Wednesday 19 May 2010

jPageFlipper 0.9 released!

cars flipper Yesterday in the late evening I made my new project available as an open-source jQuery plugin. jPageFlipper is a page flipper implemented in JavaScript using HTML 5 <canvas> API. It requires no Flash or Silverlight – just a modern browser.

It is based on a page flipping technique described in a wonderful article by Rick Barraza so you can be sure pages move just as they move in real life :)

jPageFlipper is available under the MIT license at Codeplex website: http://jpageflipper.codeplex.com

It’s not ready for production as it needs some polishing and unification though it’s nice enough to say “Wow! It’s in JavaScript”!

P.S. What’s the most interesting, it works on iPad – though veeeeeery slow ;)

Friday 14 May 2010

Book Review: Adrenaline Junkies and Template Zombies

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I like books about patterns. Really. They’re not about some silver bullets that can save people, they’re the essence of experience of people who are smarter than I am – and I like it.

I like books about management. Not just project management, but bringing order into chaos – that sort of things.

So what about book about management patterns? I just love it! Really, it’s wonderful. I could buy this book for only its authors but after reading it – I should have bought it even If I didn’t know any of the authors.

This book is a compilation of patterns of project behavior that authors have observed throughout their careers in projects of different sizes and methodologies. There is no complete story – it’s just a set of patterns that can be read from the beginning or from the end – but they should be read. Some things are rather obvious like Dead Fish and some are not like Telling The Truth Slowly. Some are with humor, some are rather sad. Some gave me ideas on how to organize things in my own company (if I ever run one) like Food++. Some are just useful.

Like any other pattern books – it should not be read once and put away. No, it should be read from time to time – at least once a year – just to remember what’s written there. I know I have not much management experience so surely I’ll look at some patterns differently when reading them next time.

As any other pattern it can not be directly applied to any project case. It should be adopted, changed and tuned for each particular case. What’s the use of it then? You have the starting point – you know the idea of what should be done and implementation will follow.

So now, stop reading this and go get one.

Wednesday 5 May 2010

A small test of HTML 5 canvas

I just want to try whether I can post HTML 5 canvas tricks to my blog :)


UPD: Nope, I can't :(