Topic: Google

Better JavaScript Development with Google Closure Tools

Dietrich Kappe, Friday, November 6, 2009 @ 11:04 am

closure
Google has release Closure Tools, the set of tools they used to write applications such as Gmail. What is it? It consists of three parts:

  1. A compiler which is a "JavaScript optimizer that compiles web apps down into compact, high-performance JavaScript code. The compiler removes dead code, then rewrites and minimizes what's left so that it will run fast on browsers' JavaScript engines. The compiler also checks syntax, variable references, and types, and warns about other common JavaScript pitfalls. These checks and optimizations help you write apps that are less buggy and easier to maintain. You can use the compiler with Closure Inspector, a Firebug extension that makes debugging the obfuscated code almost as easy as debugging the human-readable source."

    So it compiles JavaScript into JavaScript and makes it behave more like a statically typed language.

  2. A library which contains both widgets and datastructures and algorithms. Sort of the standard library that JavaScript was always missing.
  3. A templating system you can use to assemble a user interface.

Since this system has been in use at Google to develop real applications over a long period of time, I expect it to be a fairly robust system. In many ways it solves some of the same problems that GWT is trying to solve, but in a different way.

I'll see if I can kick the tires over the weekend and post about it next week. So many cool tools and frameworks, so little time...

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What will Happen to a Giant

Joe Gillespie, Monday, July 6, 2009 @ 4:08 pm

StayPuft

Although I’ve seen so many players rise and fall over the years, what has inspired this post is the irony of what is happening to Microsoft. In the early years of my technology career it was Microsoft’s ownership of the PC O/S market that primarily allowed other compatible hardware manufacturers to create innovation and eventually marginalize IBM’s dominance of that market.

In the early years of PCs, the applications on top of the O/S weren’t even Microsoft applications. It was only later that Microsoft started developing their own applications and with them the predatory practice of squeezing out other application providers to rule the desktop.

Continue reading »

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Which Mobile Platform Should You Target – Other Points of View

Bernhard Kappe, Monday, April 6, 2009 @ 12:06 pm

Our two part series Which Mobile Platform Should You Target - on web apps and on native apps - generated a fair bit of feedback, especially from those targeting cross platform development.

Here are a few other points of view on the subject - there is certainly no shortage of opinions and angles:

What's your take?

Related Services: iPhone Application Development, Custom Software Development

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The courage to redesign

Brian Dillard, Monday, November 3, 2008 @ 5:12 pm

People are still griping about the recent redesigns of Facebook and iGoogle, but I think we should cheer on any company brave enough to disregard user feedback and embrace change.

Lots of big-name, highly successful sites eventually reach a state of paralysis in which they're too scared of alienating their customers to examine their interaction design and information architecture from a fresh perspective.

The cautionary tale of Amazon.com

Look at Amazon: The online retailer adopted DHTML navigation just last year - at least 5 years after most other big sites - because its tab interface had grown so comically large. Nevertheless, huge chunks of the Amazon user experience are still massively broken:

  • Once you've started down the checkout process, the site tries to keep you from getting back to your shopping cart to add or remove additional items. If you use your back button to do so, you've got to start the checkout process all over again.
  • Wish lists offer perhaps the most confusing, error-prone user interface I've ever had the displeasure to experience.
  • Link targets on a wide variety of UI controls are tiny and persnickety enough to elicit involuntary profanity.

Continue reading »

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Google Calendar: Finally, a search box that makes sense

Brian Dillard, Monday, July 28, 2008 @ 4:31 pm

I've been complaining for months about a usability problem with Google Calendar's default search behavior, so I figure I should document that it's finally been fixed. Ever since gCal introduced the concept of public calendars, hitting "enter" in the global search box has kicked off a trawl through the public-calendar database. Instead of searching MY OWN calendar for, say, my Aunt Donna's birthday, gCal instead searches public calendars of, like, sports schedules and Kazakhstanian bank holidays. Smart.

