20 October, 2008 11:38 pm

Attractive Javascript Logging Console - Blackbird

Posted by Richard Wong under Javascript, Tools | 0 Comment

Everyone who programmed in Javascript will know that one of the most common way to debug across browsers is the alert() function. Although, you can use tools like Firebug and their console api to output. It doesn’t work on IE or Safari. So a pure Javascript based solution would be great.

Blackbird is one of the latest script that does just that. It offers:

a dead-simple way to log messages in JavaScript and an attractive console to view and filter them. You might never use alert() again.

All you need to do is include the Blackbird script and style. Then you can start logging messages using their APIs including different message types and profiling as shown below:

log.debug( message )
Add a debug message to Blackbird
message: the string content of the debug message
log.info( message )
Add an info message to Blackbird
message: the string content of the info message
log.warn( message )
Add a warning message to Blackbird
message: the string content of the warn message
log.error( message )
Add an error message to Blackbird
message: the string content of the warn message
log.profile( label )
Start/end a time profiler for Blackbird. If a profiler named string does not exist, create a new profiler. Otherwise, stop the profiler string and display the time elapsed (in ms).

Blackbird

5 October, 2008 5:17 pm

Creating User Flows with Product Planner

Posted by Richard Wong under Development, Tools, Web Apps | 0 Comment

When you develop any sort of websites, you need to work out the flow / journey of your users. It is such an important part of any web product. If you got it wrong, you could be left with confused and unhappy user that would eventually lead to the lost of users.

Recently I found this little web tool called Product Planner that allow you to easily create user flows and share it with others.The idea is that by looking at examples of other successful web products, you can get a better idea of how to create your own.

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2 October, 2008 11:31 am

5 Online Tools to Test the Loading Time of your site

Posted by Richard Wong under Development, Tools, Web Apps | 1 Comment

As a blogger / developer, it is always fascinating to know the loading time of your website and compare it with others. Of course, the loading time of your website depends on many different factors. It could be anything between the software and hardware that power your site. But users of your site does not really care about any of this. It is how long it takes for them to see your site on their browser that counts.

So here I prepared a list of free websites that can help you to test the loading time of any website.

1. Pingdom Tool

Probably the best tool from this list. It loads a complete HTML page including all objects (images, CSS, JavaScripts, RSS, Flash and frames/iframes). It looks very similar to the Firebug “Net” feature. The load time of all objects is shown visually with time bars.

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19 August, 2008 10:44 pm

Web 2.0 Design Generators For Developers

Posted by Richard Wong under Tools, Web Apps | 17 Comments

If you are a busy web developer that also need to work on the interface, here is a handy list of online tools to help you save time and effort creating nice graphics for your sites or apps.

Buttons

  1. As Button Generator - Fully featured button creator allowing you to customize colour, gradation type, stripe, filter, image, and of course text.
  2. Buttonator.com - Another Button generator with a big range of different style buttons
  3. My Cool Button - Simple and easy to use button generator

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15 July, 2008 7:48 am

Reading your Feeds like newspaper with Feedly

Posted by Richard Wong under Tools, Web Apps | 1 Comment

Feedly is “a more social and magazine-like start page for Firefox”. It is a very well made and design application that really take the concept of homepage and RSS aggregation to the next level. They have social features like sharing, annotation and even twitter integration for each post.

But what interest me the most is the ability to do real-time summary of the most relevant content available on the web based on your interests, your reading patterns, and recommendations from your friends. In other words, you can see straightaway the hottest, latest post from your feeds.

After using it for a couple of weeks, I really enjoyed its clean design and functionality. I found myself using it more to do feed reading than Google Reader. The way Feedly organizes the post are far more natural to scan read a large amount of headlines and lead me to discover more interesting posts than before.

The coolest part of Feedly is that it doesn’t replace your beloved Google Reader. It actually integrate very well with it. All your read or star items are always synced that means you can use both to suite your needs.

So go ahead and give it a go at http://www.feedly.com/

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