07.30.09
Posted in Links, Software at 9:43 pm by Smokey
Brent Simmons, author of renowned feed reader NetNewsWire, periodically writes about software development issues as they pertain to end-users. He debunks common end-user myths and misconceptions about software development (“it’s like one line of code to add this”) and provides guidance to users about making good feature requests and bug reports (and why developers will ask you lots of questions along the way). Since I periodically want to refer back to these posts (and refer others to them) and Google is not nearly as omniscient as one might expect 
when entering "Brent Simmons" "software development for end users", I’ve decided that here is as good a place as any to collect them for my reference.
(Thanks to Brent for doing all the hard work of writing these articles, and apologies for appropriating your name for the title of this anthology.)
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06.17.09
Posted in Camino, Links, Software at 11:53 pm by Smokey
Commenting on a post about iPhone apps, Daring Fireball’s John Gruber writes:
[J]ailbreak users expect everything to magically just work and will blame legit apps, rather than the hacks they’re running, for crashes.
Substitute “Users of InputManager hacks” for “Jailbreak users” and you have the bane of the Mac software developer’s existence.
Sadly, you can also substitute “Users of NPAPI plug-ins” for “Jailbreak users” and “legitimate browser plug-ins” for “hacks” and explain most web browser (and many web view-using application) crashes, which are the bane of the web browser developer’s existence.1
1 Simmons’s final lament is just as true for web browsers as it is for non-browser applications that use a web view. ↩
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08.31.08
Posted in Links, Software at 4:16 pm by Smokey
From the Ars Technica comments on a recent Ars piece:
I didn’t expect to find "Jackass of the Week" material featured on Ars.
(Hat tip to Daring Fireball.)
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04.22.08
Posted in Links, Open Source, Software at 2:37 am by Smokey
Marc “uwog” Maurer, a leading AbiWord developer, on AbiWord’s 2008 Google Summer of Code projects:
Interestingly, we did receive quite a few applications about improving OOXML support, while we got zero OpenDocument related proposals. Apparently the support for the OpenDocument ISO standard isn’t strong enough in the F/OSS community to actually make an effort to improve support for it. Even when paid. Food for thought.
Both sad and disturbing for advocates of truly free and open standards for document formats (of which I am one).
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06.25.07
Posted in Camino, Links at 9:06 pm by Smokey
An eagle-eyed fan of our favorite browser spotted Camino in the BBC’s on-air ads for its website. That’s right, millions of Britons (and others around the world?) seeing Camino on TV! Pinkerton must have died and gone to heaven. 
(It’s actually Camino 1.0—hey, BBC ad folks, be sure to upgrade to 1.5 for your next spots —but cool nonetheless. First person to guess how I knew it’s Camino 1.0 and not 1.5 wins a fabulous ardisson.org prize—bragging rights as “mind-reader of the moment.”)
Update: Chris Lawson notes that the BBC has been using Camino in screenshots on the web for a while, but this is still a whole new level of cool.
Camino doesn’t often get a lot of “high-profile” internet press like “that other browser”—we do have a few fans like tech journalist and blogger Om Malik, browser polygamist extraordinaire (and our very own “staff” designer) Jon Hicks, noted purveyor of Mac nerdery John Gruber, and a couple of others I’m forgetting (sorry!) who write about Camino releases regularly—so it’s always nice to see a new fan among the movers-and-shakers of the web world. Today we hear that noted web standards advocate (and more) Molly Holzschlag is also a Camino fan.
It’s a fun Monday.
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04.22.07
Posted in Links, Open Source at 9:40 pm by Smokey
The developer(s) of Handbrake (an open-source application for converting DVD content to MPEG-4, e.g., for iPod Video or AppleTV) have written up a nice guide for end-users as to what open-source software is and isn’t.
By and large, the post is an appropriate characterization of every open-source project in existence, and it certainly is completely correct for 95% of all open-source projects out there (most of which are small single-programmer affairs). There are a few well-known software projects to which the entire post does not apply completely (corporate-sponsored OSS projects that are open-source in order to harness the “community” to improve the product and the bottom line, and projects that fall a little closer towards some manner of “cater[ing] to the needs, whims, or desires of end-users”), but even in these cases, the formula set out by the Handbrake developer(s) is still largely correct from an end-user perspective. If you’re not up for reading the entire post, the two bulleted lists provide a good summary and a quick read.
Since I stumbled upon the post today with some surprise at not having seen it before, and since I liked it so much, I wanted to make a quick post and “do my part” to give it some more exposure. (Who am I kidding? Only Sam reads this —and only to catch my typos.)
Thanks to the Handbrake guys for coming up with this great guide; it’s a must-read, and I wish I had known about it a month ago. If you are someone who uses open-source software, please consider reading it to be your homework assignment for the week.
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