I use jQuery quite extensively in my projects these days, but I kind of ignored jQuery UI for too long. The last two days, though, I finally got more into jQuery UI, after I was looking for a modal dialog component and realized that jQuery UI provides a very nice implementation by itself.
I haven't done much directly with the available components (except the dialog component), but
I was very much impressed about the way you download jQuery UI. They call it "Build Your Download" which let's you pick and choose which components of jQuery UI you may want to use and it creates a customized download bundle for you.
But substantially more impressive is "ThemeRoller", which not only let's you select between various themes but also allows for editing and creating new themes. All changes are applied right on the spot and once you're done you can include the theme in your customized jQuery UI download.
From there I discovered that jQuery released a new CSS Framework called "jQuery UI CSS Framework". It looks quite promising and I wonder if it might be applicable for my pet project. I certainly need to learn more about it...it would be nice if it could serve as the main CSS for my web application and therefore allow for easy theming of the application.
Anyway the docs can be found at http://docs.jquery.com/UI/Theming/API and the wiki pages are located at http://jqueryui.pbwiki.com/jQuery-UI-CSS-Framework
There is also a themeswitcher component available.
http://docs.jquery.com/UI/Theming/ThemeSwitcher
Lastly there is an interesting article on the blog of filament group, one of the main sponsors of jQuery UI, about styling buttons and toobars.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Résumé and Career Advice – A Panel Discussion
Last Tuesday at our monthly AJUG meeting, we had a panel discussion on what hiring managers are looking for in software developer candidates and what you can do to improve the odds to get hired.
The panel consisted of:
In case you missed the presentation, the presentation was recorded and is available for download here.
It was an interesting event and the room was certainly packed. It looks like the recession is slowly hitting the IT job market here in Atlanta. There were a few more unemployed attendees than we had been accustomed to in the past. One question raised during the panel discussion was how the Atlanta job market for software developers looks like right now. The panelists thought that Atlanta, while not being perfect, is one of the stronger IT job markets in the US currently, and stressed that the situation is certainly not horrible. Prior to the start of the meeting one visiting company was actually actively looking for quite a few developers.
Anyway, the panel discussion raised a few other interesting points providing valuable career advice, of which some was new to me and some was pretty much common sense, such as not to have a résumé consisting of more than two pages—Well, some time ago I was interviewing a candidate who provided an eight-page résumé…
Some general résumé advice was that: Simple is better. Include your formal education but then show progression and growing responsibility on your résumé. Summarize your experience for specific projects. Don't put references onto your résumé. Also, references these days are a mere pro forma check for the hiring company, important but less so.
One aspect that the panel stressed more than once was to concentrate on the last five years of experience and to make sure that your career follows a holistic picture, meaning not to branch out into vastly different areas of expertise (E.g. one year I am a DBA, the other year a BA and yet another year I develop some code).
Another question that was addressed was: How important is it to know the latest and greatest technology out there? It is more important to understand the business and get the job done. The panelists made the point that it is important for software developers to be able to provide a holistic software solution, to stay current more in a broader sense, and not follow the latest greatest hype.
This also played into one of the later questions: Is it better to have a broad focus on technology or to learn a very specific set of technologies and do them really, really well instead? The panel certainly seemed to be more split on this question as the best approach depends on your career goals. It was mentioned that knowing a specific technology can be very advantageous either while it is still cutting edge (E.g. Adobe Flex) or at the tail end of the popularity curve (Ever heard of PowerBuilder?), particularly when doing consulting. For more permanent long-term employment, this may not be as significant, however.
A question from the audience was about which value do certifications have in regards to hiring candidates. All panel participants voiced the importance of experience over having certifications. Another point that was mentioned several times was the importance of soft-skills. How well developed are your estimation skills? How do you handle and execute given tasks? How well do you understand the larger picture of your business and your customers?
Also, when you are looking for jobs, don't necessarily trust the job description. Internal recruiters may use a canned job description or the job description may deviate quite a bit form the actual duties. Thus, always ask lots of questions and don't get discouraged by a bad job posting. It may be better than the posting indicates.
When asked about contracting and the advantages and disadvantages of Corp-to-Corp versus W2, the panel was not too excited about Corp-to-Corp contracting but they noted that as long as your corporation consists of just yourself you won't run into too many issues.
Someone from the audience asked about current hot technologies. The panelists thought that while there are still good opportunities in custom software development, there are even better opportunities around business intelligence projects. They also thought that knowledge in JBPM, Rules Engines and AJAX are very useful.
What I thought was interesting from my European perspective, was, that companies especially in the financial service industry may actually check your credit-score. Thus, don't plan on doing too many bankruptcies.