Now, though, that behavior seems to have been flipped. "Search My Calendars" is now the default action, while "Search Public Calendars" has become the secondary action. Bravo!

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Google learns to crawl Flash

Sasha Dzeletovic, Sunday, July 6, 2008 @ 4:49 pm

For a technology used to publish content on the internet, not being able to be properly indexed by search engines is a big snag. That is one of the first questions that is raised about Flash in any IT environment. The second one is how do you get around it. That might be about to change... Continue reading »

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Google Health and the Changing Landscape of Healthcare Analytics

Dietrich Kappe, Wednesday, June 25, 2008 @ 3:57 pm

Google is at it again. Entire industries have sprung up around their search engine, adwords/adsense universe, and now they are set to do the same thing with healthcare data.

One of the major barriers to entry for companies offering services around processing healthcare data has been access to data. Who has the data? Typically the insurance companies. At least they have it in the kind of quantities that makes doing serious data analysis worthwhile. Managed care organizations are in second place, but from there you get to piddling amounts quickly. As you move from the heavily consolidated payer end of the industry to the heavily fragmented provider end, the comprehensive data view of the patient is balkanized to the point of uselessness.

This data problem even effects the valuation of companies. I've seen healthcare analytics companies that provide services to hospitals and clinics valued at less than $10 million, while another company that provides the exact same services to insurance firms is valued at ten times that price. Here, as in all things, follow the money.
Continue reading »

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Recent Ajax Framework Releases/Developments

Dietrich Kappe, Tuesday, April 22, 2008 @ 4:13 pm

Some noteworthy Ajax Framework releases have come out in the last few weeks, along with some other news of interest:

  • Ext JS 2.1 and Ext GWT 1.0 Beta - Better performance, new Slider, StatusBar components. REST support (support for other HTTP methods beyond POST and GET). The Ext GWT 1.0 Beta consummates the love affair between GWT (Google Web Toolkit) and Ext that was started by gwt-ext and MyGWT, but provides the comfort of knowing that it is supported by the Ext JS folks. Note: Ext GWT is pure GWT, not an Ext JS wrapper.
  • Dojo 1.1 - First off, API compatibility between 1.0 and 1.1. Unified timing loop (ala Scriptaculous) for animation effects, with increased performance. Syntactic improvements to dojo.query. Unification of XHR functionality into dojo.xhr() function.
  • Backbase Enterprise Ajax 4.2 - Backbase has been in the commercial framework game longer than almost anyone. Among the new features: hierarchical data bindings and improved performance. If you've wanted data binding for tree widgets, have a look.
  • Google Search, Feed and Translation API - I opined a while back that Google discontinued their SOAP search API because they didn't want people reordering or otherwise manipulating their search results. Looking at the terms of use of the new REST service, you can see that this continues to be a concern:  You agree that you will not, and you will not permit your users or other third parties to: (a) modify or replace the text, images, or other content of the Google Search Results, including by (i) changing the order in which the Google Search Results appear...
  • Google App Engine - it only runs Python apps right now, and it's a preview release available to a select few, but you can already see that this is Google's challenge to Amazon's EC2 compute cloud. In at most a year, unless you are security sensitive -- health care, financial services -- or running on Windows, you won't be building and maintaining data centers. The capital requirements for launching sophisticated and scalable online services is about to change.
  • Echo3 (beta) - it's getting close. Superior performance to Echo2. Easier development of new components. Automatic serialization of objects between client and server. All HTML rendering now done on client. Overall the JavaScript client code is now of a design quality on par with the server code.

Lots of exciting developments for Ajax developers and Web 2.0 entrepreneurs. I, for one, can't wait to see how the Google App Engine compares to EC2 for deploying and scaling Facebook applications.

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Google Summer of Code 2008

Dietrich Kappe, Thursday, February 28, 2008 @ 10:35 am

Got an Open Source or Free software project? Want some young, eager college developers to give you a boost? Then you should check out the Google Summer of Code. The details:

Over the coming months we'll be working with open source and free software groups to select hundreds of student projects from thousands of applications. Then, during the summer, we'll distribute millions of dollars in stipends to the students cranking out the code. Our goal is to increase the world's supply of open source software while providing young programmers inspiring, meaningful summer jobs.

