The Ruby Reflector

…how to not only send HTML e-mail, but how to put it together (along with the obligatory inline CSS) too.

Debugging Scary Crashes of Rubinius

Dirkjan Bussink has been debugging memory corruption in Rubinius and has put together a 55 minute video explaining how he debugged it. Surely a must watch for any wannabe Rubinius hackers. A 453MB download though..

'Architecture the Lost Years' by Robert Martin at Ruby Midwest 2011

I really enjoyed this …

• Topics: Ruby on Rails, Ruby, Rubinius, Ruby Midwest, API
• Tender Lovemaking: Profiling Rails startup with DTrace
• Riding Rails - home: Rails/master is now 4.0.0.beta
• giant robots smashing into other giant robots: Test Rake Tasks Like a BOSS
• Envy Labs: Try Ruby Rewrite and Redesign
• gnuu.org: Do Gem Downloads Really Correlate with Gem Usage? Survey Says: No
• New Relic: State of the Stack - A Ruby on Rails Benchmarking Report - Sept. 2011

…callback function? (See back in KnockoutJS Databinding Support For Inline Templates .)

We'll update the data-binding of savings-goal-view-container in our index.html , by assigning our new sgs.mediator.savingsgoal.setupViewDataBindings function to the afterRender attribute: <div id='savings-goal-view-container' data-bind='template: { name: "savings-goal-view-template", afterRender: sgs.mediator.savingsgoal.setupViewDataBindings …

• Topics: jQuery, Template, Refactoring, DOM, XHTML
• # Hash: Dry migrations
• John Resig: Learning from Twitter
• Viget.com Blogs: Single-Use jQuery Plugins
• Life at the Speed of Green: The Closure Taste Test
• till's blog: Tumblr: Display a list of entries in the sidebar
• giant robots smashing into other giant robots: Recipe: Ajax searching and filtering

Inline help

Help articles

Buttons

Anchor text

Takeaways from user testing copy and content

These were the main issues we found with our copy through user testing:

The user didn't understand it due to the wording or jargon used

The user, in general, didn't read instructions on screen and preferred to just click stuff to see what happens

There was too much to read so the user didn't bother reading it

Inline help is useful, particularly for first time users …

• Topics: 't, UI
• Lee Munroe: 3 ways to improve copy for a better user experience
• a timocracy of one: Unobtrusive JavaScript vs. Kool-Aid
• RubyLearning Blog: Do You Understand Ruby's Objects, Messages and Blocks?
• : Sammy 0.3.0 Released: I gotta right to swing!
• jimmy.thinking: PyCon 2010: Python in the browser
• Simone Carletti's Blog: Unobtrusive JavaScript in Rails 3

or inline: Post.stubs(:recent).returns(stub(:first => @ post))

Note that you can't use the shorthand if the stubbed methods require parameters.

Let's take it even further (but you probably shouldn't). A longer method chain: Post.recent.first.partial_text.upcase

can be stubbed: Post.stubs(:recent).returns(stub(:first => stub(:partial_text => stub(:upcase => 'PARTIAL TEXT'))))

However, if you find yourself writing a stub chain like this, sit back and …

• Topics: POST, Google
• Diego Carrion: Ruby annotations
• Ajax on Rails: Captcha in Ruby on Rails - Customize the use of captcha in the plugin validates_captcha
• Developing with Style: Concerned with Rails
• Railsmine: ActiveAdmin Tutorial
• : Posting Multipart File Uploads on the iPhone
• The "Tech. Arch.": Implementing Ruby Camping REST Services With RESTstop

The technique is simple: we insert inline CSS <script> tags which set display: none; for the relevant CSS selectors. We do this, rather than a simpler $("selector").remove() , because dotjs runs your ~/.js/whichever-domain.js file when the page loads, but Twitter first loads a skeletal page and then populates it via Ajax. This updated version of the file not only removes all the specific stuff mentioned above, it even wipes out the entire dashboard div, giving an even …

• Topics: Twitter, Cascading Style Sheets, Ajax, Ryan Tomayko, Giles Bowkett
• BenCurtis.com: A Pricing Experiment
• SKORKS: Here Is The Main Reason Why You Suck At Interviews
• News Feed: A Time of Miracles: Some thoughts on Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery (and Bonus LP Listening Party)
• Luigi Montanez: Cr-48 Chrome Notebook with Decals
• John Resig: Learning from Twitter
• RailsTips by John Nunemaker: Give Yourself Constraints

…number of required arguments, whereas proc will just set these to nil, or just drop any extra ones. Inline blocks behave more like procs than lambdas. ↩

I hope you found this article valuable. Feel free to ask questions and give feedback in the comments section of this post. Thanks!