Another member from the audience asked about how companies use social networking services in order to source candidates. The panel indicated that they are not paying too much attention to it but that it might be very useful to check out connections of a potential candidates. Maybe the hiring manager knows somebody in your connection list. Therefore, pay attention to it, but keep in mind that your profile is public information and it needs to be a good and accurate reflection of yourself.
Another question dealt with the current recession and for ways to prevent lay-offs. The panel said that you should concentrate on doing a good job and not to get affected too much from the economic situation, otherwise your work quality may slip which may cause issues by itself. Notwithstanding, you want to concentrate on how to market yourself best. You may take on charity projects, contribute to user groups or write a technical blog.
In an interesting question, a member from the audience asked for advice regarding a new-hire's first couple of weeks on the job. The panel advised to use the first couple of weeks to learn. Get self-sufficient. Several panelists said that is is not good if a company does not provide any ramp up times. This may however differ when working as a consultant. Nevertheless, if in doubt regarding your performance, talk to your manager.
I think this covers the core of the panel discussion. All in all it was an AJUG meeting worth attending. See you at DevNexus next month!
The panel consisted of:
- David Brooks - VP Technology at LexisNexis
- Mike Nearman - Consultant
- Deran Ross - Partner at Enablus
- Pat Baumgartner - Director of Sales at Anteo
- Dion Deloof - President at Anteo (Moderator)
In case you missed the presentation, the presentation was recorded and is available for download here.
It was an interesting event and the room was certainly packed. It looks like the recession is slowly hitting the IT job market here in Atlanta. There were a few more unemployed attendees than we had been accustomed to in the past. One question raised during the panel discussion was how the Atlanta job market for software developers looks like right now. The panelists thought that Atlanta, while not being perfect, is one of the stronger IT job markets in the US currently, and stressed that the situation is certainly not horrible. Prior to the start of the meeting one visiting company was actually actively looking for quite a few developers.
Anyway, the panel discussion raised a few other interesting points providing valuable career advice, of which some was new to me and some was pretty much common sense, such as not to have a résumé consisting of more than two pages—Well, some time ago I was interviewing a candidate who provided an eight-page résumé…
Some general résumé advice was that: Simple is better. Include your formal education but then show progression and growing responsibility on your résumé. Summarize your experience for specific projects. Don't put references onto your résumé. Also, references these days are a mere pro forma check for the hiring company, important but less so.
One aspect that the panel stressed more than once was to concentrate on the last five years of experience and to make sure that your career follows a holistic picture, meaning not to branch out into vastly different areas of expertise (E.g. one year I am a DBA, the other year a BA and yet another year I develop some code).
Another question that was addressed was: How important is it to know the latest and greatest technology out there? It is more important to understand the business and get the job done. The panelists made the point that it is important for software developers to be able to provide a holistic software solution, to stay current more in a broader sense, and not follow the latest greatest hype.
This also played into one of the later questions: Is it better to have a broad focus on technology or to learn a very specific set of technologies and do them really, really well instead? The panel certainly seemed to be more split on this question as the best approach depends on your career goals. It was mentioned that knowing a specific technology can be very advantageous either while it is still cutting edge (E.g. Adobe Flex) or at the tail end of the popularity curve (Ever heard of PowerBuilder?), particularly when doing consulting. For more permanent long-term employment, this may not be as significant, however.
A question from the audience was about which value do certifications have in regards to hiring candidates. All panel participants voiced the importance of experience over having certifications. Another point that was mentioned several times was the importance of soft-skills. How well developed are your estimation skills? How do you handle and execute given tasks? How well do you understand the larger picture of your business and your customers?
Also, when you are looking for jobs, don't necessarily trust the job description. Internal recruiters may use a canned job description or the job description may deviate quite a bit form the actual duties. Thus, always ask lots of questions and don't get discouraged by a bad job posting. It may be better than the posting indicates.
When asked about contracting and the advantages and disadvantages of Corp-to-Corp versus W2, the panel was not too excited about Corp-to-Corp contracting but they noted that as long as your corporation consists of just yourself you won't run into too many issues.
Someone from the audience asked about current hot technologies. The panelists thought that while there are still good opportunities in custom software development, there are even better opportunities around business intelligence projects. They also thought that knowledge in JBPM, Rules Engines and AJAX are very useful.
What I thought was interesting from my European perspective, was, that companies especially in the financial service industry may actually check your credit-score. Thus, don't plan on doing too many bankruptcies.
Another member from the audience asked about how companies use social networking services in order to source candidates. The panel indicated that they are not paying too much attention to it but that it might be very useful to check out connections of a potential candidates. Maybe the hiring manager knows somebody in your connection list. Therefore, pay attention to it, but keep in mind that your profile is public information and it needs to be a good and accurate reflection of yourself.
Another question dealt with the current recession and for ways to prevent lay-offs. The panel said that you should concentrate on doing a good job and not to get affected too much from the economic situation, otherwise your work quality may slip which may cause issues by itself. Notwithstanding, you want to concentrate on how to market yourself best. You may take on charity projects, contribute to user groups or write a technical blog.
