DEfusion.org.uk

A couple of weekends ago I was about to begin a large amount of re-factoring of our Ruby on Rails app (more on that to follow) to move it from a functional wireframe of the app to the final polished first version that users can use without cursing us. However I’d knocked together the wireframe version fairly quickly and had not taken time out to put down some decent test coverage, yes I know, and doing the amount of re-factoring I was planning without having any tests to verify that I haven’t broken anything isn’t a good idea.

So I undertook to get our test coverage up to scratch, I got ZenTest to ensure that the tests get run for every saved modification, which is a great help during development. But this exposed me to something which I had already started to notice but which hadn’t become a real issue yet, Ruby on Windows is slower than a 1-legged dog down the dog track. ZenTest was taking 20 seconds or more to even notice a file had changed and then took even longer to begin the test. Combined with Ruby using 100% CPU most of the time this really dented my productivity and I had to do something. Luckily all that spare time I had while I was waiting for the tests to run every time I pressed save meant I could look into resolving the problem.
Continue reading this entry »

I used the BBC iPlayer for the first time yesterday so I decided I’d share my thoughts on that and as it turns out a few other things with regards to on demand TV.

Firstly I must make the point that I have the a home made Personal Video Recorder (PVR, using GB-PVR) which I had and used for nearly 3 years and a Sky+ box. Both of these have really helped me detach from being locked into the TV schedule and digital recordings are much more liberating than VCR’s ever were. I rarely use my PVR anymore, only as a DVD player and to watch older recorded/downloaded programs & films – but it would be the perfect machine for any on demand TV software, in my opinion.
Continue reading this entry »

I’ve just read this interesting post on how to speed up your web application with an automated system for working with browsers cache for your assets (CSS, JavaScript, images etc.).

Previously I’ve used query strings parameters within asset requests so that they act as a ‘cache bust’ parameter, these have usually been the source control revision number and is built into the release process. But I’ve never taken the step of force an expiry date on content that can be cached and the solution in the post is a lot more fine grained than my previous solutions. Something to consider for the future.

I’ve had a list of changes and updates to apply to the JavaScript Image Cropper for quite a while now and I have been thinking of these in a lot more detail recently. There are lots of changes that I plan to make that would bring the cropper up to V2 level and ensure that it remains a viable cropping solution for the future.
Continue reading this entry »

Recently I was creating a set of in place editor custom components for our project at work and I noticed that when I placed them inside a FormItem that they didn’t line up with the label of the FormItem. I left it when I first noticed it as I didn’t have time to fix the issue but when I returned to it I had to do plenty of digging to figure out the problem.
Continue reading this entry »

A couple of weeks ago I was looking for some more examples of using the measure() method in one of my custom Flex components and I found this series of excellent tutorials of how to create a custom component by Peter Ent:

• Component Class – Part One
• Component Class – Part Two
• Component Class – Part Three
• Component Class – Part Four
• Component Class – Part Five(Skins vs Styles)

Continue reading this entry »

The FlexUnit Custom Test Runner is a customised FlexUnit test runner which aims to improve the presentation and ease of use of running FlexUnit tests.

I have used unit testing in a few different languages, so obviously when I started using Flex I wanted to start off on the right foot by using unit testing from the outset. However after a couple of days using the base runner which is provided with FlexUnit I found myself spending a lot more time than I thought I should just looking for the details of the problem in the flex runner.

So as usual I attempted to make something that would work a little better for my requirements, see the FlexUnit Custom Test Runner code page find the full details and the download. As usual any comments should be made on the code page.

I was just reading my RSS feeds (in the fabulous FeedDemon) and I followed a link to an Excel spreadsheet (on purpose).

I’ve not used IE (outside of FeedDemon that is) in so long that I forgot that with Microsoft Office documents it opens them within the “browser” for you. Yuck. I wasn’t expecting that, not at all – and it scared me, quite a lot. This kind of thing (and the slow loading speeds with this kind of thing) is the reason I don’t let Firefox load PDF’s inside itself.

Am I wrong? Sitting here looking at an Excel spreadsheet within FeedDemon you’ll have to forgive me for thinking that it’s all a bit scary.

Towards the end of last week I spent quite a lot of time working with customisations of the ComboBox in Flex 2 for work, and it was really beginning to bug me how when I typed to select an item, the selection was only ever the first item that matched the letter I was typing. Having had it become second nature, since it’s a feature of my browser of choice Firefox, that I can type the beginning of a word to jump to an option (e.g. "United K" to jump to "United Kingdom" in a list of countries) I now really missed it when using Flex.

I didn’t have time to look at a work around during work hours as it really isn’t a feature that is needed of our product, just something that annoyed me. So I decided that I would quickly knock a solution together at the weekend and then write up a short post of how it was done, in case other people wanted to find out how to do it.

However it didn’t quite work out that way.

After a few frustrating hours I managed to get a fully working solution which I thought I’d share. You can read on for the story behind the component, or you can head straight to the FoxyComboBox code page to view the results.
Continue reading this entry »

While just writing my first post about Flex which required some code examples in MXML, I found that currently GeSHi (Generic Syntax Highlighter) doesn’t have a MXML language file, and I couldn’t find one when I did a few searches.

So using the XML language file as a base I quickly knocked one together.