Since the first Google Summer of Code in 2005, the program has had remarkable success. Last year we connected 900 students with more than 130 open source mentoring groups, including such prominent organizations as Dojo, Python, Samba and Ubuntu. Several past students are still contributing to their projects and many are serving as mentors in this year's program. Meanwhile, similar programs are springing up all over, including the Finnish Summer Code Program, the GNOME Women's Summer Outreach Program, the Season of Usability, and game publisher NCSoft's Winter of Code.

This year's Google Summer of Code promises to be the most successful we've ever held. We've extended the program timeline to allow students and mentors to discuss applications before settling in to write them, and we're continuing last year's tradition of announcing accepted applicants early to allow students more time to bond with their project communities.

We look forward to applications from organizations and students eager to participate.  Applications for organizations open March 3 and close March 12; for students, applications open March 24 and close March 31.  Coding will run from May 26 through August 18.

Note the appropriate use of the semicolon in the second-to-last sentence. ;-) We're thinking of gettin us one of them thar summer of code students for one of our own Open Source projects: RSH.

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GWT Rolodex now at Google Code

Dietrich Kappe, Friday, February 22, 2008 @ 12:35 pm

Chris Jones was kind enough to move his GWT Rolodex widget over to Google Code. Looks like you no longer have to resize your own images.

Grab your stack of images (you'll get the best results from images that are roughly the same medium size) and place them in the same package space as your RolodexCardBundle.

That's it. Just drop them in a directory. Check out the RolodexImageBundleBuilder.java for the code that does the magic at compile time.

One enhancement planned already is to do a real perspective transform to "get rid of the jaggies."

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Gmail, agile development and user experience design

Brian Dillard, Monday, February 18, 2008 @ 3:34 pm

Ionut Alex Chitu of Google Operating System posted yesterday about Gmail's evolution from internal beta to public beta to today's constantly-evolving-but-still-beta version. Gmail's Humble Beginning never uses the phrases "agile software development" or "user experience design." (Nor, for that matter, does the original post, by Gmailer-turned-FriendFeeder Paul Buchheit, from which Chitu liberally quotes.) Regardless, the evolution of Gmail provides a case study in the combination of agility and UxD.

Sample quote from Chitu's post:

Gmail got a delete button after many months of requests from users, even if Gmail's philosophy was "archive, don't delete". Gmail will also add some functionality from folders to its labels, most likely drag and drop.

The key step is to build a product that's interesting enough to a attract an audience and learn from people who use the product. "The sooner you can start testing your ideas, the sooner you can start fixing them," explains Paul.

Continue reading »

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ZK on Android

Dietrich Kappe, Friday, November 16, 2007 @ 5:35 am

I'm glad that my Comp Sci classes were taught differently from my Art History courses, otherwise all I would remember is the hum of the slide projector and the taste of sleep in my mouth. Instead I remember the Bridge Pattern and the wonderful things it can do for you. Specifically, you can decouple an abstract component GUI from it's concrete implementation (see AWT). This makes the task of retargeting the GUI framework to a new platform comparatively quick and easy.

Now server-side Ajax frameworks (Echo2, ZK, etc.) have been using the Bridge Pattern for a while, but with the exception of OpenLaszlo (Flash and Ajax) and WidgetServer (Ajax, Swing Applet, Swing Desktop), they only target the browser, i.e. one platform.

Now ZK Mobile, an extension of the ZK Framework for mobile devices, is showing the power of the Bridge Pattern in the mobile world. On 11/12/2007 Google released the Andriod SDK and two days later, on 11/14/2007, the ZK team released an extension to ZK Mobile that allows you to run your ZK apps on Android. How is that for quick turnaround? Good design can be good for you and good to you.

