One of the things I hate the most on software makers is when they treat all users as if they were dumb. This is the case of Apple software. Every time I use iMovie to make a recording I spend some time worrying about where the actual stuff is stored at every point. The program is supposed to be so “smart” that duplicates your videos to the local iMovie library and then it saves the project and your modifications automatically, “magically”. Theoretically without you having to worry about it whatsoever and only having to wow at every new beautiful feature you come across. However, the opposite is true, and factual evidence is easily noticed when searching for “imovie lost project” in Google and finding tons of frustrated folks (i.e: this is one, this is another, and yet another, …).
Same stuff happens with GarageBand. Today we recorded a 40minutes podcast episode with GB and when we were done, happy and satisfied with the episode, preparing stuff to get back home, we happened to go “Save as” and, wow, all the “magic behind the scenes” of Apple slapped in our faces and the .aif file of the recording got deleted forever. Now, if there’s any notion any software engineering or user experience engineer should ever have clear from the start is interface metaphors are meant to be accurate. That is, when a user click “Save”, she is probably not looking forward to delete the whole damn thing. Have a look at the endless thread for this problem at Apple’s Garageband forum.
But it all comes from the same principle of Apple, the principle of they controlling everything and users just wowing at the company’s wonders and playing their sheep role, doing baby-like limited options and sticking to them forever. We developers are given a couple of more options and a thousand of more rules to follow but that’s it. This is Steve Job’s concept of freedom.
Well, it turns out I don’t need anyone to manage my work, I want to write my software and give it, or sell it the way I want. I want to use programs and save the stuff when and where I feel like. I’d rather stick to my old-looking but reliable interfaces.
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Tags: apple software policygarage band lost fileimovie lost project
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Are you looking for an onlike backup system for your Mac computer? Well, let me give you a piece of advise: do not use Mozy! Yesterday I sent this email to their customer service after fighting for a week with their program and their support FAQ.
Dear Madame/Sir
I subscribed to your service of online backup approximately one week from now and since then I haven’t been able to perform a single backup yet. I have to say that the program you offer for MacOS is one of the worst pieces of software I’ve dealt with recently. It is not usable and it is not smart. It is painfully obtrusive, it slows down my computer, it eats up more than 9Gb of space from my disk leaving my system out of temporal and virtual memory. And it offers almost no options for customization… Instead of dealing with the files to backup in small quantities, and according to the bandwidth and the ability to send them to your servers, it tries to deal with them all from the start, encrypting the full stack and leaving the computer utterly KO.
I’ve used other online backup services before (such as Dropxbox), and they offer software way more efficient and smart for dealing with backups. Coming from EMC I thought Mozy would be trustworthy, it turns out I was wrong. I request the cancellation of my account and the refund of my payment. I hope that at least customer service proves satisfactory.
Yours faithfully,
Bernat Farrero.-
The answer to this was: Go to your panel, complete the questionnaire and cancel your account. No word about the refund. So don’t be misled by their low prices, it will make you waste your time and money.
Update: At the end, two weeks later, I did receive the refund. I lost 1,10€ in the transaction, but I’m satisfied enough =)
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Tags: mozy problemsonline backup
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As most of Rails developers, recently I’ve been through a process of unlearning all concepts of older versions of Rails and learning again the new ones of 3. But hey! I must admit that so far it’s been more pleasure than pain as things only get simpler and more natural than they used to be!
Here I’d like to talk about how simple it has become to integrate unobtrusive jQuery to a Rails app. Let’s use as an example a system of comments. I’ll create a simple app to create YouTube like comments:
Start typing in your teminal:
rails myCommentsApp
rails g resource Comment name:string body:text
rake db:migrate
Then we have to include the jQuery library and the jQuery driver file and place it inside /public/javascripts/ (or grab the helpers generator of Code Officer and do it automatically if you wish). Now remove the javascript_include_tag :defaults in the layout and add the following includes:
/app/views/layouts/application.html.erb
javascript_include_tag "http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.2/jquery.min.js"
javascript_include_tag "http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jqueryui/1.7.2/jquery-ui.min.js"
javascript_include_tag "jquery-rails.js"
Now let’s add some logic to our program. We’ll start out with an index action that will get all the comments:
/app/controllers/comments_controller.rb
def index
@comments = Comment.all
respond_to do |format|
format.html # index.html.erb
format.rss
end
end
And the views for the index will look like this:
/app/views/comments/index.html.erb
<span id="comments_count"><%= pluralize(@comments.count, "Comment") %></span>
<div id="comments">
<%= render :partial => @comments, :locals => { :list => true } %>
</div>
<hr />
<div id="comment-notice"></div>
<h2>Say something!</h2>
<% form_for Comment.new, :remote => true do |f| %>
<%= f.label :name, "Your name" %><br />
<%= f.text_field :name %><br />
<%= f.label :body, "Comment" %><br />
<%= f.text_area :body, :rows => 8 %><br />
<%= f.submit "Add comment" %>
<% end %>
Notice that the new attribute remote is all we need to worry about when creating a form that will submit with Ajax. Rails 3 works with HTML5 attributes, so it only adds the attribute data-remote=”true” to the form and that’s it, the jQuery driver will handle the rest.
We’ll create a partial for the comments:
/app/views/comments/_comment.html.erb
<%= div_for comment do %>
<span class="dateandoptions">
Posted <%=time_ago_in_words(comment.created_at)%> ago<br />
<%= link_to 'Delete', comment_path(comment), :method => :delete, :class => "delete", :remote => true %>
</span>
<p><b><%= comment.name %></b> wrote:</p>
<br />
<%= content_tag(:p, comment.body, :class => "comment-body") %>
<% end %>
So now let’s add the fireworks! That is, the asynchronous creation and deletion of comments along with some trendy effects. We come back to the CommentsController and add the actions:
/app/controllers/comments_controller.rb
def create
@comment = Comment.create!(params[:comment])
flash[:notice] = "Thanks for commenting!"
respond_to do |format|
format.html { redirect_to comments_path }
format.js
end
end
def destroy
@comment = Comment.find(params[:id])
@comment.destroy
respond_to do |format|
format.html { redirect_to comments_path }
format.js
end
end
And we are done with the logic part! A few javascript lines will end the work:
/app/views/comments/create.js.erb
/* Insert a notice between the last comment and the comment form */
$("#comment-notice").html('<div class="flash notice"><%= escape_javascript(flash.delete(:notice)) %></div>');
/* Replace the count of comments */
$("#comments_count").html("<%= pluralize(Comment.count, 'Comment') %>");
/* Add the new comment to the bottom of the comments list */
$("#comments").append("<%= escape_javascript(render(@comment)) %>");
/* Highlight the new comment */
$("#comment_<%= @comment.id %>").effect("highlight", {}, 3000);
/* Reset the comment form */
$("#new_comment")[0].reset();
/app/views/comments/destroy.js.erb
/* Eliminate the comment by fading it out */
$('#comment_<%= @comment.id %>').fadeOut();
/* Replace the count of comments */
$("#comments_count").html("<%= pluralize(Comment.count, 'Comentari') %>");
Finish! That’s all the effort you need nowadays to a create a Web 2.0 fashionable feature such as this one. Of course, you need some styling with CSS, and you would need tons of more things in the real world (such as antispam, authentication, something to comment about…) but that’s the part I chose to talk about today!
I pushed myCommentsApp to Github in case you want to have a closer look (or download the zip version).
You might be interested in checking out my script for letting user in-place edit your application contents.
Tags: ajaxcommentsjqueryrails 3tutorial
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