Do also read these awesome Guest Posts:

How Does One Use Design Patterns In Ruby?

Do you know what's new in Ruby 1.9?

The value of a personal bug log

Do …

• Topics: Proc, Ruby on Rails, ProTip, Procs, DOS

…intuitive. While they have generally been hard to create in web apps, the introduction of canvas and inline SVG has made them a synch to put together. I see a lot of great examples of canvas and SVG that are absolutely mind-bending to look at, but very few examples which enhance the traditional applications and websites we use on a day-to-day basis.

I won't claim to have invented these, but I was reminded of how cool they are recently when I read this post: http://blog.asmartbear.com/creativity-over-optimization.html …

• Topics: DOM, Scalable Vector Graphics, UI, Cascading Style Sheets, jQuery
• Global Nerdy: Take Internet Explorer 9 for a Test Drive!
• Alex R. Young : JsChat and Ico Updates
• jystewart.net | notes, tips and commentary by James Stewart: Week 131
• jlaine.net: New Zealand SVG Map in Black and White
• mir.aculo.us: I Can't Believe It's Not Flash!
• Lindsay Holmwood - auxesis' musings: Searching for the perfect presentation toolchain

…implementation of Unobtrusive JavaScript and the consequent removal of the old inline AJAX commands offers at least three advantages:

Less verbose, inline, behavior code in the HTML document, with the result of much more lightweight, cleaner and readable source code

Rails 3 is no longer Prototype-oriented. With Rails 3 you can easily switch from a JavaScript framework to an other.

Rails 3 code is now JavaScript framework agnostic. It no longer contains framework-specific …

• Topics: Ruby on Rails, JavaScript, Ajax, XHTML, Unobtrusive
• Simone Carletti's Blog: Book Review: HTML 5 Up and Running
• Simone Carletti's Blog: The Road to Rails 3: make your Rails 2.3 project more Rails 3 oriented
• The RoR n00b Experience: Cucumber and Subdomains Revisited (the Capybara chronicles)
• Jake Scruggs: Rails Conf 2010 Tutorial Day
• Ruby Inside: 8 Ruby and Rails Jobs for May 2010
• Eddorre.com: Tutorial: Filtering Results with jQuery UI Slider and Rails 3 Beta 3

…can put down that bit of guilt as it all reference a proper Javascript file and with no inline JS.

Rails 3 truly is ponies and rainbows.

Rails 3 Deep Dive - Jeremy McAnally

Tweet from Jeremy McAnally (@ jm) 2 days before Rails Conf: "Why wouldn't I catch the flu right before RailsConf where I'm supposed to talk in front of people for a few hours? *sigh* Vitamin-C, engage!"

So the first 10 minutes were about how Rails 3 is basically a Rack…

• Topics: Ruby on Rails, Rack, Conf, JavaScript, ActiveRecord
• Intridea - Company Blog: Intrideans at RailsConf 2010
• Katz Got Your Tongue?: Encodings, Unabridged
• The Life Of A Radar: Recruiters: Know Thine Recruitees
• Envy Labs: Railsconf Rails 3 Tutorials
• casperfabricius.com: IronRuby on Rails
• Merbist: Au Revoir Rails community

…jQuery JavaScript framework . This is a traditional, inline, JavaScript code. <a id="alert" href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="alert('Thanks for clicking me');">Click me</a>

This is the equivalent with jQuery <script> jQuery(function($) { $("#alert").click(function() { alert("Thanks for clicking me"); return false; }); }); </script>

<a id="alert" href="#">Click …

• Topics: JavaScript, XHTML, Unobtrusive, Ruby on Rails, Cascading Style Sheets
• Simone Carletti's Blog: The Road to Rails 3: make your Rails 2.3 project more Rails 3 oriented
• Comments on: blog: Link dump for June 7th
• Flvorful Bloggage: Facebook Connect and Your Business
• Katz Got Your Tongue?: The Building Blocks of Ruby
• Biodegradable Geek: Do You Keep Old Programming Books?
• How Software is Built: Interview with Stephen Lau - Songbird