Tag Archives: JavaScript

JSConf and NodeConf – 2011

Last week was both JSConf and NodeConf in Portland, OR and it was absolutely epic. I spend all year looking forward to the various Portland conferences, but this year happened to also be my first JSConf.us, the first ever NodeConf and a lot of thick bacon. If you aren’t aware of that term, it has become a great way to gauge the accumulated awesomeness regarding the quality of experience at a conference. I believe this was coined at one of … Continue reading

Posted in Automation, JavaScript, Jellyfish, Node, Open Source, Web | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Node.JS is a Swimming Pool

Over the past six months I have heard about the unbelievable awesomeness involved in this project called Node.JS. At first I thought, “Server Side JS NOT on the JVM” – YAY! Then after a few days of that I thought, “I really don’t care about server side code, even if it is JS”. See the thing is, right out of college I started fooling with raw DOM, cross browser event firing and capturing and building pretty big cool projects without … Continue reading

Posted in CouchDB, JavaScript, Node, Open Source, Technology, Web | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Considering in-house web automation?

Recently I have had numerous conversations with people at various tiers of companies all over the place who are toying with the idea of building their own test automation and continuous integration infrastructure. Since I have spent a considerable amount of time dealing with such undertakings I decided that it might be worth the time to brain dump some of the issues you may want to consider before you dive in. Choosing Tools Boxes, VM’s or Cloud? A common first … Continue reading

Posted in Automation, Continuous Integration, Firefox, Hudson, java, JavaScript, Open Source, Python, Review, Technology, Web, Work | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Skinning Windmill with JQuery UI Themes

I have been doing a lot of UI work on the Windmill trunk, and over the past few months I have had multiple requests for the ability to apply skins. Of course my reaction up until this point has been… alter the CSS! Which is not exactly the answer people were looking for. Here is your answer, and it is now easier than ever. 1. Go to: http://jqueryui.com/themeroller/ and create your theme (or pick a pre-defined one) 2. Download and … Continue reading

Posted in Automation, JavaScript, Windmill, Windmill-dev | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

MozMill 1.1 UI Overview

During the Open Design session at Mozilla with Aza we were informed that we could load a HTML file with a Chrome URL, allowing me to rebuild the MozMill UI a bit more like a web page instead of using the XUL constructs that I had been struggling with. Granted it feels a lot more like a web page than it does a desktop application, but the speed that I can build new UI features by using libraries like JQuery … Continue reading

Posted in Automation, Firefox, JavaScript, Mozilla, Open Source | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Micro-Bookmarking with MyTabs

A few weeks ago I realized that every time I boot my laptop, one of the first things I do is to open Firefox, and immediately load about 7 web sites as tabs. Some of them requiring user interaction to navigate to the desired state. I didn’t realize that this was actually a phenomenon called “micro-bookmarking”, and that I may not be the only person who has this routine. I don’t necessarily want to bookmark these sites, and this process … Continue reading

Posted in Firefox, JavaScript, Mozilla, Open Source, Web | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

XUSH (.01), you know it’s fun to say.

Over the past 8 months I have been neck deep in XUL and XPCOM and with Venkman being as unintuitive as it is I have badly needed a shell with access to the trusted space in the browser. I also had a couple more requirements, which were that it was super easy to get at (keyboard shortcut), and that it looks awesome (transparency required). Since making things looks really nice in XUL is really hard, I decided that I would build … Continue reading

Posted in Firefox, JavaScript, Mozilla, Open Source, Python, Web | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

Meet lookupNode

A few months ago I did a re-write of the DOM access functionality used by Windmill and various other projects of mine and the result was a wrapper around ElementsLib called lookupNode. I use this all over internally but until today didn’t realize that it could be hugely helpful for test developers and people trying to debug their applications. The following list are the different options you have for looking up your node: link xpath id name value classname tagname … Continue reading

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This thing I’m calling Windmill-Lite

In preparation for the Windmill 2 client side re-architecting, and an article I am writing about simulating user sessions with JavaScript, I decided it was time to go through the Windmill JavaScript source and pull out the pieces necessary to drive a user session in JavaScript. It turns out that it’s easily broken into a few pieces: Events: Cross browser compatible event firing functionality ElementsLib: DOM element lookup functionality via many methods called ‘locators’ Controller: The logic for firing the … Continue reading

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Leaving Rearden Commerce, What’s Next?

What happened? As some of you may have heard, today I resigned from my position at Rearden Commerce. Leaving a company is never a fun thing, because you know how you feel when you hear that someone else is leaving.. and you can see it in people’s eyes. I have reminded myself multiple times today that I am still going to be 30 mins away, most of my communication with those people has been via email and IM and there is no … Continue reading

Posted in Career, JavaScript, Mozilla, Open Source, Plans, Slide, Startup, Technology, Web, Windmill, Work | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments