Category Archives: Development

Friday, August 19^th marked yet another Brew Day at Bottlecap. But it wasn’t just any Brew Day; this one had a little more structure from the outset: a focus on our brand, our process and our work.

The goal of every Brew Day is simple: spend eight hours or so working on those little things that will help us learn and grow – either as individuals or as a company.

Gabe (left) and Elliott from The SuperGroup talk about Microsoft's Kinect platform.

Easier said than done.

Most of us made it until about 2p when the demands of our clients pulled us away from our pursuit of innovation. Some folks never even got started. And that’s something we’ll continue to work on each month, allowing each member of the team the freedom to step away from the day-to-day demands of agency life in order to work on projects that draw from each individual’s professional passion.

Still, we were able to accomplish some exciting things in a somewhat limited timeframe:

• One of our developers worked on an automated deployment feature that would allow us to automatically launch websites at a certain date and time. It may not sound like much to you, but when’s the last time you had to leave a family picnic because you had to push a website to a production environment?
• Another developer worked on a proprietary bug-tracking tool that will allow us to keep our QA efforts separate from our project management system. Clear paths of communication + better issue resolution tracking = win.
• Our Traffic Manager collaborated with our Creative Manager to talk through our existing traffic process and see if we could streamline how information is passed from resource to resource.
• We brought in our friends from The SuperGroup to discuss cutting-edge technologies, like Microsoft’s Kinect platform, and how they could be used in practical marketing applications today.
• We researched solutions that would allow for automatic browser caching, as well as cross-site performance reporting … but not at the same time.
• Our senior designer created an app that will allow our designers to turn a series of screenshots into an interactive, online proof that will eventually be enhanced to track comments/notes.

And we attempted to document the whole thing on Twitter, too. It’s our goal to make Brew Day an inclusive experience, one which inspires not just the people participating at Bottlecap, but others who catch a glimpse of what’s going on via blog entries, tweets, and Facebook posts.

And what should only be seen as a harbinger of things to come, Team Bottlecap easily handled the mustachioed men from Team Scoutmob in some post-Brew Day bocce at our favorite after-work establishment.

It’s still early, but we’re getting there. And we’re going to enjoy every second of the ride.

This is just plain awesome. Google’s dedication to bringing a high quality web-experience to all users, has moved them to do something Microsoft is yet to do; FIX IE6! How do you fix a web browser that’s nearly 10 years old? By turning it into a more modern web browser, namely, Google Chrome. Google released an IE plugin (compatible with IE 6,7 and 8 ) that they call Chrome Frame. Chrome Frame improves the running browser by making it more compliant to web standards and improving performance.

My only skepticism towards this new release, is how many IE 6 users will actually install the plugin if they are yet to install a newer browser? Yet, a large number of IE 6 users are forced to use the browser at work, because IT doesn’t allow them to upgrade. Chrome Frame may be an alternative for such users. Google also plans to passively promote the plugin on any Google apps that may render better on Chrome than in IE.

It will be interesting to see how web development evolves as the web continues to progress. As the capabilities of modern browsers improve, it becomes possible to make richer, more user-friendly web applications . With IE 6 lingering around, innovation in new web development techniques have been constrained to the capabilities of this ancient browser. Developers worldwide have been eagerly anticipating the eventual death of IE6. The release of Chrome Frame is just one more step in that direction.

We’ve mentioned both the dogged efforts of IE 6 to stick around, along with the equally persistent campaigns of those attempting to rid the world of it.  Now it looks like Microsoft itself may be joining in the fight.  I read this morning that Microsoft will be donating 8 meals to Feeding America for every download of IE 8 during September.  And if you’re upgrading from IE 6, they will double the donation to 16 meals.

Sure it may just be another ploy in Microsoft’s attempt to improve their image, but for two worthy causes, who cares?  Let’s feed the hungry!  http://www.browserforthebetter.com/

Peter’s last blog spelled out some major problems with Apple “stifling innovation”.  With the FCC now involved with the battle between Google and Apple over the rejection of the Google Voice Mobile app, it’s got me thinking…

As developers, we deal with technical limitations and licensing restrictions all the time.  Commercial and open-source licenses clearly spell out what you can and can’t do (legally) within a platform or framework.  This ensures that when we build applications that use an existing framework or integrate a 3rd party application, the copyright holder’s “program” is preserved and no laws are broken.

What if a platform’s restrictions weren’t disclosed entirely to developers?  Or worse, what if the owner of the platform arbitrarily decided which applications were allowed or restricted regardless of whether they followed the guidelines provided?  Wait, isn’t that what Apple’s doing?

