Dan Olsen’s Weblog

I downloaded Google Chrome as soon as I could. I’m always interested in trying out new Google products. They have always done a good job in my opinion. I use GMail, Google Apps, Google Reader, Picasa, etc. I’m a big Google fan.

I have liked Google Chrome so much that it is my default browser. Does it have everything I would like? No, not quite but it is showing promise.

One of the things I was surprised about was the fact that the browser wasn’t hooked into Google Bookmarks. I love the Google Toolbar and the Bookmark feature. I figured that this may be an addition later until I read on a user forum about the idea of integrating Google Bookmarks into the browser. Google is probably trying to avoid integrating their other products into the browser to avoid those anti-trust guys.

I am sure that there will be some sort of Google Toolbar for Google Chrome but it will be a plugin that you have to download. At the moment Chrome doesn’t support plugins but from the press release we know that those will be coming. I would love FireBug to be ported to Google Chrome. To develop my code I still use Firefox so I have FireBug support. The developer tools that are integrated into the browser are good but not as good as FireBug. However, they are much better then IE’s developer tools.

If you haven’t tried Google Chrome yet, I would recommend it. I love it!

I am testing Windows Live Writer to see if it is worth installing on my home computer for my wife to post to our own family blog. I’m always up to hear what others have to say about Windows Live Writer.

So I signed up for Facebook when Phil Windley invited me to join. I figured I’d check it out. It turns out quite a few people I know also have Facebook accounts. This has lead to a major Facebook annoyance for me.

The thing that annoys me is that people are using my Wall on Facebook to send me a message. So, when they post a message on my Wall I get an e-mail from Facebook saying so-and-so wrote on my Wall. Now I have to click on the link, login to Facebook and go to my Wall to read the message. What ever happened to sending me an e-mail instead? Sending me an e-mail provides a way to send me a message without requiring me to jump through hoops to get my messages.

One thing I wish Facebook could do in this situation is send me the message in the e-mail they sent me.

Mainly, people need to realize that there is a coolness factor and a convenience factor. What WOWs some people annoys others. Think about the user on the other end and determine if what you are about to do causes inconveniences for the other. So, if you want to send me a message, send me an e-mail. Don’t write on my Wall in Facebook.

Technorati Tags: Facebook, Messaging

It’s amazing how much information you miss out on when you are down and out for a few days. Yesterday I made an attempt to go back to work after having my appendix out on Friday. One of the first stories I read was that Apple released Safari for Windows. At first I thought maybe the pain killers were causing me to hallucinate. Well, I wasn’t.

At first I didn’t understand why they would do such a thing. That question was quickly answered as I read about Safari being the platform for iPhone apps. At work I use Windows and for my Masters Thesis work I use a Mac and I like being able to use the same browser in both environments. I think Safari is a nice little browser and I think I would use it more if it were actually more developer friendly. As a basic browser I love Safari, but as a developer I find it to be not so great. I currently use Firefox since I have easy access to the Firebug plug-in. It is nice to have a tool that can help troubleshoot problems with my web apps. Safari lacks any really good tools to debug issues that only appear in Safari.

I would be more likely to use Safari if they had more built in tools or even a plug-in infrastructure that allowed for such useful tools. If anyone knows of any such tools please let me know. In the mean time I am going to continue to focus on Firefox and IE as supported browsers for my web apps. IE at least has a developer toolbar to help out with some of the problems. However, the Javascript warnings in IE stink a lot of the time.

Please Apple, give us some useful tools that help people make debugging problems easier. Once again, if you know of any such tools leave me a comment pointing me in the right direction.

Technorati Tags: Safari, Windows

I had been using Trac to keep track bugs for my projects. However, with out using fast CGI it was really slow and getting on my nerves. So, I started looking into other options that might fill my need and still appeal to me. Well, I found Retrospectiva. It is pretty much the Ruby on Rails version of Trac. So if you are looking for a good system to track your projects, Retrospectiva is another good option.

Technorati Tags: Bug Tracking, Retrospectiva

I am a fan of fantasy sports games. Because I enjoy them I decided this past year to create my own. My original iteration of the web app has lasted through the BYU football and basketball seasons. I am now in the process of putting together version 1.0 which I am planning on releasing August 1st. In time for some the upcoming NCAA football season. I wanted to get it out a little before the season to take care of any bugs.

For version 1.0 I am using the YUI toolkit to bring some AJAXy stuff into the site. I am also hoping to increase the number of users to more then the 10-15 I’ve had over the first year. One way that I am hoping to draw more people is to provide more then just BYU as a team in the game. As of right now I have plans to add USC and Michigan to the mix. I am hoping to have the multiple team functionality tested well enough to be able add all NCAA Division I teams to the game by the 2008 football season or 2007-2008 basketball season if things go well.

One time consuming part of my current setup is that I have to put all the final scores in by hand. I am looking for a web service that I can use to have the scores entered into the database automatically. If anyone knows of a web service that will provide me NCAA football and basketball scores, please let me know.

