http://visiblearea.com/blog/bin/view/VisibleArea Thoughts and rants by Arthur Clemens en-us Copyright 2012 by contributing authors Wiki Administrator [] The contributing authors of things visible - things imaginable things visible - things imaginable http://visiblearea.com/blog/bin/view/VisibleArea http://visiblearea.com/blog/pub/System/ProjectLogos/foswiki-logo.gif http://visiblearea.com/blog/bin/view/VisibleArea/VisibleArea_File_Icons Download and use for free the icons are licensed under the Creative Commons 3.0. Download VisibleArea File Icons.zip (free) Preview 2011-11-14T11:48:35Z ArthurClemens http://visiblearea.com/blog/bin/view/VisibleArea/Typographic_baseline_grid_with_LESS For a couple of projects I have used the Baseline Rhythm Calculator to create a balanced vertical rhythm on the page. As webtypography.net explains: “Vertical space is metered in a different way to horizontal space . You must choose not only the overall measure – the depth of the column or page – but also a basic rhythmical unit. This unit is the leading, which is the distance from one baseline to the next.” and on Add and delete vertical space in measured intervals: “Headings, subheads, block quotations, footnotes, illustrations, captions and other intrusions into the text create syncopations and variations against the base rhythm of regularly leaded lines. These variations can and should add life to the page, but the main text should also return after each variation precisely on beat and in phase.” The Baseline Rhythm Generator uses javascript to generate example CSS, which you then can paste in a CSS file. I have converted the baseline calculations to LESS rules so you can incorporate ... 2011-08-27T11:41:07Z ArthurClemens http://visiblearea.com/blog/bin/view/VisibleArea/Sloveens_org_a_Slovene-Dutch_dictionary Once upon a time I started a Slovene Dutch dictionary. It was the time of multimedia, when there was a real difference between Applications and the Web. The Web was minimal and slow, applications rich and fast. So "Slovar" was born as paid application on cd rom. Its main strength was the type ahead with just a few keystrokes you could find your word, plus the immedate surrounding words in the list. Overall it was built for retrieval speed. While I could have updated the interface, the project has been laying dormant, awaiting better times. I think this summer was a good time. During my holiday evenings in Slovenia I have resurrected my old database, migrated it to MySQL, and created a web interface with Foswiki, the open web platform. My first goal was to make the dictionary accessible again, and free this time. Next goals are to improve lookup speed and to introduce user interactivity. Although I haven't decided on a model yet, I think the German English dictionary at http://dict.cc ... 2011-08-01T14:50:27Z ArthurClemens http://visiblearea.com/blog/bin/view/VisibleArea/Dictionary_wiki_integrating_speed_with_audit_trail Two years ago I made my database publicly available on sloveens.org. But it has remained static since then because content could not be added or changed. I was reluctant to just create an interface with the database. Working with Foswiki I am used to having a change history and the ability to easily roll back changes. So this summer's project has been the integration of a wiki with the database. All words, expressions and phrases are maintained in Foswiki data forms, so that all changes (what, when, by whom) are tracked. And with every change the database gets updated. The result is a flexible and safe editing environment combined with fast search. And the dictinonary is now ready for collaborative editing. BTW did I already mention that I got 2 pages in the book "Slovenia in the Netherlands" (Slovenië in Nederland / Slovenija na Nizozemskem), published by the Slovene amabassador in the Netherlands? You can download it in full from the embassy's website (direct link). 