Mark McAulay

"Big kids did it" 
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September 25, 2009
 

Remove hootsuite frame by the power of greasemonkey

Firstly, this of course only works on Firefox with the greasemonkey addon installed. If you have no idea what this means, you probably don't need to read any further and you're free to go on your way ;)

** UPDATE ** - This now also works natively under chrome 4. just click the link below to install it as an extension. buh bye hootsuite framery on chrome too ;)

For those of us who like finer grain control of our web browsing, I have created a userscript for a new pet hate of mine. I have noticed an increase of twitter users posting from hootsuite, and there's nothing wrong with that, my issue comes from any links contained within a hootsuite tweet. These do not open as I'd personaly like...in the browser window as intended, but are instead loaded into an iframe with a little toolbar etc so you can interact more with hootsuite. Now that may be fine for many people. Not for me though, I prefer my web pages served straight up thank you very much. I personaly dont want to interact with hootsuite...thats not why i clicked a link now is it?

This userscript breaks out of the hootsuite iframe and renders the page correctly in the browser...it's probably about now that someone will pipe up and tell me there's tons of these already as I know i'm not alone in my dislike for this kind of thing...whatever, I'm just glad that I got to experiment with greasemonkey and that hootsuite frames are a thing of the past.

Grab it here if you want it.

If you find something wrong with it, remember that this is a first attempt and try to be kind/helpfull with any feedback please.

Comments [0]

September 3, 2009
 

The right kind of timesheets

Timesheets, now there's something I never thought I'd write favourably about! Those who have worked with me in a timesheet culture previously will have gathered that i'm not too keen on them. My opinions ranged from "waste of time", "they're all made up anyway" to "exist only to point a finger of blame" in truth, I absolutely hated timesheets. Turns out that me and timesheets got off to a bad start, I'd been forced to use the wrong sort of timesheet by those I previously worked with.

Earlier in the year while looking at how we could be more efficient and accurate in both managing/scheduling our time and costing jobs at work, the idea of using project management software was agreed on. As part of this, time tracking was built in on a project by project basis and we all decided to give it a go as a helpful indicator on how long tasks take to complete. My appreciation of timesheets started here.

It is still my opinion that general timesheets are not very useful and yes, i'd still resist using them. Project timesheets on the other hand, have proven to be very useful indeed. For clarity, I should probably explain what I mean.

What I'd class a general timesheet includes a block of time for your whole day, say 8 hours, broken down into hours or half hours or even 15 minute blocks where you log everything you do from the moment you take your coat off in the morning to the moment you put your coat back on again at the end of the day whereas a project timesheet only focusses on the tasks required to complete the job from start to finish and their duration runs for the entire length of the project. So for exaple when figuring out how long a job takes, or even how long a select part of a job takes, the information is right there rather than having to wade through days of irrelevent time entries for things like washing your hands or going to the shop and then collating the useful data into something sensible.

It's been an interesting and often eye opening experience over the relatively short period of time so far that I've been using these. The imediate benefit is being more aware of how long smaller, individual tasks really take. Longer term benefits include giving an overview of how many hours a whole job actualy takes and on a much longer timescale it is possible to average out how long certain types of jobs take, allowing you to quote accurately and honestly while also letting you see where you can be most profitable...which is nice for anyone in business to know really.

If you're not currently using project timesheets I'd encourage you to give it a shot, even if you do it by yourself on the work you do for your own record. It'll give you a valuable insight into how you work and how you should be charging jobs.

Filed under  //   business  

Comments [2]

August 12, 2009
 

Streamlined wireframe

been concocting a little app recently and think I may have gone a bit minimal with my wireframe....whaddya think?

Filed under  //   wireframing  

Comments [1]

July 30, 2009
 

ColdFusion language in Notepad++

I came across a post by Howard Scholz outlining how to get ColdFusion 8 language support into Notepad++. I also noted that the process seemed to be causing people some confusion so as I worked my way through it, I kept some notes and re-organized it into what I hope is easier for most people. My intention was to post these steps in the comments of the blog but for whatever reason that turned out not to work(received the message "discarded" when posting). Instead of throwing my notes away, I thought I may as well post them somewhere, so here they are.

The steps I took on windows XP

1) Download the zip file at the top of the article and extract it to your machine.

2) Click start>run and paste the following: %userprofile%/application Data/notepad++

3) Copy "shortcuts.xml" from the extracted files into the folder opened from the above command

4) Copy file "userDefineLang.xml" from the extracted files into the same folder as above.

5) In the same directory you copied the last 2 files into, create a file called "InsertExt.ini" and paste in the following:
[User Languages]
Count User Languages=2
Name 1=ColdFusion8
KeyWBodyBeg 1=
KeyWBodyEnd 1=
MatchCase 1=0
Count Comment 1=3
Comment P1.1.1=
Comment P1.2.1=
Comment P2.2.1=
Count Syntax 1=2
Syntax P1.1.1= Syntax P2.1.1=\"\t.*\>
Syntax P3.1.1=[A-Za-z]*
Syntax P4.1.1=
Syntax P5.1.1=
Syntax P6.1.1=
Syntax P1.2.1=cffunction[\t ]*name[\t ]*\=[\t ]*\"
Syntax P2.2.1=
Syntax P3.2.1=[A-Za-z_]*
Syntax P4.2.1=
Syntax P5.2.1=
Syntax P6.2.1=

6) Copy file "plugins\APIs\coldfusion8.api" from the extracted files to "c:\Program Files\notepad++\plugins\APIs\coldfusion8.api" (note that this is a different folder than the one you've been using)

Restart Notepad++ and "ColdFusion" will now be visible in the languages list (before "User Defined"), open a .cfm file and there you go.

Hopefully this will be of benefit to others

Filed under  //   cfml  

Comments [2]

July 10, 2009
 

Saying No

From time to time every web designer gets asked by their client to do something that they just don't want to do, whether it's giving them free tech support(we've all had this right?) or whether it's to blatantly rip off someone else's website design, these are things you could do but whether or not you actually want to is quite another thing. Obviously I'm talking about the second example here.

Recently I was asked to provide web design, nothing unusual there and everything went along as normal, we had meetings, discussed requirements and technologies, defined what I'd need from them in terms of content. This was just like any other job until the final scope of work came back from them with the line "We would like our website to be a direct copy of this." referring to a website they'd come across....uhh oh....perhaps I'd not done such a good job so far after all. The decision in my head was still as clear as it should be, there's no way I will morally, professionally or even legally agree to do this, but how to put that across to the client without them pulling the plug and heading down the road to "unscrupulous web design ltd"? Having already put in time and effort to get to this stage, the business decision, and it is at this point a business decision, is to say no. The problem with saying no in many situations is that it can make you appear negative and confrontational. It also has a certain element of finality about it which can mean that you don't get the work or the cheque at the end of it which may not be what you want at all. There are however a few ways to say no with very different outcomes:

  1. Just say no, explain that you wont do that, cut your losses and walk away with your morals intact.
  2. Stamp your feet, explain you're the designer and you know best and watch your new ex client walk away.
  3. Negotiate your way out of this, get your point across in a professional way and keep everyone happy.

So how exactly do you do keep everyone happy? In this instance it was a case of further educating the client without being patronizing, aggressive or dismissive (being helpful and friendly is the key) that website design copyright infringement is no less serious than any other medium, that we'd all be in trouble if I'd agreed to do something like this. Not to mention that it was potentially damaging to the reputation of all involved. I started by explaining how I understood that they liked the particular look of something but by using multiple sources of inspiration and my own design recommendations for their particular market, I'd deliver something a little more unique and targeted that would serve them better. I provided a visual outlining the proposed new direction and that was that.

The secret is to say "no" in a "yes" kind of way.

Of course there are times when we should say no outright and run screaming into the distance, but that's a post for another day I think.

What do you think? How do you deal with these sort of difficult scenarios?

Comments [1]