You can go check out the old version of the system by going to http://bballpickem.com. The site for the football version is http://football-pickem.com. Go check the sites out (the football site doesn’t have much yet) and get ready to sign up come August 1st and get your friends to do the same. In the near future I am going to put up a poll or two on football-pickem.com to allow people to vote on the importance of features and teams that I am looking at adding.

Technorati Tags: Sports, Games

Since I have been using the YUI library from Yahoo! I have found that it took a lot of space and required a lot of files I had to update in my project to keep up with the latest version of the libraries. Well, Yahoo! has announced that they will be hosting all the files in their YUI libraries. Here is what they said.

Coinciding with this week’s release of YUI version 2.2.0, the one year anniversary of the YUI open-source release, and as announced at the YUI Party just moments ago, we’re opening up free YUI hosting from the Yahoo! network to all YUI implementers. If you’re using YUI for your own project, we’ll serve the files for you — gzipped, with good cache-control, using our state-of-the-art network, for free. You can count on these files being continuously available because they’re the same files, served by the same source, that we use for most YUI implementations at Yahoo!.

Files served from Yahoo!’s network include version numbers in filepaths, allowing you to reference a specific version in your code. Previous versions are retained even as new versions are released. While we are providing no explicit SLA with respect to the availability of legacy code, our current policy is to support permanent availability of legacy YUI files.

From Free Hosting of YUI Files from Yahoo!
Referenced Fri Feb 23 2007 09:49:43 GMT-0600

The reason I like this is because when there is an update to the YUI libraries I have to update all the files. Now when I want to update I just change the path to the files on the Yahoo! servers and I am updated. Using PHP makes this update easy since I just use a PHP variable to hold the path and update the one variable and BAM I’m done updating.

I have already updated my main page on a sports pickem game I am wiring and the load time dropped the load time of the page by 4 times. The gzipped files makes the load time quicker. The load time was a major concern of mine since I was annoyed at how slow my pages were loading when hosting the YUI files on my web server.

I love these libraries because they provide a quick and easy way to produce cool effects on my web pages. Since I am limited to working on my projects during my lunch break it’s nice to not have to figure out all the functionality myself. I have looked at some other libraries and I have found the YUI library to be my favorite. I may end up using some others as well since there is still some functionality that YUI does not have.

Technorati Tags: Yahoo! User Interface Library, YUI

Once I found out about Google hosting I decided to start using it to see how it compares to my own Subversion/Trac setup. Thus far I must say I am pleased. Google hosting doesn’t have a whole lot of features to it but I like its simplicity.

I have a sports pickem application I have been working on in my free time and I have put it up on Google hosting. Now when people find a bug or want a certain feature I just point them to the issue page of the project and submit it. Quick way to have a list of things I need to do without setting up Trac or Bugzilla.

Technorati Tags: Google

I have installed Office 2007 Beta on my Windows box at home. My first reaction when I saw the new UI was, “Oh man, I’m going to have to learn where everything is again.” To my surprise I was able to pick up on the new UI very quickly. I really like the new interface and find it easier to use then previous versions of Office. Also, in my opinion the new UI is easier to learn then the previous interface.

The other thing I like is that it is easier to format your document. There are more pre-defined styles provided by Microsoft. Another nice feature they have added to Office 2007 is the preview functionality. If you want to see how a style or other options appear in your document you just have to hover over the option instead of apply the style. The hover over preview has saved me some time in finding the kind of style changes I want. I hated how I would have to apply a style, see how I like and back out of it if I didn’t like it. That slow style selection routine is history with Office 2007.

The one problem I have with Office 2007 is that it does some annoying things when it comes to printing on my Epson CX6400 printer. If I use the default printer options everything prints just fine. However, if I try to print at a higher quality or set the paper to glossy or another paper type, the document is printed about 50% smaller then it should. On multiple occasions I have ruined some nice paper because of this. I don’t think about it until I print since I’ve never had to pay attention to this before.

Overall, I really like what Microsoft has done with the Office suite. I like the new look, the easy formatting of documents and the fact that I’m using it for free right now. I would love to update when Office 2007 comes out but the price is quite hefty and I don’t know if I’m ready to fork over that much money.

Technorati Tags: Office 2007

I have been using Firefox 2 beta. There are a couple of things that I like about Firefox 2.

The first thing I like is the changes to the interface. There wasn’t a full GUI overhaul but it was enough to make the browser nicer to look at.

Another thing I like is the is how Firefox 2 handles RSS/Atom feeds. It gives you a preview and then lets you choose what feed reader you would like to use for the given feed.

One of my favorite additions is the session restore option. I always hated it when Firefox would crash (more often then I would like). With Firefox 2 you can now restore your session when you start up the browser after a crash.

I read this morning that they are now accepting ideas for additions for Firefox 3.

