So I found an issue with the steps in the help file for novella. Basically I forgot to mention that you need the ASP.Net Ajax Library 1.0 installed on your computer if you are going to run it locally. Kinda important.

I updated the help file to talk about this little requirement.

You can get the latest version by clicking here or you can visit the download page of the novella home page.

On a related note, novella has been downloaded over 100 times in about 1.5 days. Sweet.

Whew…it has been a long week, but I am proud to announce the first version of novella is out the door and ready for consumption.

You can go check it out at www.devmade.com/novella.

If you get a few minutes, check it out and let me know what you think. There are bound to be some bugs here and there in the sites and in the code so if you find any please let me know. Also, I would love any feedback you have.

Ok, so I have been reading all about the MacBook Air, just like most of the tech world, and I just don’t get it.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am not a Mac hater by any means. The iMac revolutionized how computers looked (thank God!), and I have been drooling over the iPhone since I saw the first pictures leaked onto the web (I would have one if it wasn’t for the $200 cancellation fee from my current carrier). I also think the iPod is inspired and a great little device (although I will admit I got a Zune 2 for my wife, but it was a tough choice).

Before MacWorld I was as excited as the next guy to see what Jobs and company were going to come up with next, but the more I read about the Air the more I get confused.

From a design/ui perspective I get it. Its sleek and sexy and has that cool “apple” look to it. Where I stop drinking the Kool-Aid is when I think about it from a business perspective. Who is the market for this thing?

I know there are the mac addicts…chalk up a few thousand sold. Then you have the first adopters who just have to have anything with a power button. There are a few more thousand. But outside of that, whats the point?

Is there really a large audience looking to spend $1,800 on a laptop that has less functionality than one half that cost just because it fits in a manilla folder? I understand that road warriors needs a lightweight device because they are always on the move, but its not like you can’t find a great laptop (even a mac) that weighs 3 or 4 pounds for a lot cheaper.

Now if it were cheaper…say under $1,000, then that might make it more drool-worthy. Or heck…maybe even if it were actually smaller (like a UMPC) or maybe a sexy tablet (now we’re talkin’). I would be in heaven to have a tablet with the look and functionality of an iPhone on steroids. Mmmmm….tasty.

But as it stands now you get a fragile device (imagine dropping that little thing?) with a funky touchpad that costs almost two grand (for the cheap one).

Am I missing something?

As luck would have it…I am an idiot. I prove that little fact over and over (just about daily really), but this was a case of just not paying attention. You see, while I was building my little CMS app I chose the name simpleCMS without paying attention to who else might be using that name because it fit. Big mistake.

As I got closer to completion I did a bit of searching for other apps with that name. What did I find? Apparently simpleCMS is quite a popular name. So is simplyCMS, and just about any other variation of the name. I shouldn’t really be surprised. Its not like the world of CMS applications is a small one or anything.

I was a bit disappointed at first. Partly at my own stupidity, but also because I thought the name summed up my little app perfectly. So I began the gut-wrenching process of finding a new name that summed up what I was trying to build.

After several days of hunting and swearing the word novella popped into my head.
Easy to remember? Check.
Easy to spell? Check.
At least tangentially related? Check.

A novella is a book that is shorter than a novel and longer than a short story. As such they are not a complex as a full sized novel. It works as a nice parallel to my app when it is compared to the big daddies like wordpress and the like. Those apps do more, but are more complex and therefore a bit harder to wrap your head around.

So there you have it…

With that said, I hope to release novella in a couple of weeks. Stay tuned!

A while back I built a very simple CMS system using .NET for a client. That little tool became very useful and I have been able to use it over and over for various clients.

As I have worked with it, it has slowly improved, a few new features here, a little bit of polish there…and *poof*…simpleCMS was born.

The goal of simpleCMS is…well…simple. It is built for developers to give to their clients so they can have easily managed content. Its not for blogging (yet) nor does it have all the bells and whistles that some of the bigger guys out there have. However, the features it does have work well and it will be easy to deploy and even easier to rebrand for your own companies.

Best of all…it will be free. Free to use, free to customize, free to do whatever.

In the next few weeks I will be releasing it under my new DevMade brand which will contain all of the tools that I and my company, Visionary Online, release to the community. When it is available I hope all you freelancers and web designers/developers give it a shot. If you do, please tell me what you think of it.

Nick Hand is a graphic and web designer who lives in Alaska. When it came time to design his new portfolio he wanted to use some slick effects to make it stand out a bit. He ran across the side scrolling effect that I detailed in several articles and liked it enough to use it.

The final product is very creative and utilizes the effect very well I think. I was proud to help him through some of the stickier spots he ran into while implementing it.

If anyone else needs help with any of the articles that I have on the site, please feel free to contact me. I love seeing my tutorials “at work”, so if you use one, let me know and I will give you a little link love.

Great job Nick!

So the last few weeks have been crazy busy. I have been completely swamped with client work, and while that is a good problem to have, it does take away time to do other stuff (like blogging!).

One of the things I have been working on deals with handling large blobs of data. Its a bit of a tangent since it has absolutely nothing to do with UI, but I figured that since there are a lot of developers reading this site, it might be helpful.

So what do I mean by large amounts of data? Well, for the app I am building we were testing our theoretical limits for performance reasons. Imagine a grid or an Excel spreadsheet that has 700 columns (Excel itself only allows 256) and 30,000 rows. That basically equates to 1.65 million cells in the grid. Now if you compare that lump of data to what, say, Google throws around, its pretty insignificant; however, when it comes to keeping it in memory and accessing it quickly it is a bit beefy.

Most of the time you would get around this problem by paging through the data somehow, or having some sort of filter. Unfortunately for us, we didn’t have this luxury. The application needed the whole kit and caboodle accessible to it at all times. With that as the challenge we went to work.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hey everyone, sorry for the dearth of articles the past few weeks, I have been crazy busy working on various projects. Not an excuse, just an explanation.

Anyway, Smashing Magazine has a cool article on the User Experiences of the Future.

Its worth checking out.

Some of the stuff I have talked about before (such as multitouch and Surface), but there are a few things that really are amazing that I hadn’t seen before. In particular, check out the video on Photosynth. It actually demos two technologies related to images that are just simply amazing. You combine that with the multitouch concept and man you have something cool there.

I will be sharing some of what I have been working on soon. Its a bit of a tangent, but I think it will help developers out…

Ok, these are just too cool not to mention.

Today is Halloween and to commemorate the event here are some really awesome Star Wars t-shirts that can double as a costume.

For instance…be Darth Vader.

There is Darth, R2-D2, a Stormtrooper, and Chewbacca. The only one that is missing is Boba Fett.

Happy Halloween!

For the few people out there that don’t read A List Apart, they have recently come out with their first “Web Designer Survey” results.

If you ever wanted to see how you fit in the web professional industry in terms of education, salary, etc. it is an interesting read.

Check it out