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App Store Software – What the Description Really Means

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I buy a lot of software.  A LOT OF SOFTWARE.  The following is my tongue-in-cheek assessment of App Store software descriptions.

Gorgeous / Stunning Graphics

We have a graphic artist.  We think her work is awesome.  Lots of companies have awesome graphic artists.  Many times they are pretty much as awesome.

Feature Rich

Our app is really complex.  We put a whole bunch of stuff into it.  Unfortunately the Pareto principle (80/20 Rule) likely applies.

Minimalist

Our app is really sparse.  We <3 Getting Real.  This may or may not be good for you depending on what we consider essential.

Our most awesome version to date

Our last version had bugs / was less than awesome.

Frequent Updates

See “Our most awesome version to date”.

Winner of the Blah Blah Blah Award

If it’s not an Oscar or a Grammy… well ok, if it’s not an Oscar be suspicious.

Using not() in jQuery to exclude a member of a class

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This is just a quick tip I thought I throw out there. We have an application that applies a fade to a .alert class on all its pages. We have 2 pages that need to not fade one particular alert. Here is one way it can be handled.

  1. Add a class of .notfade to the alert that needs to stay put and not fade out:
    <div class="alert alert-info nofade"></div>
  2. Place the following in $().ready(): $(".alert").not(".notfade")fadeOut(7000);

Saving to a database with ColdFusion using jQuery

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A commenter asked me how to extend a previous jQuery post to perform the database save via ColdFusion.  It is REALLY easy (and please keep in mind this is meant to be a SIMPLE example, not production code).  From the jQuery side my example only required the following code to ship the data off to ColdFusion:

function fSave(){
you=$("#you").val();
// Try to save
$.get("adduser.cfm?"+"you="+you , function(data){
// Result
alert(data);
window.location=location.href;
});
}

The adduser.cfm page then validates and inserts the data and returns a success or failure message.

See it here | Get it here.

Use jQuery to enable submit button and set form action

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I recently had to do a quick bit of coding to only accept data from a form if JavaScript was enabled.

This example starts with a form that has no action and a disabled submit button.  When jQuery’s .ready() fires though it enables the submit button and attaches the appropriate action.

Please note the example file is in ColdFusion so your mileage may vary slightly for your own use.

See it here | Get it here.

Using jQuery style a cftooltip span

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It’s not hard to figure out how to style the box that pops up when using cftooltip.  It is controlled by the .yui-tt class.

/* Tool tip styling */
.yui-tt {
color: #444;
font-size:110%;
border: 2px solid #1C64D1;
background-color: #eee;
padding: 10px;
width:250px;
cursor:help;
}

But how do you style the text that is triggering the tooltip?  cftooltip is going to generate a span around your text with the id of cf_tooltip_999999999 (where 999999999 is some random number).  I didn’t want to add another span to the mix to provide styling so I turned to jQuery for a simple, quick solution.

In the css file I added a class:

.terms{
color:#168FC0;
border-bottom:1px dashed #168FC0;
text-decoration:none;
margin-bottom:10px;
font-weight:bold;
}

In the jQuery .ready() function I added this line:

$("[id^=cf_tooltip_]").addClass("terms");

The result is that the text which triggers all cftooltips is now controlled by the .terms class.

eMusic Premium Plan Change – 45% fewer downloads… same price

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I don’t even know what to say to express the level of disappointment I have regarding this.¬† I logged in to eMusic today and discovered that my Premium Music Plan is going from 90 downloads a month to 50.¬† Ouch.¬† Looks like I’m going to have to start buying used cds again.¬† Following is the correspondence I sent them.

Changing my plan to 1/2 the downloads for the same price?¬† Not very recession friendly and pretty sorry.¬† Especially for a customer who has been with you for years.¬† If I wanted music from the Boss, Alicia Keys, and the Dixie Chicks I wouldn’t be shopping at emusic.¬† Cancel my account and the level of respect I used to have for your site.

I have used eMusic for about 5 years or so and have learned of so many great bands from the site.  What a pity.

imafan of imakey

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I use a USB drive almost every single day. I have a problem keeping up with USB drives and caps so this can be problematic. † Enter Lacie’s imakey USB drive. I never would have thought I’d be dorky enough to carry a USB on my key ring, but this looks so much like a key I’ll risk it.

Lacie imakey USB drive

Just got it in the mail today. It’s sweet.

CS4 Beta – Subversion integration does not support file:// protocol

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CS4 Beta has no love for svn file:// protocol

I was really excited to see that CS4 was integrating Subversion.¬† In fact it was the main reason I downloaded the CS4 Beta.¬† At my office I am the only programmer and you’ll have to trust me when I say my only option (for a wide variety of reasons beyond my control) is Subversion on my local machine’s file system and not as a Subversion Server.

Sadly, here is the error message that tipped me off that the file:// protocol was not a possibility:

You have entered non-matching protocols. Please check your settings.

I’m not the only one hoping for Adobe to add support.¬† Check this post as well.¬† If anyone knows of or hears about this getting changed in future releases please drop me a note.