Only Passionate People Win : Web

Web 2.0 Development

youngjoo — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 02:37:00 GMT

I am not a huge fan of Web 2.0 hype. However, I have to agree with points that Marc Hedlund made about Web 2.0 Development. Although he's describing how Web 2.0 start-ups are developing Web 2.0 apps, these points should still be considered by other traditional web development shops.

For a lot of shops, these have been tried and got rejected due to various reasons.

Why waste money on shadow app when resources can be used to build new features that would bring in revenue?
Well, because you don't know what feature would bring the revenue in if you don't understand how your users are using your application!

It will take way too much time, resources and coordination to do sampling and testing!
I used to be against this sampling and testing approach. I had several debates about A/B testing with my sales manager at my previous company. The reason I was against that was because I had a huge list of backlog items that I did not have enough resources for. If you asked me to deliver on all those AND do sampling and testing, I would ignore you. This is about where the investement should go to. Similar to shadow app above, you need to understand your users and how your features fit into what your users are trying to accomplish before going full-force with your new features.

Public API? Our application won't be extended by others. So, why bother?
Ok. Forget about public part of this. And look at how your developers are doing their work. If you do not have solid architecture that's extensible (I told you not to worry about public for now... internally extensible), your developers are wasting a lot of their time doing the same thing over and over but a bit differently each time. Build solid architecture. Make it extensible. Use it. And one day, you will find that the new business opportunities walk by you.

* Um... gotta run to a meeting. I will either finish this off later or post Part 2 *

Windows Live Local Streetlevel!!

youngjoo — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 02:36:00 GMT

You gotta try this out. Bird's eye images are so old now...

Channel 9 Video

Tech Preview

Yahoo! User Interface Library

youngjoo — Sun, 19 Feb 2006 02:35:00 GMT

If you call yourself a Web Developer, you have to visit this site. Yahoo! User Interface Library is packed with extremely useful set of UI controls that you can download and start using immediately. And best of all, they are provided under BSD license. Which means you are free to use them without paying even a cent to anyone as long as you follow what I call no-brainer-rules. Animation, XMLHttpRequest transaction management, DOM Utility, Drag & Drop, Event Manager, Calendar, Slider, TreeView. These are all packaged together as a very easy to use library. Next time you work on a redesign project, you should definitely consider using these.

And if you are having a stupid battle with your product manager about how a certain interface should work, send her a link to Yahoo! Design Pattern Library and go back to coding. For web application interface stuff, you better listen to Yahoo! engineers.