The ZK "smalltalk" demos a simple Twitter application for the Android SDK.

Amazing how little work is necessary to get this app on a mobile phone.

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More on Safari and the new Gmail upgrade

Brian Dillard, Tuesday, November 6, 2007 @ 9:26 am

Over the weekend my Gmail finally got upgraded to the new version. (I know, I know, a week is hardly a long time to wait for a slow-rollout Google feature. But I'm impatient.) I have to say, the history and back-button support is AWESOME. It's funny that Gmail warns you in a huge red banner to disable Firebug. I, of course, kept it enabled and immediately began digging through the DOM of the new UI. As usual, most of the JavaScript is so obfusticated that it's hard to tell what's going on. Still, it's interesting to dig through layers and layers of iframes and nested divs and see how much DOM hackery is involved. Looking behind the scenes at any commercial-grade webapp is like taking a tour of a sausage factory.

Luckily, I have a strong stomach. I'm going to make it a weekend project to really dig in and learn how they're handling their history support. In a previous post, I wondered why the new Gmail is only available for Firefox 2 and Internet Explorer 7. Given my own experiences with Safari's history object, I shouldn't be surprised. With bookmarkable URLs and history management so central to the new Gmail UI, no wonder Safari has been left in the cold; it's simply too buggy in this regard to receive A-grade support. Safari users have been complaining to Google that it should fix Gmail for Safari even with the old UI. I think those complaints should be lodged at Apple, not Google.

Picture_1_3

P.S. Sure enough, leave Firebug open in Gmail for any length of time and your Firefox will slow to a crawl. My FF has been crashing a bunch this week, but I'm not sure whether it's Gmail or Firefox's own latest updates. Commenters, am I the only one seeing this?

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Dying to see the new Gmail’s back-button support in action

Brian Dillard, Wednesday, October 31, 2007 @ 12:04 pm

Even though it's on a slow rollout and has reached only a handful of users, Gmail's new UI has already earned tons of coverage. The new Gmail boasts a fast new JavaScript architecture, an improved contact manager and a host of interface tweaks, all of which I'm dying to see and use. But the feature that excites me the most is back-button support.

From the Google Operating System blog (emphasis mine):

Gmail has a new architecture that improves the performance and the usability. Now you can use the back button in your browser and bookmark URLs from different Gmail views because the URLs change when you go to a different section. The messages are prefetched when Gmail loads so you don't have to wait too much until a message is displayed.

With all the work I'm doing on Really Simple History, I'm excited to see exactly what kind of back-button support the new Gmail offers. If I use the "newer" and "older" links to navigate through 10 messages, will I be able to use the back button to cycle back through them? Or will only the major views of the page (Inbox, Starred, All Mail, etc.) get stored in the browser's history? I'm also interested as to why only IE7 and Firefox users will see the new interface. What's holding up Safari support? (For that matter, what's been holding up official Opera support all these years?)

If you're one of the lucky few who's already gotten to see the upgrade, please tell us all about it in the comments - especially your experience with the back button.

In the meantime, here's a round-up of posts about the upgrade:

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Pimp my Webapp: Turning Web 1.0 into Web 2.0, Part 1

Dietrich Kappe, Tuesday, October 16, 2007 @ 12:54 pm

Everyone wants the Web 2.0. But how to get there, especially if you have a dowdy old Web 1.0 application? Will I have to spend the annual GDP of a smallish Central American nation on the rewrite? There are three general approaches that evolved over the last year:

  1. The Christmas Tree Approach - decorate your Web 1.0 app with Ajax widgets and simple backend JSON or XML services. Pro: doesn't require major investment. Con: app still mostly suffers from the Web 1.0 downsides -- postbacks, CRUD, etc.
  2. The Refrosting the Cake Approach - transform all of your views from HTML to JSON or XML. Develop a client side GUI that calls your applications controllers and views. Pro: doesn't require full rewrite. Con: control flow moves from server side to client side; won't take full advantage of RIA opportunities, such as direct manipulation or document-centric interfaces; really just a nice face on CRUD.
  3. The From Scratch Approach - take the opportunity to rethink your application as something other than the web equivalent of a green screen. Imagine Photoshop or Word as a traditional webapp. Pro: unencumbered by the old system. Con: costly; you may lose your way in reinventing your app.

I think approach #2, Refrosting the Cake, is actually quite appealing. You can make using that dowdy old webapp quite a bit more pleasant with a quick coat of Ajax. There was a really interesting article on this written by Brian Walsh back in July of 2006. It sort of got lost as a pure Tibco GI article, but it has much wider applicability. In it, Brian uses XStream to convert the views of a SpringMVC sample application from HTML to XML. He then uses Tibco GI to build a UI that talks to the controllers and views on the back end.

I used a similar approach to convert a dowdy old application -- mwhois -- to Web 2.0. Instead of Tibco GI, I used GWT. And instead of XML, I used JSON.

The old application looked somewhat homely...


...and suffered from the kludgey flow and heavy postbacks typical of Web 1.0. I proceded to identify the different views and converted them (via mwhois' templates) into JSON.

simple search: domain=agiledev&ext=com

{ "isAvail" : false,  "domain" : "agiledev",  "ext" : "com",  "whoisServer" : "whois.crsnic.net" }

raw record: domain=french&ext=biz&show_raw=1

{ "domain" : "french",  "ext" : "biz",  "raw" : "Domain Name:                                 FRENCH.BIZ\nDomain ID:                                   D2708502-BIZ\nSponsoring Registrar:                        COMMUNI GAL COMMUNICATIONS LTD.\nSponsoring Registrar IANA ID:                418\nDomain Status:                               clientTransferProhibited\nRegistrant ID:                               GC683CO965021\nRegistrant Name:                             jamil akhtar\nRegistrant Address1:                         Regent House\nRegistrant Address2:                         24-25 Nutford Place\nRegistrant City:                             London\nRegistrant Postal Code:                      W1H 5YN\nRegistrant Country:                          Great Britain (UK)\nRegistrant Country Code:                     GB\nRegistrant Phone Number:                     +44.7729391052\nRegistrant Facsimile Number:                 +44.2075693152\nRegistrant Email:                            jamil@cityfinancialcorp.co.uk\nAdministrative Contact ID:                   GC683CO965021\nAdministrative Contact Name:                 jamil akhtar\nAdministrative Contact Address1:             Regent House\nAdministrative Contact Address2:             24-25 Nutford Place\nAdministrative Contact City:                 London\nAdministrative Contact Postal Code:          W1H 5YN\nAdministrative Contact Country:              Great Britain (UK)\nAdministrative Contact Country Code:         GB\nAdministrative Contact Phone Number:         +44.7729391052\nAdministrative Contact Facsimile Number:     +44.2075693152\nAdministrative Contact Email:                jamil@cityfinancialcorp.co.uk\nBilling Contact ID:                          GC683CO965021\nBilling Contact Name:                        jamil akhtar\nBilling Contact Address1:                    Regent House\nBilling Contact Address2:                    24-25 Nutford Place\nBilling Contact City:                        London\nBilling Contact Postal Code:                 W1H 5YN\nBilling Contact Country:                     Great Britain (UK)\nBilling Contact Country Code:                GB\nBilling Contact Phone Number:                +44.7729391052\nBilling Contact Facsimile Number:            +44.2075693152\nBilling Contact Email:                       jamil@cityfinancialcorp.co.uk\nTechnical Contact ID:                        GC683CO965021\nTechnical Contact Name:                      jamil akhtar\nTechnical Contact Address1:                  Regent House\nTechnical Contact Address2:                  24-25 Nutford Place\nTechnical Contact City:                      London\nTechnical Contact Postal Code:               W1H 5YN\nTechnical Contact Country:                   Great Britain (UK)\nTechnical Contact Country Code:              GB\nTechnical Contact Phone Number:              +44.7729391052\nTechnical Contact Facsimile Number:          +44.2075693152\nTechnical Contact Email:                     jamil@cityfinancialcorp.co.uk\nName Server:                                 DNS.INTER.NET.IL\nName Server:                                 NS.COMMUNIGAL.NET\nCreated by Registrar:                        COMMUNI GAL COMMUNICATIONS LTD.\nLast Updated by Registrar:                   COMMUNI GAL COMMUNICATIONS LTD.\nDomain Registration Date:                    Wed Mar 27 00:01:00 GMT 2002\nDomain Expiration Date:                      Wed Mar 26 23:59:59 GMT 2008\nDomain Last Updated Date:                    Mon Mar 12 16:25:34 GMT 2007\n\n>>>> Whois database was last updated on: Sun Oct 14 17:51:14 GMT 2007 <<<<\n\nNeuLevel, Inc., the Registry Operator for .BIZ, has collected this information\nfor the WHOIS database through an ICANN-Accredited Registrar. This information\nis provided to you for informational purposes only and is designed to assist\npersons in determining contents of a domain name registration record in the\nNeuLevel registry database. NeuLevel makes this information available to you\n\"as is\" and does not guarantee its accuracy. By submitting a WHOIS query, you\nagree that you will use this data only for lawful purposes and that, under no\ncircumstances will you use this data: (1) to allow, enable, or otherwise\nsupport the transmission of mass unsolicited, commercial advertising or\nsolicitations via direct mail, electronic mail, or by telephone; (2) in\ncontravention of any applicable data and privacy protection acts; or (3) to\nenable high volume, automated, electronic processes that apply to the registry\n(or its systems). Compilation, repackaging, dissemination, or other use of the\nWHOIS database in its entirety, or of a substantial portion thereof, is not\nallowed without NeuLevel's prior written permission. NeuLevel reserves the\nright to modify or change these conditions at any time without prior or\nsubsequent notification of any kind. By executing this query, in any manner\nwhatsoever, you agree to abide by these terms.\n\nNOTE: FAILURE TO LOCATE A RECORD IN THE WHOIS DATABASE IS NOT INDICATIVE\nOF THE AVAILABILITY OF A DOMAIN NAME.\n" }

