What You See Is What…You Can’t Control.

I am a vim user. Why? Because what I “put in” is what I “get out.” period.

Today I’m using the embedded WYSIWYG HTML editor of a major (free) online blog tool and have finally reached a raging boiling point. They let the user have a drag-n-drop visual environment for placing images, marking up text, and inserting hyperlinks. They also have a tab that lets the super-users (i.e. coders) modify the raw source code.

The problem? Whenever I submit raw valid W3C HTML source code changes that are not recognized by the WYSIWYG filters, they get removed. Not morphed. Removed. Not left as-is. Removed. Yes. All 15 minutes worth of work is completely and utterly obliterated.

Moral of the story. Use Vim. It’s good for your health.

Our new corporate blog just launched…. guess who got first post : )

This is a great new public portal to reach our customers and prospects. It allows our systems engineers (customer facing tech guys) to share stories about best practices and implementation strategies….the programming engineers can highlight new features and tool integrations… and the public relations group can advertise new features & functionality for upcoming releases. Overall, it offers great inside visibility beyond the traditional marketing collateral.

If your manage teams of developers… checkin/checkout source code…. or are responsible for software tools… I’d recommend keeping an eye on this blog.

I’ve spent the last 2 months feverishly working on a Vim plugin for AccuRev. I’m nearing an alpha launch.

In the meantime, check out the vim easter eggs I’ve found so far:

:help holy-grail
:help UserGettingBoard
:help mapmode-nvo
:help 42


This weekend I came across a wicked cool “popup” javascript library called “greybox“. My good friends from viewpoints.com gave me the tip. For years, we’ve been using javascript ‘window.open(…)’ to create a non-modal popup from querying user information to sending the user to another website. Othewise known as… brute force.

Today, life is different.

Now, with the help of javascript, AJAX, and some talent, we have a toolset that lets us create modal dialog windows that don’t force the user off the primary website. Why is this important? Because we want stickiness — keep the user as close to the original website as possible. Furthermore, we want simplicity - don’t create yet-another-window because of limitations in technology!

Here are some examples.

So… after spending 30-minutes reading the website/instructions and 10 minutes installing the application…. I spent a full hour debugging why it wasn’t working. To make a long lunch break short… after intensive debugging include pathing, rails routing, file permissions, and instructions, I finally found the dumb mistake. spelling. I love being a programmer.

<script type="text/jvascript“>
var GB_ROOT_DIR - “http://localhost:3000/javascripts/greybox”;
</script>

Now life is grand.