Confusion and Delay

Using Google Chrome as an external browser in Eclipse on Mac

2010-08-05T08:29:00.000-07:00

I like Google Chrome a lot, so I'd like to use it as my default browser in Eclipse. So I do what I'm supposed to do:

Eclipse->Preferences->General->Web Browser

Select "Use external Web browser"

Select "New..."

Name = "Chrome"

Location = "/Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome

Parameters = "%URL%"

But that doesn't work for some reason - not really sure why. To get it to work I had to use a shell script:


open -a '/Applications/Google Chrome.app' $1 &

and use that as my executable.

Flex Lesson Learned #1: Preventing mouseOver flash

2010-04-21T08:45:00.000-07:00

Say you've got this situation:

A complex Flex component you want to act as a button
Too complex to implement as a button with skins
MouseOver/Out behavior involves redrawing/resizing parts of the component

I was working on something like this, and couldn't get rid of multiple rapid mouseOver and mouseOut events when mousing over the component. Eventually I found what looks like a pretty good solution.

Make the top-level subcomponent (in z-order) of the component a button component with alpha of 0. Make it cover the precise bounding box you want to be sensitive to mouse events. (It may be possible to mask the button to achieve non-rectangular mouse regions, but I haven't tried this.) Put the mouse event listeners on the button only, not the whole component. Then making the component mouseEnabled="true", mouseChildren="true", and making other subcomponents mouseEnabled="false" will cause the button subcomponent to catch all the mouseEvents, without the underlying redraws affecting it.

Code Aesthetics

2010-03-10T17:52:00.000-08:00

Good code is pretty code. Ugly code is broken, and should be fixed.

Unit Testing Quiz Part I

2010-02-01T21:18:00.000-08:00

Here's a question anyone should be able to answer if they're to be considered proficient at unit testing:

Your client asks you to unit test the serialization/deserialization code for a data model class written by their in-house developers. Since the implementation of the class is sensitive information, you are expected to work without either source code or a description of the serialized form of the model. All you know is the public API of the model: properties and methods, contracts and invariants. The client assures you that the serialized models will only be used by the given code, and do not need to be readable by any other application or implementation. If the class has the methods serialize() and deserialize(), for serializing and deserializing the model respectively, describe how you would write unit tests to test these two functions despite the given constraints.

If I remember I'll post the answer later.

Singletonitis

2010-01-12T08:38:00.000-08:00

Proposition A: proper OO design exploits polymorphism.

Proposition B: singletons inhibit polymorphism.

A & B imply Proposition C: proper OO design excludes singletons (in most cases).

Tree Etiquette

2009-12-18T07:05:00.000-08:00

Dear Developers (I'm looking at you, Eclipse!),

When you have an expandable tree UI, always remember to include a "collapse all" button. Thanks!

Love and Kisses,
Phil

D'oh!

2009-11-10T08:37:00.001-08:00

Always remember - if you update your path in Windows, you have to restart Eclipse before Eclipse Ant will see the change. ARGH! This cost me 2 hours!

Unit Testing Anti-Patterns

2009-11-10T07:02:00.000-08:00

This is a presentation I gave recently about Unit Testing Anti-Patterns. The material is fairly basic, but you'd be surprised at how many professional developers are addicted to very bad practices writing unit tests, and are generally unfamiliar with the basic principles in this presentation.

Unit Testing Anti-Patterns (PDF)

Favorite Lines from the Latest Art Brut Album, "Art Brut vs. Satan".

2009-11-09T09:17:00.000-08:00

"I can't believe I've only just discovered the Replacements" - "The Replacements"

"How can we sleep at night when no one likes the records we like?" - "Demons Out!"

12XU?

2009-10-20T07:14:00.000-07:00

Strangely enough, a band named Sub Debs recorded a song named "12XU" in 1999, that is not at all the Wire song.

John McCain, Rogue Cop

2008-09-07T09:33:00.001-07:00

Everybody loves the maverick cop who plays by his own rules - Dirty Harry, Axel Foley, Mel Gibson, so of course everyone loves The Maverick John McCain. But don't you think there's a reason they never get to be Chief of Police????

DRM Sucks

2008-07-25T08:24:00.001-07:00

DRM still sucks: Yahoo Music going dark, taking keys with it

Holy Bastard Offspring of John Lennon and Bryan Ferry!

2008-07-15T11:00:00.000-07:00

Brian Eno singing "Tomorrow Never Knows": 801 Live.