2011-08-01T14:42:09Z ArthurClemens http://visiblearea.com/blog/bin/view/VisibleArea/MySQL_and_international_characters_in_a_LIKE_search Even if your MySQL table has a unicode character set, you will run into problems when doing a LIKE search. For instance WHERE myfield LIKE 'a%' will also find strings that start with #269;. Instead you can use a regular expression search: WHERE myfield REGEXP '^a' See the official MySQL regular expressions documentation. Note that word boundary regexes are different in MySQL: WHERE myfield REGEXP ' :: ' 2011-08-01T11:22:09Z ArthurClemens http://visiblearea.com/blog/bin/view/VisibleArea/Area_Sequence 2011-07-31T11:36:19Z ArthurClemens http://visiblearea.com/blog/bin/view/VisibleArea/Installing_MySQL_on_Mac_Snow_Leopard I just spent a day figuring out how to get MySQL working together with Perl. Here's a couple of tips: * Download the .dmg package installer from http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/, it is more recent than MacPorts * Make sure that installers install the 64 bit version. Add to your ~/.profile: export ARCHFLAGS=" arch x86_64" export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/mysql/lib/:$DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH and update the Terminal window with source ~/.profile * For DBI and DBD::mysql, don't use the CPAN installer but download the source files from CPAN and install manually * Check where these libraries are installed and add the Perl folder path to @INC * Fix the link to libmysqlclient.18.dylib with sudo ln s /usr/local/mysql/lib/libmysqlclient.18.dylib /usr/lib/libmysqlclient.18.dylib 2011-07-31T11:30:37Z ArthurClemens http://visiblearea.com/blog/bin/view/VisibleArea/Javascript_Undo_Manager For an online app I was looking for an existing undo manager in Javascript. My first place to shop was at jQuery, and although it looks like one had been created as plugin for jQuery, only an info page is online. Other resources where either tied to a larger library (Ruby on Rails, tinymce) or too complicated (like jsUndoable). So that left me to write one myself. And although the principle is not too difficult, it did take me a couple of trial and error rounds before I got it right. Hopefully this code will save others some time. My Undo Manager registers undo and redo actions simultaneously and stores them as commands (see command pattern) to store set and unset actions. Source code Get the Javascript Undo Manager source code at GitHub Demo %ADDTOZONE{ "script" id="undomanager" text=" function UndoManager() { this.commandStack = ; this.index = 1; this.undoManagerContext = false; this.callback = undefined; this.callCommand = function (command) { if (command) { return ... 2011-07-31T11:02:38Z ArthurClemens http://visiblearea.com/blog/bin/view/VisibleArea/Site_Map This text has first appeared as part of a small Interaction Design pattern library, in 2003. See also: Homeward Path. Pattern: Site Map. Also known as: Sitemap, Table of Contents, Contents, Site guide, Site directory. Upper part (out of 3 screen heights) of Apple's site map: http://www.apple.com/find/sitemap.html (11 Nov 2002), showing 3 levels of information. Problem Site maps come in all sorts of forms. However, only a few actually work. Motivation A site map has 2 basic functions: 1 Provide a conceptual overview of the site's content 2 Provide quick access to pages Provide conceptual overview is related to the function of a book's table of contents: the reader can quickly learn what kind of book he is holding by skimming over the chapter titles. Is it an overview, a textbook, a monograph, a scholarly study, or a novel? What subject does the book cover? Is the subject within my knowledge domain? 4 Similarly, a site map shows the site's scope and depth: the visitor learns what the ... 2011-07-31T11:02:32Z ArthurClemens http://visiblearea.com/blog/bin/view/VisibleArea/Homeward_Path This text has first appeared as part of a small Interaction Design pattern library, in 2003. See also: Site Map. Pattern: Homeward path. Also known as: Breadcrumb, Trail marker. Yahoo offers a double path. The upper path functions as page title and repeats the last 2 items from the page path. http://www.yahoo.com (Jul 2003) Problem Sites can have many levels of information, making it difficult for visitors to orientate, especially when they are coming from a deep link or search engine. Motivation The site's main navigation does not always show how a page is related to other pages. A site can have multiple navigation schemes, or a two level tab navigation that hides the actual complexity of the site. When the user performs a search, he does not use the main navigation but jumps directly to a page, so he can loose sense of location easily. On websites with 3 levels or more, users need a fallback navigation method if other navigation methods (menu, search) fail. Solution Create a row ... 