Upcoming Pathfinder Appearances

Noel Rappin, Friday, June 19, 2009 @ 8:14 am

Windy City Rails is September 12, 2009

Here are a couple of upcoming Ruby and Rails-based appearances by Pathfinder personnel:

On Tuesday, June 23, Noel Rappin (referring to himself in the third person) will be the guest speaker at the Chicago Ruby.org monthly meeting. The meeting starts at 6:00 at Chicago Ruby's downtown loop meeting location, see the link for details. The working title of my talk is "I'd Like To Start Testing. Now What?" and it'll be an informal discussion of testing tools and good practice.

The schedule for WindyCityRails was announced this week. The conference is September 12, 2009 at the Westin Chicago River North. John McCaffrey from Pathfinder will be presenting "Super-easy PDF Generation with Prawn and Prawnto", and I'll be up there with "How To Test Absolutely Anything".

Other speakers include Ryan Singer from 37signals, Ben Scofield from Viget Labs, and Yehuda Katz from Engine Yard.

Registration through August 1st is $99, there are a couple of tutorial sessions also available for purchase.

This was a very well-run regional conference last year, and I'm excited for this year's edition. Hope to see you there.

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Summer Software Development Internship

Dietrich Kappe, Tuesday, May 12, 2009 @ 12:36 pm

photo credit: Paul L. Nettles

We're starting a software development summer internship in our Chicago office this year. If you're a college junior, senior or recent graduate who want to learn the agile/OO development ropes while developing really cool products and services and earning $20/hr per hour (you should pay for the privilege, right?), give the internship posting a look here.

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Pathfinder Launches Beer Hunter, A New Flex + Ruby RIA

Bernhard Kappe, Monday, May 4, 2009 @ 6:51 am

We just launched a new rich internet application for Destinationbeer.com, called Beer Hunter.  It was written in Flex and Ruby on Rails and features mapping and 150 beers from around the world.  We think it's pretty cool, so check it out, and let us know what you think.  One of the things I really like about it is that the design pattern can be applied anywhere you're filtering products geographically and on attributes.  Coffee? Wine? Jewelry? Chocolate? Travel Books? I particularly like the way the beer list visually sorts when you change a filter and the zoom interactions on the map.

There's more information in the case study on the Pathfinder web site, Sasha has written a related post on RubyAMF and Flex from the Flex perspective , and Justin has written one on Rails, AMF and Flex from the Rails perspective.

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RailsConf 2009: The RailsConfening

Noel Rappin, Friday, April 24, 2009 @ 1:44 pm

In just over a week, I'll be headed off to RailsConf for my second visit.

Here's an overview of some of the sessions I'm looking forward to.

First, of course, is my own: Below and Beneath TDD: Test-Last Development and Other Real-World Test Patterns. It's at 2:50 on Tuesday, May 5, in Ballroom B. I'll be talking about how Test-Driven Development can fail, how to recognize failure patterns, and how and why to move back to a successful process. No matter what your level of comfort is with testing, I think you'll get something out of this talk. It's going to be fun, and I'm excited about the chance to present.

I'm also going to be giving out free copies of Rails Test Prescriptions (well, it's an ebook, I'll be giving out free licenses). I haven't quite worked out the exact details yet, but it'll be similar to last year's plan, and will involve seeing me or attending my session. Follow the book on Twitter for information about giveaways. Follow me on Twitter for general updates about the conference.

And come up and say hi -- I'd love to meet people who read this blog or the Rails Prescriptions book.

Other talks and sessions that I'm particularly interested in include:

Continue reading »

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Touch Screen Kiosk in Adobe Air

Bernhard Kappe, Monday, April 20, 2009 @ 3:09 pm

We recently launched a new Touch Screen Kiosk deployed in both Adobe Air and Flex. Touch Screen Kiosks pose some interesting usability challenges, some of which overlap with those for the iPhone. Take a look at a video demo or read the longer case study on the Pathfinder site.

Touch Screen Kiosk Demo

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Rails Test Prescriptions is now on sale

Noel Rappin, Friday, March 13, 2009 @ 8:50 am

This is the cover

Rails Test Prescriptions: Keeping your Application healthy is now on sale. This is a beta, partial release.

Rails Test Prescriptions is a comprehensive guide to testing your Rails application, covering both the mechanics of writing tests and the style for writing good and useful tests.

I'm excited to be publishing this electronically in a way that allows me to keep the book up to date as Rails changes over the upcoming months and years. Your $9 purchase entitles you to all updated versions for the life of the book.
Continue reading »

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Category and UI changes on Pathfinder blogs

Brian Dillard, Monday, December 29, 2008 @ 10:50 am

If you read one or more of the Pathfinder blogs in our web interface, you may have noticed some tweaks to our navigation and top-level categories. Our goal in making these changes was to help different audiences drill down to the specific content that interests them. Instead of just a few top-level categories, we now boast around 20, though many posts appear in multiple categories. To subscribe via RSS to any specific category - or to our entire feed - just visit our Feeds page.