As an added bonus, though I haven't yet heard it: June 1, 1974

What's up Eclipse?

2008-07-14T06:53:00.000-07:00

How come a long-running build won't automatically cancel when I hit save? Why does it block the entire app instead?

Cool Old Discovery

2008-07-12T18:21:00.000-07:00

Dream Syndicate

Don't Use java.io.File!

2008-07-09T11:07:00.000-07:00

One of my biggest gripes with Sun's Java libraries is their I/O implementation, particularly the class java.io.File. Even worse is its ubiquity in the method signatures of third-party libraries. Why? I'll explain.

Consider an interface that gives you the method public void upload(java.io.File file), which is supposed to upload a file to a server. Now suppose you want, instead, to upload some data you created programmatically, or that exists at a remote URL. Oh no! Now you have to download that data to a file on your local file system, and upload THAT file. Ouch!

Believe it or not, people charge actual money for systems with APIs that work this way.

This illustrates the real weakness behind using java.io.File in a public API - File is a concrete class that is directly tied to the native file system. You can't mock it for unit testing, you can't substitute a URL. You're stuck.

What to use instead? Well, URLs/URIs are an obvious choice, and work well. I would recommend actually using java.net.URL instead of String in method signatures, so that the signature explicity indicates what kind of data it wants. This also means your code won't have to handle or throw MalformedURLException. Finally, always handling URLs as java.net.URL prevents chains of casting back and forth between String and URL, which often happens when using 2 or more APIs together that aren't consistent in their use of URLs vs. Strings.

When you're working with internal APIs and you need an actual file object, I'd recommend using Apache commons-vfs instead of java.io. As the web site says, "Commons VFS provides a single API for accessing various different file systems. It presents a uniform view of the files from various different sources, such as the files on local disk, on an HTTP server, or inside a Zip archive." For unit testing, the RAM disk implementation is very useful, allowing you to mock output files when necessary.

Easy Layouts in SWT?

2008-07-02T05:38:00.000-07:00

I'm trying out a layout engine for Swing and SWT called MiGLayout. Their claim for it is "MiG Layout makes complex layouts easy and normal layouts one-liners." We'll see. So far it seems pretty good. Here's a snippet of (SWT) code I've written:

Label label = new Label(panel, SWT.NONE);
label.setText("Test Name:");
label.setLayoutData(new CC().growX(0));
final Text text = new Text(panel, SWT.BORDER);
text.setLayoutData(new CC().spanX(2).growX());
Button button = new Button(panel, SWT.PUSH);
button.setText("Load");
Button runButton = new Button(panel, SWT.PUSH);
runButton.setText("Run");
runButton.setLayoutData(new CC().wrap());
browser = new Browser(panel, SWT.MOZILLA | SWT.BORDER);
browser.setLayoutData(new CC().spanX().growX().growY());

This gives you something that looks like this:

And the label, textbox, and buttons on the top row grow/shrink as they should. Nice. Definitely worth exploring further.

Making java.exe Use a JDK on Windows

2008-05-16T10:14:00.000-07:00

So let's say you're running an application, such as Sonar, that invokes java.exe directly and doesn't allow you to configure your java path (as far as I can tell, anyway). Now let's say you want to run in -server mode. You try it, but what pops up?

Error: no `server' JVM at `C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.6.0_06_\bin\server\jvm.dll'.

Oops. That's because you're running in a JRE, which doesn't include a server JVM. So you think, "Ok, well, I'll just fix my PATH variable to point at my JDK." Maybe you even try setting JAVA_HOME. But none of it works. Why not?

It doesn't work because Java is launched differently these days. If you look in \WINDOWS\System32, you'll notice that java.exe and javaw.exe are in there. When you launch java.exe, the copy that gets run is the one in System32.

If you look at the Properties of the java.exe file in System32, you'll notice it's tagged with the version of the JRE it came from. When you launch it, then, it looks in the registry for a compatible JRE, and gets resources from that JRE. The relevant registry key is HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\JavaSoft\Java Runtime Environment.

You'll notice if you fire up regedit and look at the above key that this key defines the value "JavaHome". Ah, wow, so now Java actually records different JAVA_HOME values for each version of the JRE. Now look at the value of JavaHome. You'll notice it points to your stand-alone JRE, not the JDK's JRE. So the solution is just to change the value to point at <JDK home>/jre.

Simple, eh? Now why isn't this documented anywhere?