In an interesting question, a member from the audience asked for advice regarding a new-hire's first couple of weeks on the job. The panel advised to use the first couple of weeks to learn. Get self-sufficient. Several panelists said that is is not good if a company does not provide any ramp up times. This may however differ when working as a consultant. Nevertheless, if in doubt regarding your performance, talk to your manager.
I think this covers the core of the panel discussion. All in all it was an AJUG meeting worth attending. See you at DevNexus next month!
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Paving the Road for DevNexus
I have been busy doing my best to ensure that the DevNexus conference in Atlanta will become a big success. There is only one more month to go. I helped quite a bit with marketing lately. The latest Java Posse (Episode 229) mentioned the conference in their quick news items (Dick Wall gives it "2 enthusiastic thumbs up" and mentions that he has visited one of the previous AJUG conferences in the past).
InfoQ did us a favor today, and has sent a promotional email to their subscribers in the Southeast mentioning DevNexus.
Lastly, no conference is perfect without free giveaways. Therefore I am in the process of organizing a few free books that we will raffle off at the conference.
InfoQ did us a favor today, and has sent a promotional email to their subscribers in the Southeast mentioning DevNexus.
Lastly, no conference is perfect without free giveaways. Therefore I am in the process of organizing a few free books that we will raffle off at the conference.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Struts 2.1 Java Templates Plugin
In an interview article on InfoQ regarding the latest Struts 2.1 release it was mentioned that Struts now features the Java Templates Plugin. It basically provides the functionality of the "simple" theme implemented directly in Java instead of Freemarker. Musachy Barroso states in this interview that this makes the simple them tags render 4-5 times faster. The question for me is, do you "feel" the difference? Shall I avoid the Freemarker-based templates (at least as long as I use the simple theme)?
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Do offices like these exist in Atlanta?
Most developers here in the US appear to be accustomed to gray cubicles and if you’re out of luck you even have to survive without daylight. I wonder whether means you have to take vitamin D pills daily. Joel on Software seems to have a more progressive opinion about developer office space. It is a NICE office. I was actually lucky enough to have my own office while working at the Georgia Department of Audits and Accounts, which was nice.
Is Joel’s philosophy an anomaly in the American software development world? Do offices like his exist in Atlanta? I guess you can always abandon coding and just become a VP to get that fancy corner office…
Is Joel’s philosophy an anomaly in the American software development world? Do offices like his exist in Atlanta? I guess you can always abandon coding and just become a VP to get that fancy corner office…
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Doing some Marketing for DevNexus
Things are finally coming together for the DevNexus conference. Burr Sutter was sending out the first announcement messages to the group's mailing list last week. Vincent Mayers setup a targeted ad campaign on LinkedIn. We had the first couple of registrations. Today, I saw the first out-of-state registration.
Over the last couple of days we at AJUG crafted a press-release in order to not only raise awareness locally in the Atlanta area but also within the larger software development community nationally. Today I submitted press-releases to 2 press release submission sites. Let's see whether the press-release shows up in Google News. Furthermore, I submitted conference announcements to major software development news sites such as InfoQ and TheServerSide.
By the way I came across an interesting blog that provides some tips in terms of press-release distribution. It also list many free press release distribution sites. Organizing a conference is certainly a neat learning experience.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Devnexus Conference in Atlanta March 10-11
The Devnexus developer conference will be held in Atlanta, Ga from March 10-11, 2009. It is organized by the Atlanta Java Users Group and is basically the continuation of AJUG’s DevCon events which were held in previous years and they were always very well-received.
Together with four other members, we are right now finalizing the list of speakers and presentations for the conference, finalizing the registration website and preparing some marketing material. Well, and most importantly between now and March we need to get word out.
To me this is the first time planning an event of this scale and it has been a fun learning experience. The conference has been over six months in the making and is organized entirely by volunteers in their respective spare time.
I certainly cannot wait for the actual conference itself. We have an extremely high-profile line-up of speakers covering a wide range of topics around the Java platform as well as dynamic languages and RIA. As we make the final push towards the conference I plan on posting additional information as soon as it gets available. Keep an eye, though, on the conference’s official website at http://www.devnexus .com/
Together with four other members, we are right now finalizing the list of speakers and presentations for the conference, finalizing the registration website and preparing some marketing material. Well, and most importantly between now and March we need to get word out.
To me this is the first time planning an event of this scale and it has been a fun learning experience. The conference has been over six months in the making and is organized entirely by volunteers in their respective spare time.