2011-07-31T11:02:26Z ArthurClemens http://visiblearea.com/blog/bin/view/VisibleArea/BlogCategory * Interesting * VisDoc * Cinema * Processing * ActionScript * Interface * Art * Cocoa * Business * Online strategy * Slovene * Mac * Work * Interactive design * Motion design * Javascript * Code * User Experience Design * Design * Foswiki "}% 2011-07-31T10:56:15Z ArthurClemens http://visiblearea.com/blog/bin/view/VisibleArea/SoundField_is_now_an_Open_Source_project I have rewritten SoundField, first created 10(!) years ago when I was at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, as native Mac application. The source code is freely available at GitHub. Description SoundField is a visual audio mixer. It displays sounds as circular surfaces. The graphical representation of sound brings concepts to audio that are traditionally more related to other fields, such as proximity, boundary, overlap and placing. Most audio mixing programs mimic physical audio mixers, presenting a series of knobs and sliders to control a dozen or so tracks. But a computer screen gives you only one mouse pointer to control this apparatus, instead of 10 fingers. It is almost impossible to do a live mix with such an interface, and one must resort to do the mixing in sequential recorded steps. SoundField has almost no controls and makes audio mixing an intuitive, interactive and emersive process enabling you to get 'into the sound'. SoundField is written with OpenFrameworks. Source code ... 2011-02-26T18:19:19Z guest http://visiblearea.com/blog/bin/view/VisibleArea/Personas_are_effective Since a number of years I have been working with personas. They are an effective way to make the fuzzy area of target groups, online customers, and online survey results tangible for us, designers. And what is tangible for designers is tangible for business. Personas give concrete directions for the online strategy. Because personas give answers to the question what your users need and what are we going to do for them. This is not new anymore, fortunately. Personas are an accepted methodology for our clients. Up to now this has been based on 'best practice' and gut feeling. There has been little evidence on the actual effectiveness of personas. Now, the results of a first study on persona effectiveness have been published: Research Paper Real or Imaginary: The effectiveness of using personas in product design. In short, the study confirms that personas do work. They provide the teams better insights so they create better design solutions, faster. Author Frank Long elaborates in a LinkedIn ... 2011-02-26T17:35:01Z ArthurClemens http://visiblearea.com/blog/bin/view/VisibleArea/New_logo_for_Foswiki Although Foswiki is now a two year old project since we forked from TWiki, we still were using the quickly created logo by one of the devs the blue pill in the masthead, lovingly called "Fat Willy". So it was about time we created a logo. This is the one I have drawn around the New Year, and looking at the reactions I have good hope it will be adopted! 2011-02-26T00:30:02Z ArthurClemens http://visiblearea.com/blog/bin/view/VisibleArea/Processing_and_ChucK Update 15 September 2007: I have fixed the code so it will now run on Windows too see also Processing and ChucK 'Hello World' demo A couple of weeks ago my colleague Barth mentioned Processing to me. I knew the works of John Maeda and Ben Fry from a number of years back, but I found it too small, too closed at that time. Now I was surprised by the growth of the platform and the community. I decided to give Processing a try during my holidays. More about that work later... Linked on the Processing site I found ChucK, a new audio programming language. I see a lot of possibilities to create audio by visual means. I have created a demo application to let Processing and Chuck talk to each other through OSC. The demo loads 4 audio files. Volume and panning values are controlled by Processing and sent to ChucK. ChucK analyses the sound spectrum and sends back analysis data. This is a non interactive sketch, but interactivity would be trivial to add. PS: if this demo looks a bit similar to SoundField ... 2011-02-20T21:52:24Z ArthurClemens http://visiblearea.com/blog/bin/view/VisibleArea/Marcel_Christ_website Screencast of the portfolio website for Marcel Christ, http://marcelchrist.com Visual design by Ingeborg Bloem. Interactive design and ActionScript programming by me. Created with ASAP Framework. 2011-02-20T21:48:19Z ArthurClemens