Technorati Tags: Firefox

I have recently installed Trac on the server here in the ECLab at Brigham Young University. I must say that I am converted. Trac is exactly what I was looking for. Trac is an online project management tool. It contains a wiki, a bug tracking system and a source browser. This was the kind of tool I was looking for. It allows me to post information about my thesis, keep track of bugs and other improvements I need to make to my code, it allows me to browse my source code, etc..

I love the source code browser. Trac allows you to hook your Subversion repository into the environment and then from there you can browse all the source in the repository. Not only that, there is a Subversion hook you can use that allows you to reference bugs in your commit messages. The hook looks at the message and determines what was done regarding the bug(s) mentioned in the message.

For our projects in the ECLab, Phil Windley has been paying for Basecamp account. Basecamp was nice but it didn’t provide a way for me to hook into my Subversion repository. Now I have everything I used in Basecamp plus some. If you are looking for a project management system I would recommend Trac for now.

We are currently moving all the project information from Basecamp to Trac. Another nice thing about Trac is that it is easy to set up. The actual Trac install can be a beast depending on your server setup but I didn’t find it all that bad, there were plenty of online resources. Once Trac is installed you use the trac-admin command to create new environments. Each environment is independent of each other in the sense that each environment knows nothing about the other environments. However, global changes are made easily because they all rely on the main Trac install. Best of all, they keep it simple and try to keep things to just the essentials. Here is what their website says about that:

Trac uses a minimalistic approach to web-based software project management. Our mission; to help developers write great software while staying out of the way. Trac should impose as little as possible on a team’s established development process and policies.

Technorati Tags: Trac

So I have wanted to put some personal projects into Subversion on my Dreamhost account. The problem came when I was trying to use a client for the repositories. My SSH access kept getting blocked trying to figure out how to connect using a client. I finally figured out that you have to put a DSA or RSA key in the authorized_keys file. I am now connected but it took some work. I had tried putting my key in the authorized_keys file before but I must have done something wrong. Now, Dreamhost needs to update their Subversion installation, they are using 1.1.4 with 1.3.2 being the latest version.

Technorati Tags: Subversion

Ever since my Firefox was updated to version 1.5.0.4 I have had it crashing at least 2-3 times a day. Not only does it crash but it hangs momentarily on a regular basis. I don’t know what fixes they made but what ever it is it seems to have created some new problems.

I am running Firefox on Mac OS X 10.4.6 which was freshly installed about a month ago. Is anyone else experiencing the same problem?

Technorati Tags: Firefox

It’s now official. Google has finally released Google Calendar. I have been looking around this morning and like what I see. They even provide instructions on how to put a button on your site to add an event to you Google Calendar. The button that you see on the right is a button that allows you to add the Internet Identity Workshop event information into you Google Calendar. Give it a try, I recommend it! (So far)

I was having problems with Windows Media Player on my Mac so I went to reinstall it. I soon found out that Microsoft will know longer update Windows Media Player for Mac. Instead they provide Flip4Mac which allows you to play Windows Media files inside of Quicktime. I have yet to try it out but I hope it is nicer than the clunky Windows Media Player 9 I’ve had to put up with on my Mac.

It has been announced that Google has acquired Writely. For all those people who have been wondering whether or not Google was ever going to come out with a Web Office Suite, the answer is now known. Writely has been the best online web suite that I have looked at. I am excited to see where Google is able to take this.

Finally, after waiting and hoping, Google has come out with Google Earth for Mac! I am currently downloading it. I love Google Earth and I am glad I will be able to use it on my laptop!

Google has just announced their blog the release of Google Pack. Google Pack is a solution to having to install individual software packages on your PC. The pack is an installer for multiple programs all in one. Not only is Google Pack an installer but it keeps those programs updated. The pack is only available on Windows XP but that’s just expected.

The programs included in the Google Pack are:

• Google Earth
• Google Desktop
• Picasa
• Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer
• Google Pack Screensaver
• Firefox
• Ad-Aware SE Personal
• Norton Antivirus 2005 Special Edition (with 6 month subscription)
• Adobe Reader 7

Ever since I downloaded and installed the latest version of Firefox for Mac OS X I have had problems and hang-ups. It seems that every 20-30 minutes Firefox will hang-up and I will have to do a forced quit and open it again. Many people have said to remove any extensions I have but the truth of the matter is that I don’t have any installed. This is Firefox on a clean install.

I don’t know if other people are having problems with it but I am quite disappointed. The same thing happens with Camino. I have switched back to using Safari for a majority of my web surfing. I hope this is fixed in the next release. I had no problems with 1.0.5 or earlier versions.

Technorati Tags: Firefox

It finally happened. Google has entered the IM market with their new Google Talk service. I had been wondering if a Google IM application came out if I would be able to use it on my Mac. Well, since they use the Jabber protocol so I am able to use their service with iChat. Very nice.

I am glad they made it possible for Mac users to use this service since many of their services are for Windows only. I’m a fan of Google and would like to see more of the services available to more operating systems than just Windows. I do download their stuff when I’m at home on my Windows box.

Technorati Tags: Google, Google Talk