Apple may finally be in over their heads after rejecting a perfectly legitimate app, Google Voice, and then lying about it!

There are a number of core iPhone apps that are powered by Google, such as Search, maps, YouTube, etc.  Apparently, Apple feels that Google is taking over too much core functionality of the iPhone.  Since the Google Voice app provides alternative functionality to the iPhone’s core phone application, perhaps Apple feared they would essentially be turned into a hardware manufacturer for a Google-dominated device.

You can read more about the insanity on techcrunch:
The Truth: What’s Really Going On With Apple, Google, AT&T And The FCC

I’ve had the idea of blogging about project planning for my next blog for a while now, so I was very interested to see Dan’s blog about adaptive development, or basically dealing with changes in project plans. As Dan mentioned in his blog, changes are inevitable and we enjoy brainstorming solutions for these changes and are very adaptive at managing them. While changes will always occur and can be handled efficiently, proper planning is still the most crucial step of a project and will add value from the start.

Before beginning development on a project, it is key to thoroughly plan out what the project requirements will be. Talk to the intended users of a system before beginning development to discuss what features they would like the system to incorporate, how they think things should flow, and how the system can create value for them. Mocking-up processes and flows is a great way to refine system requirements before the actual development begins. Planning a project well adds more value by allowing more time to add additional features and refinements (and make it even more “awesome”) rather than constantly having to rework sections of a project due to poor planning from the beginning.

Gathering technical requirements for a project is also a very important part of planning. While this is usually a very simple step, it can be the most frustrating when not properly planned for. As a developer, I know there is nothing more frustrating than having part of a system that works perfectly using standard best-practice techniques and then have to rework it because some special technical requirements were unknown and not planned for. It’s hard to add value to a project when a change is reworking something to do the same exact thing, just a different way.

Planning your project is nothing to be intimidated by though. We’re always here to meet with our clients to help properly plan and architect their projects from the beginning. When the inevitable changes do come, we will handle those and switch into adaptive development mode. And of course, if a project’s plan starts as a personal ‘About Me’ page and ends up being a system to drive our country’s healthcare system, we can still make it happen and we will make it awesome!

As we get into each and every project, it’s bound to happen that something is going to change or be altered from what was originally planned.

This is what I like to call adaptive development.

Once the project specs are built out and the project begins, we get our development thoughts together and construct our plan of attack, however when that unknown comes into play we have to be ready to adjust fire.  We’re not always able to stay on the original course.  Figuring out what to do next is, often times, one of the more challenging yet enjoyable parts of working at Bottlecap.  Whenever this happens, we get a chance to really test the collective Bottlecap brain power.  We get the team together and we brainstorm solutions, from the extreme to the mundane….the joy of this comes in seeing everyone come together to work on potential solutions with one goal in mind “making the project awesome”.

The beauty of this is when we are able to attain a soluti0n that stays on budget and on time by adapting to the situation and using a little bit of ingenuity and creativity to achieve the desired outcome.

About a week ago Apple announced that it was pulling Google Voice Mobile from the App Store, stripping iPhone users from access to one of Google’s most innovative projects. Google Voice allows users to send free SMS messages and get cheap long-distance. It also allows you to use one phone number for all your other numbers, and manage SMS messages and voicemails online.

This has brought on intense criticism over Apple’s app review process. Sure, there may be good reason to not approve certain applications, but is it fair-game to pull an app simply because it provides better service than AT&T (and free for that matter). One of the iPhone’s main marketing points is its extensibility. But is it really living up to that claim when its actually limiting what can be run your phone?

Jason Kincaid at TechCrunch says it best:

“The thing that really bothers me about the move is that Apple is now actively stifling innovation. Google Voice is the kind of service that can actually have a positive impact on your life, and not in a frivolous, entertainment-related sense. It makes it easier to connect with people, and to manage those connections. Apple can point to the App Store’s 50,000 applications all it wants, but how many of them could truly be called groundbreaking? Are they really putting a dent in the universe?”

This move will just hurt Apple in the long-run. It gives iPhone users another reason (in addition to AT&T’s failure) to switch to Android as it becomes available on more phones and carriers. This could be a huge factor in the emerging “war” between Google and Apple.

Google has a well-known corporate motto: “Don’t be evil”. But, is Apple becoming ‘evil’? Or do they have legit reason to do this? Let us know your thoughts on the matter.

By now, it seems that the web has become the platform to share information across all industries.  In fact, many young professionals these days have no idea how documents and information exchanged hands prior to the web.

The truth of the matter is that, over the years, painstaking efforts have gone into the organization and layout of content in the printed format.  In some cases, a tangible, printed document can’t be converted to live online (as HTML) without major transformation.

