I noticed this essay by Jef Raskin mentioned on slashdot the other day, arguing for better documentation, as opposed to relying on “self documenting” code and the like. My favorite line from the essay:

That we use escape characters to “escape” from code to comment is backwards. Ideally, comment should be the default, with a way to signal the occasional lines of code.

How well put! Documentation should be used not just to prevent confusion among future maintainers (who often include the author), but to help the writer define and think about the peice of code they are writing.

I’m filing this under news “Clippings”, so I’ll stop here, but what good stuff!

I keep coming across these cool little css and javascript based “Tool Tip” scripts. Here are a couple:

overLIB Help tips

This type of thing might prove to be annoying if used too liberally throughout a website (Tool Tips, Tool Tips, Everywhere!), but it could really enhance a complex web application. For example, you wouldn’t have to link to a help file or documentation site for every little button - this way the user never leaves the interface, but can still access specific help information when needed.

This tool seems to be a free alternative to using acrobat. From the OpenCD brief: “Use PDFCreator to generate PDF documents directly from any Windows program. Once installed, simply select ‘Print’ from the File menu of your word processor or drawing program, and select ‘PDFCreator Printer’ from the list of printers. Click ‘Save’ and enter a name for your PDF output file. That’s it!“.

We’ve previously recommended Acrobat Standard to folks because there didn’t seem to be an alternative that could easily produce the desired results.

This appears to be yet another great product included on TheOpenCD’s list of open source windows programs. I’m looking forward to giving it a try.

We needed to post some of the photos we took during the ProjectSTAY laptop program, and since we were using a blog, it seemed natural that the pictures be posted within that framework.

I looked around and found a few candidates, and quickly found one that looked like it would fit the bill.

Unfortunately, the method it was using to convert the thumbnails wouldn’t work in this case, as safe mode restrictions seem to prevent use of the exec() call. That said, I’ve modified the plugin to use the bundled gd libraries.

You can get the modified version of SnailGallery here.