August 2009
51 posts
Redesign of the Supreme Court website →
From awful to very good.
“He once said of his brother Bobby that he need not be idealized or enlarged in...”
– BARACK OBAMA, in his eulogy for the late Ted Kennedy
1 tag
Thunder Thimble badge for Pockets
//
WatchStartup lessons learned.
6 tags
Google Analytics API dimensions & metrics →
1 tag
“Sour Diesel” by Project Blue Book....
1 tag
5 tags
Why Waltham doesn't matter →
Startup ideas Y Combinator would fund →
Key-Value stores for Ruby, Part 2: Tokyo Cabinet →
Second piece in Engine Yard’s series on Key-Value Stores focuses on my pet favorite, Tokyo Cabinet.
Cucumber directory convention
I’ve been organizing Cucumber features in Rails apps using a strict directory convention:
features/admins/
features/api_clients/
features/users/
features/visitors/
The convention
All features go inside a directory named after a user type (including non-human users such as API clients).
Visitors are un-authenticated users.
Users are authenticated users.
Use domain-specific language....
Boston.rb redesign
thoughtbot-giantrobots:
Boston.rb was recently re-designed. It went from this…
… to this:
I know, I know… you’re thinking: that must have cost a fortune! What’d you do, hire Sterling Cooper?
Nope. I’ll let you in on a little secret but I want you to hold on to your horses… it cost $0 to redesign.
That’s right. It was done using a new-fangled technique called “open source.”
Boston.rb...
Already confirmed
thoughtbot-giantrobots:
If you’re using Clearance and Hoptoad, chances are you’ve seen this error:
You see, in the dead of the New England winter, we got academic about being HTTP fluent. In the process, we made our Rails apps less usable for one edge case:
Users click their confirmation email more than once.
Why (using email as a bookmark, double-clicking) doesn’t really matter. Hoptoad...
Analysis paralysis: access control
thoughtbot-giantrobots:
Have you ever analyzed the “access control” (also called “authorization”) options in Rails and thought, “something better must be out there”?
I’ve analyzed libraries and concluded “authorization needs to be custom in each app.” Many will disagree.
If you’ve reached the same conclusion, however, your decisions are not over:
Do you test access control in Cucumber? … or...
1 tag
Open tickets for next Rails milestone →
2.3.4 is scheduled for August 31st in about 2 weeks.
“Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is...”
– Antoine de Saint Exupéry in The Economist
“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.”
– Albert Einstein in The Economist
“A software program that is limited in scope but easy to use is generally better...”
– Richard Gabriel in The Economist
1 tag
Disqus API →
High Voltage
thoughtbot-giantrobots:
Last year, we wrote about static pages for the enterprise.
Since then, we’ve fine-tuned our PagesController into a Rails engine called High Voltage.
Static pages?
Yeah, like “About us”, “Directions”, marketing pages, etc.
Installation
script/plugin install git://github.com/thoughtbot/high_voltage.git
Usage
Write your static pages and put them in the...
We're now tumbling
thoughtbot-giantrobots:
We’ve just moved this blog over to be powered by tumblr.
We’ve been making a conscious effort to not be self-hosting or maintaining things ourselves, to allow us to spend our time on things more core to our business. A few weeks ago, when we had some problems with some mephisto blog posts, it prompted this move.
HTML tags organized semantically →
Structure, meta information, text, links, images and objects, lists, tables, forms, scripting, presentational.
How to peg your app to Edge Rails →
Upgrade libxml on Mac OS X
Download this package and expand it:
ftp://xmlsoft.org/libxml2/libxml2-2.7.3.tar.gz
Expand the archive and cd into its directory
./configure && make && sudo make install
At this point, you need to recompile nokogiri with the new libxml: sudo gem install...
Rails 3 generators using Thor →
Jose Valim continues his streak of excellent work.
Rails 3 State Machine →
class TrafficLight < ActiveRecord::Base
include ActiveRecord::StateMachine
state_machine do
state :red
state :green
state :yellow
event :change_color do
transitions :to => :red, :from => [:yellow], :on_transition => :catch_runners
transitions :to => :yellow, :from => [:green]
transitions :to => :green, :from => [:red]
...
7 tags
Lean Design →
Opportunity to learn “10 times more” when in experimentation mindset.
3 tags
SendGrid →
Email delivery a la AuthSMTP.
Looking for simple solutions to plug into Heroku apps. Gmail works great for development/staging/beta phase (500 email limit each day), but looking to cascade down to a secondary service.
First 500 emails a day to Gmail, after that use SendGrid.
Confused about pricing though. I love the metered style, not as thrilled about automatic charge each month. Want...
PostgreSQL notes →
from Harold Giminéz
4 tags
stub_chain for mocha →
Now handles more use cases.
factory.attachment →
Sequel: the database toolkit for Ruby →
Sequel cheat sheet →
“the rich stay healthy,
the sick stay poor”
– U2, God Part II