Better living through bookmarklets; or, one-click switch between UW dev and production servers

Posted on Jun 16, 2010 in IT, Web Dev | 3 comments

Better living through bookmarklets; or, one-click switch between UW dev and production servers

Bookmarklets are small scripts that live in your browser's bookmark bar and make life easier. If you're a UW developer who often needs to switch between the development and production versions of files living on the www.washington.edu servers, your life just got a bit easier. I'm pleased to introduce "www2udev," a bookmarklet I wrote to simplify that task. Drag it to your bookmark bar and start saving time and keystrokes.

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Cross-posts: Two blog entries about the UW’s academic calendar web service

Posted on Jun 10, 2010 in Marketing, Web Dev | 2 comments

Cross-posts: Two blog entries about the UW’s academic calendar web service

What's the best part of doing good work at a university? Why, writing about it of course! I recently launched a web service (of sorts) for the University of Washington's academic calendar. Part of that launch was getting the word out to students and the campus community, so I wrote posts on two blogs. One for a technical audience that discussed the features of and some drawbacks to the service; the other for the wider University of Washington audience that focused on the academic calendar web service's benefit to students. Read both posts here.

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Quick impressions of HTML5

Posted on Jun 7, 2010 in Web Dev | 1 comment

Quick impressions of HTML5

HTML5 is on its way (or already here, depending on what browser you use). There's a lot under the hood to love: simplified markup, greater functionality for developers without reliance on complex javascript or libraries, etc. I offer a few thoughts on what I see as HTML5's best additions and some of its not-so-amazing ones, too.

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