It seems like Facebook is constantly changing their navigation around and it is pretty annoying. Quick, can someone tell me how to get to the Facebook Application settings page?I'm not talking about the page where you add/remove/edit applications that you have added to your page. I am talking about Applications that you have created to leverage the Facebook Graph API. The place with your API key, secret key and other settings. Yeah, I have no clue either. I used to be able to access it from the Account drop down in the top right menu - but it has been removed from there.Going to http://developers.facebook.com is useless. You would expect it to maybe be there somewhere, but nothing. Just i...

Why is programming fun? What delights may its practitioner expect as his reward?First is the sheer joy of making things. As the child delights in hismud pie, so the adult enjoys building things, especially things of hisown design. I think this delight must be an image of God's delight inmaking things, a delight shown in the distinctness and newness of eachleaf and each snowflake.Second is the pleasure of making things that are useful to otherpeople. Deep within, we want others to use our work and to find ithelpful. In this respect the programming system is not essentiallydifferent from the child's first clay pencil holder "for Daddy'soffice."Third is the fascination of fashioning complex ...

Here's a fun video from last winter ... when the project was still young and we were all getting used to the Agile way of working. Almost a year later and things haven't changed much (in a good way.)A Day in the Life of a Scrum TeamCredit for this video goes to my good friend and co-worker Najati. We need to make a new one when we move to the new space!

So the news is finally out, and people are starting to talk. For about the past 2 years, one of which I have been intimately a part of, Businessweek has been thinking up and developing the "Topics Exchange". I won't bother going into the details of the site and what it is, as other sites have already done this. What I want to touch upon here is the process which was used to develop the site. Namely, the Agile Process.Agile software development refers to a group of software development methodologies that promotes development iterations, open collaboration, and process adaptability throughout the life-cycle of the project. It chooses to get things into action quickly, rather than to plan a...

So how hard can it be to find the "payment" option on the DMV site to pay for a violation? Well, how about I let you try for yourselves and see how long it takes you. I swear it took me almost 30 minutes just to find the page with the little credit card icons on it, and that wasn't even the page with the form to fill in your info.I don't know who designed that site or decided that they should fill all the pages with endless ramblings, but I would really love to know if they've ever used the site themselves. It is the most useless piece of crap I've seen in a long time. Why is there so much text explaining every little detail that I nor anyone else cares about. Just show me a damn form to ...

Update 10/13/2006: Put in a flag to check when an image is being swapped so that the user clicks don't register until image has fully loaded. This fixed the fast-click / double-click issue (on both the thumbnails as well as the back/next links)Also updated the mouse hover area for the thumbnail activation to be 25px from the top by default (used to be 50). This is ofcourse configurable. I will have full explanation on how to use the gallery soon.Demo page has been updated. You may also grab a zipped up version of the whole project here: gallery.zip.I'm been playing around with jQuery a lot lately. It's definitely not the holy grail of Javascript toolkits, but I like it. The community crea...

Update 10/17/2006: As requested, I've added two new arguments to the menu that will toggle the hide on page load (hideOnLoad) and also toggle the autohide (autoHide) when the mouse leaves the menu area. The 2nd argument is only useful when the triggerEvent is set to click or dblclickHere is my first jQuery plugin. It is a very simple sliding menu using the effects provided by Interface (think Script.aculo.us for Prototype)I really like jQuery. I also really like Prototype and Script.aculo.us. I've come to learn that each one has its strengths and weaknesses and you should decide which one to use based on your needs. I use them both, depending on the project at hand.Here's an example of th...

In a few days, I will be moving this domain to a new server. I will either be upgrading to WordPress 2.0.x or giving the Ruby on Rails powered Typo a shot. Haven't decided yet.As long as we're moving things over, I think its time for a facelift on the site as well! Stay tuned.

I was recently asked by a coworker if it's possible to create the left hand menu on the following page w/o using Flash.My first impression and response was, "Oh hell yeah, you can definitely create that using javascript!"Libraries such as Script.aculo.us, Yahoo UI and Moo.fx immediately came to mind. A few simple event handlers for mouseover and mouseout and simple animations would do the trick. well, nothing's ever simple.I was able to get most of the funcationality of the Flash version of the menu, except for the part where the menu collapses when you move your mouse out of the menu region. For some reason, the onmouseout that I had attached to my DIV was being fired when the mouse poin...