one listed yet, but it launches another instance of the application, instead of focusing on it. Much like the old Vista quick launch functionality - Windows + Space
Lets you take a quick peak at your desktop through all the windows, it looks cool — not sure if there are many useful applications of this
I love how Microsoft is addressing the needs of the multiple monitor community. Back in 1999 I thought I was among a very select crowd. Nowadays almost everyone I know (especially in tech roles) has multiple monitors in at least 1 of their computing locations (usually work).
More to come!
Windows 7 – First Impressions
It’s been a while — life has been quite busy. Drupal, WordPress, Blender, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Illustrator, Flex, Flash, Actionscript, Papervision. Even got some bicycling and racquetball in there on the weekends.
In the past, wow, month. I’ve been up to quite a bit, and will be posting things on here about them all. Right now my main focus is on my new install of Microsoft Windows 7 (the Release Candidate) while it is still fresh in my mind.
Background, Vista Recovery
A little bit of background, last week on Thursday I woke up to my Vista (32-bit) workstation completely hosed. After a lengthy chat session with a Dell support rep (I can’t say how happy I was with the Dell support guy, he was friendly, smart, and patient through an almost 6 hour long chat session), I managed to get access to the files on my disk to back them up. Happily, I reformatted. I really needed it.
The most amazing thing was when I put the Microsoft Vista DVD in, and it actually got my system to boot into “windows’. Of course I had no icons or anything, the system was actually fixed by the Vista repair actions (a first for me, usually the only use I have for those is to get a command prompt to see the extent of the damage).
While the machine was on, but with no desktop — I was able to map to the drives through another computer and backup information (\\{Computer IP}\C$, D$, E$ until I found drives K, L and M). That took forever, but it was successful.
Windows Vista 32-bit Install
It took FOREVER to get all the updates installed. I know updates just accumulate while software is out. I don’t remember it taking this long to update my XP machine which I had to reinstall 3 or 4 years into the lifecycle. Maybe Vista just has more updates, but it took forever to get my machine back in working order.
Once I was up again, things were much faster (as they always are after a fresh format).
I want to note, I’ve never had many Vista 32-bit driver issues, or any performance issues. The few issues I had revolved around a few pieces of software that didn’t have drivers or fully compatible version for a few months after the Vista launch.
Welcome to Windows 7, how Vista should have been – the first 24 hours
Wow. I downloaded the 64-bit Release Candidate from the official Windows 7 page yesterday. I want to take advantage of the 16 slots my machine has for RAM. Who wouldn’t?
I have a lot of good, and some bad, things to say about Windows 7 so far.
I’ll start with the positive:
- The install process was a piece of cake, I’m running a raid controller for my OS drive (raid 0, living on the edge) — and didn’t have to do anything special
- Updates to the OS through windows update were painless. I want to say it was less than 10% of the downloads required by my Vista install a few days earlier, though the software isn’t even released yet.
- Hardware wise, I have had ZERO, 0, problems with Windows Live 7. not like the handful of hardware issues Vista32-bit had at launch
- Google Chrome is giving me some issues. I can get it to work occassionally but it always ends up “crashing” somehow.
- I actually am not minding IE8, but I miss Chrome
- Faster. It’s true, this runs faster out of the box than my tweaked Vista install
- Clean and easy interface.
- Lots of room for running applications
- Most of my old installers worked, a few of the installers had 64-bit versions I had to download
- Everything with regards to the network seems to respond faster
- It’s free! (for now)
- Cleaner Start Menu
- Higher Windows Experience Ratings
The Bad:
- IE8 (yes, I don’t mind it, but I dislike having to use it instead of my Chrome)
- Google Chrome won’t work well
- Things have obviously moved, and I”m not comfortable with the locations yet. This is really just me being stubborn
- It will expire in 2010, and require a purchase
Conclusion
I’m happy with the install and highly recommend it. I have not lost any productivity. I’m not sure I’ve gained any though.
I will continue to report on my experiences.
Bailey (a dog) plays Dead on Letterman
The girl forwarded this to me, and I wanted to share with whoever happened onto this site.
I got a good laugh from it — Bailey plays Dead, in her own way.
How To: Track File Downloads with Google Analytics
Google Analytics is what most people use nowadays for web traffic reports. It is flexible, powerful and simple.
The problem with Google Analytics is that it doesn’t analyze web traffic reports, but generates data in real time. In most cases, this isn’t a problem. In fact, it is big feature. The problem is what about files that do not parse javascript such as PDFs, ZIP files, or other non-HTML documents.