This post is actually inspired by a blog titled “Unwebbable” by Joe Clark.

Clark states: “A sheet of paper provides complete authorial freedom, but that freedom can translate poorly to the coarse semantics of HTML”.  It really does seem that we sometimes force information into the constraints of HTML syntax.

Clark uses film screenplays as a working example of this dilemma.  Screenplays are custom-engineered so that one printed page is equivalent to one minute of onscreen time.  And through a refined structure of indents and capitalization, it’s easy to scan the pages of a screenplay and quickly decipher the contents.

The problem is that the term “page”, as used on the web, is strictly metaphorical.  Web pages, in most cases, are not restricted by length or amount of content.  Also, extensible HTML (XHTML) is really not completely extensible. HTML does not have enough tags for the semantics of a screenplay, which would require that nearly everything have its own tag.

Other print formats that don’t translate well to the web: Mastheads, callouts & sidebars, footnotes, math & science notation.

Will we continue to extend digital formats to accommodate every industry-specific document?  Will websites attempt to emulate print formats and scientific notation through HTML, XML, or javascript?

The natural solution that comes to mind is XML.  Through the use of custom XML document-types, we  may be able to accomplish this going forward.

As they should be. The only reason developers have to consider this dinosaur is because of the corporations who are unwilling to make the upgrade. Well, a guerilla campaign has been launched on the web called Hey IT!

The campaign addresses the fact that IE6 is 8 years old and that IT departments should be upgrading to “recent/decent” browsers, which they provide links to. They offer a poster to download and hang around the office, even a template of the poster so you can customize it. Also, a Facebook page has been created for Hey IT!

Hey IT! points the proverbial finger in the right direction, at the IT departments. Sure IT takes orders from executives, but don’t the executives rely on the IT departments for guidance and direction in decision making ? Ultimately it is the IT departments who can end this huge problem. How huge is this problem really? As Jeremy pointed out in an earlier blog; 20% of development time is spent on IE6 issues and IE6 still owns 15% of the browser market share!

All of this was spurred on by Digg announcing (and doing a great job explaining why) they will soon stop supporting IE6 . Followed by You Tube taking it to the next level with a message to all viewing their site in IE6: “We will be phasing out support for your browser soon. Please upgrade one of these more modern browsers (Chrome, IE6, Firefox 3.5)”.

Chances are good that Bottlecap Blog readers are not using IE6, but spread the word about this campaign. If you are a partner or client of Bottlecap know that eliminating IE6 will make us more efficient and free up time to focus on becoming even better developers, if that’s possible.

I was recently talking to a software developer friend of mine about a project he was working on. I will spare you the details of the project and the companies involved, but I will tell you it’s a multi-million dollar project that your tax dollars are paying for. One of the main obstacles his team was facing was transporting data from one user to another within the software they were developing. There was an entire sub-team within the project team devoted to this issue, and the best they had come up with for their demos to the client was to enter the other person’s IP address directly in a settings file with the computers directly connected. While I’m sure (or at least I hope) this isn’t their final solution, how un-user friendly! This got me thinking; why not just make the entire solution a web-based application? When would you actually want a software solution versus a web solution? A web-based solution was definitely a viable (and probably better) option for this particular project.

Web-based applications have many advantages over software solutions. All users can benefit from a central data source that would always be up to date among all users, instead of users specifically sending segments of data to each other. Even if they wanted to send segments between users, a web-solution would make this an easy task. As business needs change and evolve, it would also be much easier to update a central web-based application rather than trying to update software on thousands of computers.

With today’s rich and interactive Web 2.0 user interfaces, a web solution can also offer the same amount of interactivity and responsiveness that a software solution can in almost all cases, while taking full advantage of the internet. Take, for example, Google Docs. With Google Docs (which is free!) you can create and edit Documents, Presentations, Spreadsheets, and more all online. (Can you say Word, PowerPoint, and Excel in a free, web-based environment?) You can even import, edit, and save files that were created in the software-based counterparts. Best of all, with their nice Web 2.0 interface, you don’t even realize you’re not using Microsoft’s $400 software package! All this along with additional features such as sharing files with others, publishing, and a plethora of other additional features not available in the rigid software solutions.

Screen shot of some of Google Doc's Web-Based Apps

With the benefits web solutions have over software solutions and with web-technology moving forward so quickly, will everything be a web-based solution within the next few years? Well… I may be biased, I’m a web developer. =) Sure, software has its place, but web applications are quickly taking over many business functions that were only possible with a software solution in the past. Is your business taking full advantage of the web and web-based applications?