global search: domain=agilesoftware&do_global=1

{ "domain" : "agilesoftware",  "avail" : [{ "domain":"agilesoftware","ext":"biz" },{ "domain":"agilesoftware","ext":"be" }],  "unavail" : [{ "domain":"agilesoftware","ext":"com" },{ "domain":"agilesoftware","ext":"net" },{ "domain":"agilesoftware","ext":"org" },{ "domain":"agilesoftware","ext":"co.uk" },{ "domain":"agilesoftware","ext":"info" }] }

wizard search: do_wizard=1&company=pathfinder&keyword1=uxd&keyword2=agile&ext=com

{ "whoisServer" : "whois.crsnic.net",  "avail" : [{ "domain":"pathfinderuxd","ext":"com" },{ "domain":"pathfinder-uxd","ext":"com" },{ "domain":"uxdpathfinder","ext":"com" },{ "domain":"uxd-pathfinder","ext":"com" },{ "domain":"pathfinder-agile","ext":"com" },{ "domain":"agilepathfinder","ext":"com" },{ "domain":"agile-pathfinder","ext":"com" },{ "domain":"uxdagile","ext":"com" },{ "domain":"agileuxd","ext":"com" },{ "domain":"uxd-agile","ext":"com" },{ "domain":"agile-uxd","ext":"com" }],  "unavail" : [{ "domain":"pathfinder","ext":"com" },{ "domain":"pathfinderagile","ext":"com" },{ "domain":"uxd","ext":"com" },{ "domain":"agile","ext":"com" }] }

Then I wrote a simple, tabbed interface using GWT and the MyGWT widgets and slapped the two together.

I'll have more details on the code details in part 2 of this article. For now, you can look at the old and new interfaces.

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