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Announcing Rails Prescriptions

Noel Rappin, Monday, December 8, 2008 @ 2:16 pm

Check out Rails Prescriptions

I’d like to read a brief statement, and then I’ll take a few questions.

Today I’m happy to announce the grand opening of
Rails Prescriptions, a purveyor of fine Ruby on Rails books and book-like products.

The first book from Rails Prescriptions will be titled Rails Test Prescriptions: Keeping your application healthy, and will be available for order in January, 2009.

Rails Test Prescriptions is a comprehensive guide to automated testing for your Rails application, containing more than 30 individual prescriptions on various Rails testing features and techniques. I’ll be continually updating the book after its initial release to allow for changes in Rails, new testing tools, correction of the occasional error, and reader feedback. I want this book to stay in date as long is it has readers.

And now, your questions. I’m guessing:

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Pathfinder releases version 1 of its Flash Platform microsite (codename Mica)

Sasha Dzeletovic, Thursday, December 4, 2008 @ 1:30 pm

You can see the site here. Come often as it will be updated on a regular basis.

The goal of this site is to shed more light on what is it that we do here at Pathfinder with the Flash Platform.
We would be very grateful to hear feedback about the site from any perspective.

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HTML5, Ajax history management, and The Ajax Experience 2008 Boston

Brian Dillard, Monday, October 6, 2008 @ 2:38 pm

The Ajax Experience last week in Boston yielded lots of exciting developments on the Ajax history management front:

• My talk itself drew a crowd of 110 people or so despite its 8.10 a.m. start time. I received good questions from the audience and didn't notice too many people heading for the doors when they realized how deep into the nitty-gritty technical details I was getting. Instead of using Keynote or Powerpoint for my slides, I built a basic DHTML application. That way, one artifact could serve as both my content and a demo of Really Simply History, the Ajax history and back-button library I maintain. You can view the application - and the slides - at Pathfinder Labs.
• I did not meet my goal of releasing an alpha of Really Simple History 0.8 in conjunction with the conference. But I did accomplish a ton of work on the library during the build-up to my talk. I'm now hard at work finalizing the alpha and preparing updates to the project's Google Code-hosted homepage.
• The most exciting Ajax history development was the face time I enjoyed with Nathan Hammond, creator of JavaScript State Manager (JSSM), and Brad Neuberg, original creator of Really Simple History. After my talk we enjoyed an impromptu Ajax back-button summit and hammered out a shared agenda for the future of both my library and the topic in general. I'm pleased to announce that Nathan will be coming on as an RSH co-maintainer with the goal of merging RSH 0.8 and JSSM into a single, stable 1.0 library. I'm also excited that Brad, Nathan and I - plus other authors of Ajax history libraries who wish to participate - will be issuing a position paper on the current history implementation in the HTML 5 spec. Ajax history experts, please contact me via Pathfinder if you want to weigh in.
• As for the conference itself, it was my first time attending The Ajax Experience and I really enjoyed it. The topics were many, varied and well-presented. My favorites included Douglas Crockford's discussion of JavaScript's good parts, which could have been a simple book promo but turned out to be far more; the panel discussion between the leaders of YUI, Dojo, jQuery and Prototype moderated by the inimitable PPK; and my colleage Dietrich's un-sexy but vital look at how to resurface J2EE apps for Ajax using the Google Web Toolkit.

  I have to say, the crowd here felt like my tribe. The guys running around with the word "JavaScript" shaved into their hair put a smile on my face. Ajax developers are often third-class citizens at other conferences. They're either jammed together with designers and user experience folks, or thrown into the midst of Java and Ruby developers. That wasn't the case here, and I dug it highly.

  My least favorite aspect of the conference had nothing to do with the crowd or the content; it was the depressing lack of vegan food. One meal was 90% vegan, but most were 0%. Given the conference center's distance from civilization, it would have been nice if attendees' diverse dietary needs had been taken into consideration. On the plus side, I think I lost five pounds.

Many thanks to the folks from Tech Target for the awesome speaker support. My name, so amusingly misspelled on the monitor outside the ballroom where I spoke, had been corrected by the time I took the podium.

And special thanks to Ben, Dion and everyone at Ajaxian for throwing such a jam-packed event, letting me speak at it, and doing so much for the Ajax community over the years.

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The Ajax Experience 2008: Hope to see you in Beantown

Brian Dillard, Monday, September 29, 2008 @ 2:24 pm

I'm posting today from Boston, where my colleague Dietrich Kappe and I are proud to be presenting at The Ajax Experience 2008.

At 5.10 p.m. tomorrow (Tuesday 30 September), Dietrich will present "Saving Your Investment: Transforming J2EE Applications into Web 2.0 Using GWT." This 90-minute session will introduce noobs to the Google Web Toolkit; school experienced GWT developers in the security implications of leaky client-side business logic; and delight business folks and bean-counters alike with the money-savings possibilities of retrofitting a legacy webapp instead of building a new one from scratch.