When a user clicks on a PDF from your site, you will never see that PDF in Google Analytics.
How to track File downloads with Google Analytics
It’s very easy. As is most things with Google Analytics.
Google Analytics provides a method for tracking anything you want. It’s called “_trackPageview”.
You use it in javascript as “pageTracker._trackPageview(’/downloads/map’);”.
How does this help us track file downloads? Simply modify the link to the file asset to have an “onClick”:
Link to the file here: <p>
<a href="somefile.pdf" onClick="javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview('somefile.pdf');">Download somefile.pdf</a>
</p>
See how easy that was?
Hopefully you have a function used to print out those links, then you can modify it in one place (that’s what I did).
You should see results in Google Analytics under Top Content shortly.
Rant: Domain DNS Setup — not just www!
A problem that some websites have drives me crazy: some websites don’t setup their domain to work without WWW for their websites.
What brought this into mind, is the lack of being able to go to http://fdic.gov/ … while http://www.fdic.gov/ works just fine.
I don’t know of any good reason for this. Maybe it’s easier to load balance with a subdomain, than try to handle “fdic.gov” while there are emails going to “fdic.gov”.
I understand that the mail server is a different machine, great. Reroute traffic depending on the ports, it’s not hard to filter potrs 25, 80, 443, 110, 143, 465, 585, 993, 995 to the correct machines.
I feel better now.
Problems with Lossy Image Encoding
On the web we work in many formats. JPG, SVG, PNG, GIF, SWF … etc. I know, they’re not all image formats.
Why don’t we just have 1 image type? Because all images are different of course — and lend themselves to to certain formats.
There are two types of image formats:
- Lossy - An image encoding that is lossy means the final output, the encoded image, doesn’t have all of the information the original photo had. This is why it’s better to keep original’s of photos from your camera, instead of just saving the JPEGs which may be 1/10th the size of a full image
- Lossless - This is the opposite of lossy, obviously. An encoding that is lossless means it contains all of the information of the original image. Frequently we don’t see much savings when we do a lossless compression.
Why do we use “Lossy” encoding when we have “Lossless” encoding at our fingertips? It depends on the intent of a photo, but usually the human eye doesn’t need all of the accurate original information. For example, does it matter if the color you see in a photo is #236c2f or #236c2b?
It doesn’t matter to us. In an image, however, there are 4 shades in between the two colors. If we can eliminate the need to differentiate between those 2 colors in a green scene, we may save as much as 25% of the file size! Of course, that would be lossy — but we have dozens of other colors to optimize most likely.
In Photoshop when we set the “Image Quality” we are merely saying how accurate we want the encoded image to be.
At that we have a few different image formats … some of which are better suited to different environments.
- JPEG/JPG – Focused on handling “real world” scenes, designed for full-collor or gray-scale natural images. This is lossy, but can result in extreme image savings with a relatively minimal visual degradation. JPG doesn’t support transparencies.
- GIF – Handles solid colors well. Gif looks at an image and says “45 pixels of green.” This is better than saying “Green. Green. Green. Green. Green. Green …. Green.” 45 times. Since this is entirely accurate, it is lossless. The problem with GIF is that it has a limit of 256 colors (which was generous when GIF was invented by CompuServe in 1987). Frequently when we do GIF encoding we tell it “8 colors” or “16 colors” which boils an image down to 8 or 16 colors. This is lossy, as we aren’t allowing GIF to use the entire pallette. It saves space, and usually performs very well. GIF supports transparency and frame by frame animations.
- PNG – Portable Network Graphics – Lossy / lossless depends on how it is used. PNG is very flexible and can support truecolor, grayscale, and palette based colors (a la GIF). Transparencies are supported additionaly alpha channels are supported (GIF doesn’t support alpha channels). Frequently PNGs are used for vector assets as they look much cleaner than JPGs for vector assets, and are easier to work with transparancies
- SVG – Scalable Vector Graphics – an XML based file format that is useful for scalable vector assets. This means a 10×10 image looks perfect, while the same image blown up to 1000×1000 will also look perfect.
So which image type should you use?
Normally the difference between JPG and GIF is fairly small, although it can be a dramatic difference if you get it wrong (especially on larger scale web deployments).
It would help all web developers to learn how to properly use encoded images.
We should NEVER open up a JPG and re-export it as JPG again.
Want to know why? Watch the video below of what happens, over time, when you open up a JPG and re-export it:
Generation Loss from hadto on Vimeo.
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