I certainly cannot wait for the actual conference itself. We have an extremely high-profile line-up of speakers covering a wide range of topics around the Java platform as well as dynamic languages and RIA. As we make the final push towards the conference I plan on posting additional information as soon as it gets available. Keep an eye, though, on the conference’s official website at http://www.devnexus .com/
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Mac is back
After I brought my Macbook Pro in for servicing yesterday, I was able to pick it up from the Apple store today. This was a surprisingly swift return. My keyboard keys are working again - Life is good again.
Monday, January 5, 2009
MacBook in the shop - Keyboard issue
I brought my MacBook Pro in for servicing today. Some of my keyboard keys got sticky. It started with the Tab-key 2 weeks ago. For several days I had to press the tab very hard in order for it to work. Then all of a sudden it worked again. However, over the weekend the T-key was aching up. Oh, and in between the J key was not always working either.
Looks like it is not an too uncommon problem:
http://www.cartoonbarry.com/2008/01/macbook_pro_keyboard_issues.html
http://www.wp-wordpress.com/macbook-pro-mbp-keyboard-problem-frozen-keys
And, I never spilled anything over the keyboard. The friendly person at the Apple Store asked that question real hard...Let's hope they fix it and I that I get my machine back sooon.
Looks like it is not an too uncommon problem:
http://www.cartoonbarry.com/2008/01/macbook_pro_keyboard_issues.html
http://www.wp-wordpress.com/macbook-pro-mbp-keyboard-problem-frozen-keys
And, I never spilled anything over the keyboard. The friendly person at the Apple Store asked that question real hard...Let's hope they fix it and I that I get my machine back sooon.
Friday, January 2, 2009
Book Review - Slide:ology
If you ever need to give PowerPoint (Or Keynote) presentations, this book should be on your desk. Slide:ology, written by Nancy Duarte, is a well-designed and easily readable book that gives you an excellent overview on how to create great presentations. Hereby, the book focuses more on the generic concepts as slide:ology is not a dedicated step-by-step how-to book for using PowerPoint. Rather, it is more of a style book with highly inspirational qualities. In my opinion, the most valuable information gathered from the book is how it changed my way of thinking when preparing presentation slides.
I particularly liked the the chapter on color theory and typography; topics that are probably more often than not ignored by many professionals while preparing their slides. Another section that I thought was very good is ‘Classifying Diagrams’ starting on page 44. This section provides a library of graphical forms and shapes that give you a good starting point for designing your own illustrations.
The book is loaded with case-studies and examples that tie together all those theoretical pieces of information quite nicely. For example Nancy Duarte's company Duarte Design helped Al Gore with his influential presentation about global warming.
As mentioned above, the book is fairly neutral in terms of presentation software used. Occasionally it provides some tips for using e.g. PowerPoint, but Slide:ology is fairly high-level in that regard. If you are looking for a more hands-on guide to use PowerPoint, you may want to look elsewhere.
Slide:ology certainly emphasizes the creative aspects of creating presentations, which is a good thing. Notwithstanding, one recommendation for improvement would be to include a chapter for the time- and/or resource-constrained presenter. Let's face it - in many organizations/departments, it might be difficult to nearly impossible to get your hands on a first-class designer who churns out those nice looking graphics as shown in Nancy Duarte's book. In that regard it would have been nice to have a chapter that addresses that issue.
Lastly, slide:ology also has its own website at www.slideology.com, which is essentially Duarte's company blog. Nevertheless, it contains a wealth of additional information and it is certainly a good companion to the book. Overall, I highly recommend this book. May it help reduce the vast amount of mediocre presentations out there.
I particularly liked the the chapter on color theory and typography; topics that are probably more often than not ignored by many professionals while preparing their slides. Another section that I thought was very good is ‘Classifying Diagrams’ starting on page 44. This section provides a library of graphical forms and shapes that give you a good starting point for designing your own illustrations.
The book is loaded with case-studies and examples that tie together all those theoretical pieces of information quite nicely. For example Nancy Duarte's company Duarte Design helped Al Gore with his influential presentation about global warming.
As mentioned above, the book is fairly neutral in terms of presentation software used. Occasionally it provides some tips for using e.g. PowerPoint, but Slide:ology is fairly high-level in that regard. If you are looking for a more hands-on guide to use PowerPoint, you may want to look elsewhere.
Slide:ology certainly emphasizes the creative aspects of creating presentations, which is a good thing. Notwithstanding, one recommendation for improvement would be to include a chapter for the time- and/or resource-constrained presenter. Let's face it - in many organizations/departments, it might be difficult to nearly impossible to get your hands on a first-class designer who churns out those nice looking graphics as shown in Nancy Duarte's book. In that regard it would have been nice to have a chapter that addresses that issue.
Lastly, slide:ology also has its own website at www.slideology.com, which is essentially Duarte's company blog. Nevertheless, it contains a wealth of additional information and it is certainly a good companion to the book. Overall, I highly recommend this book. May it help reduce the vast amount of mediocre presentations out there.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)