At 8.10 a.m. the following day (Wednesday 1 October), I will present "Making Friends with the Browser: Ajax, Back Buttons and Bookmarks." In it, I'll look at the state of Ajax history management, from new libraries such as the JavaScript State Manager and dsHistory to my own project, Really Simple History. I'll discuss the problems and tradeoffs inherent in any browser history manager. I'll also examine the impact of new browsers such as Google Chrome and Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 on this small, rapidly evolving corner of the Ajax world.

We look forward to seeing some of you there and reporting back about the rest of the conference.

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TankEngine: New plugin for Rails iPhone Development

Noel Rappin, Friday, September 26, 2008 @ 1:24 pm

Picture of me at Windy City Rails taken by John McCaffrey

Last Saturday at Windy City Rails, I had the pleasure of announcing TankEngine, a new Rails plugin for targeting iPhone and Mobile Safari. ("git" it here)

Now, I know, I've done this already, so why a brand-new version of the plugin with a new name?

Good question. The original plugin was basically a wrapper around the iUI JavaScript and CSS classes. After working with iUI for a while, it turned out that I had a few differences of opinion with iUI (which I still think is a very nice piece of work).
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Windy City Rails

Noel Rappin, Friday, September 19, 2008 @ 3:13 pm

WindyCityRails Logo

A quick plug for the WindyCityRails conference being held tomorrow here in Chicagoland. I guess it's technically not a "plug" since the conference is all sold out, but it does promise to be a fun day. So think of this post as a promise against a longer post on Monday with a round up.

The headline session is a Q&A with David Heinemeier Hansson. David Chelimsky, lead developer of RSpec is also speaking. And we have three talks from Pathfinder as well.

John McCaffery will be doing a presentation on JavaScript practices including testing and debugging.

I'll be doing a talk on iPhone web development, and a talk on testing that I hope will also be fun.

Expect some round ups early next week. If you can't wait that long, I'll probably be updating my twitter feed all day with any interesting info.

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A mea culpa, and a launch date, for Really Simple History 0.8

Brian Dillard, Monday, September 15, 2008 @ 2:47 pm

Time to come clean: I've been a terrible project lead on Really Simple History since version 0.6 launched last fall. The problem has been twofold:

1. lack of documentation
2. lack of time

The essential functionality of RSH works well in most supported browsers, but there are several special cases that have to be coded around in your actual application. Even basic usage, however, is documented mostly through example, not through tutorial-style, narrative prose. This has resulted in lots of noise in the issue tracker from folks seeking guidance on how to use the library. For all the folks whose questions and bug reports have gone unanswered, I offer a sincere and heartfelt apology. And to the more experienced users who stepped up to answer questions and help out, I offer heartfelt thanks.

The launch of Safari 3 caused some serious problems because code created to work around Safari 2's deficiencies caused things to break in Safari 3. I should have accepted suggested patches from some gallant RSH users and pushed out a new version months ago. But to be honest, I was so swamped with paid client work for Pathfinder that I couldn't find the time. I've learned my lesson about brittle, browser-specific workarounds. The next version of the library will fail far more gracefully.

Speaking of the next release: RSH 0.8 is nearing completion. I expect to publish an alpha version to coincide with my presentation October 1 at The Ajax Experience. My talk covers lots of interesting developments in Ajax history management, and I figured I should, you know, deliver the goods to my users before getting up on that stage.

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Why Chicago is Rails-town, USA

Dietrich Kappe, Wednesday, August 6, 2008 @ 10:42 pm

It's rare that dowdy old Chicago can pull rank on Silicon Valley, but with the red hot Ruby on Rails technology, Chicago leads the pack. How can I make such a claim? After all, everyone knows that SF and San Jose and points in between attract the best developers. There are 7 (and counting) reasons why I can say this:

1. 37Signals - yes, the company where it all started is headquartered in Chicago. They're out of the professional services business and selling software built in RoR, but we used to see them as a competitor and have tried to emulate some of their business plans.
2. Pathfinder Development - yes, the small but growing RoR powerhouse is also headquartered in downtown Chicago. They combine Agile development, User Experience Design (UXD) and RoR to develop "extraordinary applications," as it says in the tag line to the right. Watch for our Rails-based competitor to Mingle, Tasker, in the next few months. Of course we also have Noel Rappin, author of Professional Ruby on Rails.
3. ThoughtWorks - global IT consultancy, but an OO and Agile Rails development shop at heart. Their Agile project management product, Mingle, is implemented in Rails.
4. Centro - they're all Rails, all the time. Their core business is "providing the most comprehensive platform and services to help agencies easily and effectively buy local online media," but they have an impressive team of Rails developers powering their development. Heck, they're just a handful of blocks from us. We may have more Rails developers per square mile than any other neighborhood in America!
5. WindyCityRails - our own local Rails conference (yes, we sponsor it).
6. Two, count'em, two active Ruby groups, ChicagoRuby.org and the Chicago Area Ruby Group.
7. Obtiva - another Agile and Rails shop, this one in the suburbs.

Think your town deserves the title of Rails-town USA? Bring it on!

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