TehNrd

Once you see it…..The Salesforce Dot will haunt you forever…

Major late notice here but today is a Seattle Force.com user group. If you are are Force.com pro or a n00b looking for more information about this platform swing by.

WHO: Me, you, and some other cool peeps.

WHAT: Discuss force.com related topics, questions, and technologies

WHEN: Today, August 5, 2010 4:00PM

WHERE:
West Monroe Partners
1215 4th Ave, Suite 1010
Seattle, WA 98161

WHY: See WHO & WHAT

This month’s meeting will be an open forum for any questions and discussion topics you may have.

I’ve got a pretty decent back log of super awesome and overwhelmingly exciting blog posts. Some related to force.com and some not. I’ve got so many that I can’t decide what is next so I need your help. Below are a few of the top choices. The only teaser is the title of the post.

On this poll you can select two options so make your votes count!

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If you have a website knowing where your visitors are located is a powerful feature. For starters it makes your website appear to have super powers if it automatically knows where the user is from. You can do all sorts of cool stalker stuff, and by cool stalker stuff, I mean customizing site content based on the visitors location.

There are several different ways to figure out where a visitor is located, each with their pros and cons. The two main ways are IP address tracing and HTML5 geolocation. There is a great guide on developer.force.com about HTML5 geolocation that you should check out. HTML5 is all the rage these days but both methods have their advantages. In my testing HTML 5 was more accurate but it requires input from the user. The user must explicitly grant permission for the browser to find their location. Depending on the use case this may or may not work. IP address tracing on the other hand requires no input from the user and can be done completely behind the scenes unobtrusive to the user. The down side is that it is not as accurate. Another issue to consider is that some users (think your parents) will not want to click a button that gives away the location because they may think the internet is full of scams and the website will use this information to track them down and steal their identity….just sayin. So these are the two primary methods and choosing one really depends on the type of application you are building.

Read more…

UPDATE: I’ll be demoing how to authenticate with OAuth using Force.com and how this can be used with the Twitter API.

It’s that time again for the Seattle Force.com Developer Meetup. Details below…

When: 6/3/2010 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM Pacific Daylight Time
Where: 7 Simple Machines Office
Subject: Seattle Force.com User Group Meeting – June 3
Comments: This month, our meeting will be held in a new venue. 7 Simple Machines has offered up a change in venue for us in June.

Location:
Their office is located at:
800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 208
Seattle, WA 98134

http://www.7simplemachines.com/views/ContactUs.aspx

As always, bring your any ideas and questions to the meeting to discuss with everyone!

As you’ve probably heard Microsoft is suing salesforce.com over nine patents Microsoft holds. One would probably assume these patents are for some ultra complicated algorithm or computer process hidden within the depths of top secret Microsoft source code. Well you’d be wrong, really wrong.

Let’s take a look at just a few of the patents they are suing over.

1) System and method for providing and displaying a web page having an embedded menu
2) Method and system for stacking toolbars in a computer display

Wait, what?!?! They own a patent on a flipping web menu!?! Yes, it would appear so. So if you have ever created or implemented a menu on a web page you are infringing on a Microsoft patent. See the menu across the top of this page? Yup, I’m a rebel.

3) Aggregation of system settings into objects

I’m not patent lawyer but I’m pretty sure this one means you can’t store some type of system setting (aka text/boolean/etc) value in an object. I didn’t read through the entire patent filing but I’m guessing ‘object’ refers to a class object or database object. So if I can’t store system settings in any of these two places where on earth can I store them! Maybe Microsoft thinks there is some pixie dust magic land where settings can be stored.

4) Timing and velocity control for displaying graphical information

This is lawyer speak for a time delayed tool tip. If you put your mouse over an icon, stop, wait 300ms, and show a tool tip you are busted! So the thousands of websites that have implemented this type of functionality are infringing on a Microsoft patent.

These are just a few of the patents Microsoft is suing over and the others I didn’t list are just as ridiculous.

What is all this madness? Well, there is a lot of crack smoking going on here. First we have the US Patent office smoking crack and approving ridiculous patents like these. Secondly, we have Microsoft smoking a little something suing over these absurd patents. If they were really concerned about protecting their intellectual property they would be suing a lot more people that have implemented these types of features, but they aren’t. They are suing a company that is a direct competitor that is innovating faster and more successfully than Microsoft in the given space. It’s is clear Microsoft is using it’s size and money ($250B) to take on a smaller company like salesforce ($10B) in the courtroom rather than on the keyboard which is just sad.

Some will say, “But Jason, you are biased supporter of salesforce.com”. Yup, that is probably true, but Microsoft isn’t really suing salesforce.com. They are suing all of us. Where “us” is any web developer or smaller company that has created the functionality mentioned above.

I finally got around to submitting a paper for Dreamforce 2010. The title…..wait for it……wait…..”Take Your Visualforce Pages to the Next Level with jQuery & jQuery UI”.

Visualforce is great for building solid and scalable web apps. Where it falls short is enhanced web 2.0 (I actually cringe at this term) usability. It lays a solid foundation but lacks slick UI features that users of today’s web expect and will soon demand. jQuery and jQuery UI make it incredibly easy to add enhanced functionality. In this presentation I will show best practices, pitfalls to watch out for, and of course show off some slick apps that use jQuery. What this won’t be is an advanced deep dive on jQuery. This presentation will show anyone who has a little web and Visualforce experience how to apply jQuery to projects they are working on as soon as they get back to work.

Salesforce has seriously pushed Flex the last few years but I guarantee you that 90% of the time I can build the exact same functionality in less lines of code with jQuery. It’s time to show some diversity at Dreamforce. Simply look at this trend for google searches.

jQuery is the most popular javascript library out there today and it even beats Adobe Flex in terms of people looking for more information. If Flex gets a dedicated session at Dreamforce so should jQuery!

If you are a regular reader of this blog you know I’ve got a quirky style with a touch of humor thrown in there. I’ll be sure to carry this over to my presentation unless salesforce makes me be all serious and professional, BORING.

If you like this idea please hit the link below and cast your vote.

Take Your Visualforce Pages to the Next Level with jQuery & jQuery UI

It is the slickness. I hope to have more info on what this is all about in an upcoming post but couldn’t resist posting this little teaser.

Popups suck. Everyone hates them, but it wasn’t always like this. There once once a time long long ago when popup actually displayed relevant information related to the site you were browsing. This was in a time before tabbed browsing and advertising behemoths. Then came advertising on the web and popups galore. Here begins the downfall of the popup. It wasn’t long before popups became incredibly annoying and web users closed them without a glance. Popups were used, abused, and are now the scum of the internet user experience.

So why this brief, and quite frankly masterfully written story on the history of popups? The help link you can add to Visualforce pages is a popup. There are a few reasons I don’t like this. One, it is a popup, and people hate popups. Two, you also have to manage an entirely separate page for what could be a very simple help dialog. And 3, it just doesn’t provide a good user experience. It feels so 1999. Read more…

Here is a little jig i like to call the “Salesforce Seizure”.

Seriously, if you have photosensitive epilepsy I wouldn’t watch this.

Looks like it only happens in Firefox, possibly related to this and this.