Development

6 Jun 2011

The error: "uncaught exception: [Exception... "Not enough arguments" nsresult: "0x80570001 (NS_ERROR_XPC_NOT_ENOUGH_ARGS)" location: "JS frame"

The cause: Not providing the supposedly-optional-but-not-always-optional-for-every-browser-third-argument to the addEventListener method in JavaScript.

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Optinal arguments that aren’t really optional (or thank-you, again, FireFox)

Browsers! *mumble, grumble*

4 Jun 2011

Extendscript editor
In the initial version of the upcoming Update conference web site, I'm optimizing for desktop, iPad, and iPhone-tier phones. This means that I have to create five different versions of nearly every image. One for the desktop size, one for 320px wide screens, one for 480px wide screens, and two for the Retina (@2X) resolutions. Of course, saving all those images by hand would suck. And it's not enough just to resize the images and export them for web since, when resized, I need to unsharp mask them to make sure they're not blurry.

I initially thought I could record an action to do this, but the Photoshop file I have for the graphics has dozens of layers. I thought I could use the Layer comps to files… script that ships with Photoshop but – while it let me export layer comps to files – it wouldn't let me add custom actions in the middle of the process (in this case to unsharp mask the image once it was resized).

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Multi-resolution images, Photoshop, and ExtendScript

Using ExtendScript and Photoshop to make it easier to build multi-resolution images for web sites.

13 May 2011

Compass

Take your favorite content slider and try this: on a Mac notebook, two-finger scroll. I'll bet my hat (easy to do when you don't wear hats) that the component will go nuts. For one thing, it will most likely be mapping your vertical scroll gesture to a horizontal scroll. I don't know who first decided that was a good idea but I think we can safely agree that it doesn't make any sense. And every content slider out there that I've encountered does this! So much so that I actually thought that you simply couldn't get horizontal scroll information from the "mousewheel".

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Scrolling in a whole other dimension

A horizontal scroll isn't a vertical scroll by any other name… or something like that.

11 May 2011

I'm up to my neck in work trying to get the site for Update Conference up and running but I saw a tweet in my stream from Mark Ford that I couldn't ignore.

Mark had written a blog post about how his wife finds it difficult to use some iOS apps because they do not implement a means to increase text size: (more...)

How to add pinch-to-zoom to a text view on iOS

An easy way to let users scale the text size in your iOS app using pinch-to-zoom.

24 Jan 2011

Geek Ninja Factory Battle night

Update: sorry everyone, the event sold out in under 24 hours but there is a waiting list you can sign up to in case anyone drops out. Thank-you all for your overwhelming interest and here's looking forward to seeing a bunch of you there in March!

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READY? FIGHT! Don’t miss the first Geek Ninja Battle Night!

Andy Clarke and Remy Sharp square off against Sarah Parmenter and yours truly in a battle of wits as we explore Mobile: Web vs. Native.