Category: Development

Three smart UI prototyping techniques

When designing a solution usually we need to show some slick and simple pictures showing user interface we plan to implement. This seems to be the only language both developers and customers seem to understand. Or maybe let me rephrase it to be more specific – screenshot has the highest likelihood that its interpretation by… Continue reading Three smart UI prototyping techniques

Aim high and then aim higher!

Good, great and beyond Nearly a hundred years ago Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky said his famous words “The Earth is the cradle of mankind, but one cannot stay in the cradle for ever”. It’s easy to get carried away by such statement to think about the final frontier for human race. Imagine all the worlds that… Continue reading Aim high and then aim higher!

Becoming a Wedding Software Developer

I’m currently preparing to become “a lawful wedded husband”, which involves buying tons of stuff. I was comparing various offers and one pattern emerged: if a thing X is renamed to “Wedding X” it automatically becomes at least two times as expensive. See for yourself: wedding photography costs 295-1500 GBP while corporate event photography 75-180… Continue reading Becoming a Wedding Software Developer

Chrome Webstore “message.json” issue

Today I have encountered an issue while I was uploading new version of my extension to chrome webstore: “An error occurred: Cannot parse message.json file from uploaded package.” I wasn’t expecting that since the extension was working locally without a problem. Also the error message says about message.json which was not a part of my… Continue reading Chrome Webstore “message.json” issue

Missing markers when two Google maps divs are placed on same page

Google is making constant changes to their APIs and they seem to roll the alpha/beta versions for us to test. Which should be fine unless you expect your webpage to be stable and working all the time. One of the issues in current version of Google APIs is problem of missing markers when you try… Continue reading Missing markers when two Google maps divs are placed on same page

New features “Translate and speak!”

My chrome extension just got two new features: Show in Wikipedia Show in Wiktionary They do basically that they say on a tin. The language of both wiki sites is determined by Google’s translate language detection function. It’s not always accurate, but it’s best I can get at the moment. I encourage you to install… Continue reading New features “Translate and speak!”

Chrome can speak now!

Yesterday new version of “Translate and Speak!” (previously TranslateMe) Chrome Extension has been released and it’s now ready to download on Chrome Webstore. New features in version 1.4 include: “Speak!” function, which uses amazing Google’s TTS to read text Translate (detect language) function, which tries to guess language of the phrase before translating it to… Continue reading Chrome can speak now!

How British police made me set up my next project on the cloud

Today British police made available their new service – a complete street level map of crimes in England and Wales. The webpage made to all possible headlines in daily papers, tv and radio. The effect is that the service is virtually down and won’t be usable until the novelty wears out. All web pages have… Continue reading How British police made me set up my next project on the cloud

Limitation of Chrome Extensions API

The Chrome Extension model is amazingly easy to use with just few basic concepts to understand. But there are rather severe limitations. The most important I found so far: There is no easy and consistent way to create option page. Developer needs to create option page as any normal HTML page, this is just overkill!… Continue reading Limitation of Chrome Extensions API