dev|sushi
Discussion on Development in Several Different Flavours
Blackberry Curve Review
Oct 29th
This is long overdue! I moved a few posts from my personal blog over here and was reading them as I went. In one I mentioned that I was getting a Curve and that I would review it shortly, oops. I’ve now had the Curve for just over 9 months so this won’t contain any “new shiny” syndrome and should be fairly objective. There are several sub-models in the Curve family now so check the chart for the specs on the one you’re interested in.
Browser Logo Shootout
Sep 3rd
In honour of the release of Google Chrome I thought I’d put together a quick tour and critique of the various icons for the top five web browsers currently out there—I’ll explain exactly why a little later. It is very important to create a visual brand for your product, we all know this and we see it every day in advertisements. We have become accustomed to the Firefox and Globe, the Internet Explorer Electron, the Opera Big O, the Safari Compass, and now the Chrome Thing-a-ma-jig. (Anyone got a better name for it?)
Figure 1. Chrome Thing-a-ma-jig
Blackberry Surreal Theme
Jul 22nd
Today I just found a new theme on the Blackberry free stuff site. It is called Surreal and it looks pretty damn good which is quite shocking considering the fuglyness of all the other free themes available. Take a look at the screenshots from my device.
Blackberry JDE API – User Interface Field Reference
Dec 2nd
When I first dug into programming with the RIM APIs installed with the Blackberry JDE I ran into quite a few roadblocks that took a while to circumvent. Most stemmed from my unfamiliarity with Java and the standard Java UI toolkits (Swing and AWT). After figuring out how to create and display each of the most interesting fields I figured I might as well document them, provide screenshots, and sample application code to help others like myself. More >
Getting started with the Blackberry Java Development Environment (JDE)
Nov 15th
Recently I became frustrated with the state of free games for the Blackberry platform. BrickBreaker is really hard and choppy on the newer devices so I decided to do something about it. I also have a Blackberry Pearl just sitting at home since my recent upgrade to the Blackberry Curve. So frustration + extra device + time = development on the Blackberry platform. After wading through some web pages on the developer site and running into more than one snag I decided to document to process in tutorial form. I hope this helps you get starting with the Blackberry JDE. Please feel free to drop questions in the comments or to email me at ahewgill@gmail.com. More >
ASP.Net DropDownList annoyance
Oct 19th
I recently ran into a problem with using the ASP.Net DropDownList for toggling the status of an element. The problem stems from how the ASP.Net page object works. In this article I present the problem and then show a solution that seems to work with some caveats. More >
Getting a Blackberry Curve
Oct 19th
I just found out yesterday that I am able to upgrade my Blackberry Pearl to the Curve through the Rogers hardware upgrade plan. Work is going to pay for the upgrade which is a nice perk. A co-worker recently got the Curve and we have all been trying it out and getting hooked. Most affected are those of us who have the Pearl since the Curve has a full keyboard that is decent to type on. I’ll probably review the Curve once I’ve had a week or two to play with it.
Mambo to the beat of the internet
Aug 10th
A few years ago I looked into using a Content Management System (CMS) to develop a site for a friend. At the time there were a few choices including Mambo, Joomla, Drupal, and about a hundred more which you can test at Open Source CMS. Mambo was really the only player that had the needed feature set which included forum/gallery/blogs/etc all in one user based interface (thanks to the many extensions). The only issue was that the system was horribly unfriendly to the internet and its standards. Each control/plugin box on the page was wrapped in a table inside another table and finally another table. Doing any template work was nightmare-ish especially if you wanted to use proper XHTML and CSS; and don’t even get me started on accessibility. I didn’t end up doing the project because my recommendation was to write it all myself. More >
ASP.Net CheckBoxes should be able to have values
Jul 16th
The ASP.Net CheckBox and CheckBoxList control don’t allow for the use of the full W3C HTML standard. For some reason Microsoft decided to implement a reduced functionality version that creates more work for the programmer. Come on Microsoft why can’t you follow even the simplest of standards? In this case it would make coding the .Net framework easier for you not to mention us! More >
