Those of you familiar with Imulus know we’ve been working on a Group Task Management application for sometime now. It’s called Stacks

We developed Stacks out of necessity. It was once an Excel spreadsheet three years ago. It has morphed into an online application which we can’t live without, so we’ve decided to put it out there for others to enjoy. In the last few weeks we’ve made great progress on getting the internal beta application ready for beta testers.

Our goal is to open it up for testing before the end of October, but that’s only if client work doesn’t seriously push us off course.

Over the next few weeks we’ll be rolling out screen captures and hints to Stack’s functionality. Please stay tuned or apply to become a beta tester!

Our “Process” is under attack; by us.

Recently, if you’ve bugged our office you’d be hearing the word “Process” tossed around with great frequency. This sounds ironic coming from a company which disdains corporate red-tape and culture. Yet I feel that Process has gotten a bad rap over the years. It’s been associated with words like ridged, out-dated, creativity-killer, soul-crusher… you get the point. In fact, I believe the opposite is true.

A great process is like having a common language between your entire team. Anyone new, coming into that team should be able to learn the language and immediately contribute. Similar to a language; processes need to be malleable and grow organically over the years. We’ve looked at ourselves in the mirror and determined that much of our success is dependent upon our chemistry and culture. While these things work well at first, they don’t allow your company to grow. They really fail once someone leaves either on vacation or permanently. Events like that will clearly cause havoc in a company which is glued together by chemistry.

Documenting Process allows us to quickly pick-up where another has left off. When a failure happens along the course of a project, it is the process that can be refined. Teams which clearly understand and execute an effective process will spend less time thinking about how to do something and more time can be dedicated to execution and creativity.

Here at Imulus we’re massive fans of jQuery. We use it on a lot of our projects. We’re also fans of TextMate, an awesome text editor produced by the folks at MacroMates. Over the last few years we’ve refined our TextMate bundles (code highlighting and language recognition packages) to work ideally within the Imulus process.

So, during my recent love affair with jQuery I’ve heavily relied on their documentation section to look up specific functions and commands. And while their documentation is awesome, it’s still a slow process. Luckily, an awesome guy named Karl Swedberg has put together a beautiful jQuery bundle for TextMate that has tons of snippets for common jQuery tasks. And, it’s free!

Installation

Head over to GitHub and grab the lastest version of the bundle. When you download it you’ll get a weird filename like this:

kswedberg-jquery-tmbundle-b0622e4f889112c37e03400a6a3e63241ab29c31.zip

Unzip the file and change the folder name (which is the same as above) to:

jquery.tmbundle

Open up TextMate and then double click the jQuery bundle file you’ve just created. Boom! The bundle is installed.

Making it work within HTML documents

By default the jQuery bundle is set to only work within .js files. However, if you’re planning on using it within HTML pages you’ll need to do another few steps of work. First, copy the following code to your clipboard:

{    name = 'source.js.jquery.embedded.html';
            begin = '(?:^\s+)?(<)((?i:script))\b(?![^>]*/>)';
            end = '(?<=</(script|SCRIPT))(>)(?:\s*\n)?';
            beginCaptures = {
                1 = { name = 'punctuation.definition.tag.html'; };
                2 = { name = 'entity.name.tag.script.html'; };
            };
            endCaptures = { 2 = { name = 'punctuation.definition.tag.html'; }; };
            patterns = (
                {    include = '#tag-stuff'; },
                {    begin = '(?<!</(?:script|SCRIPT))(>)';
                    end = '(</)((?i:script))';
                    captures = {
                        1 = { name = 'punctuation.definition.tag.html'; };
                        2 = { name = 'entity.name.tag.script.html'; };
                    };
                    patterns = (
                        {    name = 'comment.line.double-slash.js';
                            match = '(//).*?((?=</script)|$\n?)';
                            captures = { 1 = { name = 'punctuation.definition.comment.js'; }; };
                        },
                        {    name = 'comment.block.js';
                            begin = '/\*';
                            end = '\*/|(?=</script)';
                            captures = { 0 = { name = 'punctuation.definition.comment.js'; }; };
                        },
                        {    include = '#php'; },
                        {    include = 'source.js'; },
                    );
                },
            );
        },

Then open up the TextMate bundle editor and drop down the HTML arrow.

You should now see a huge list of snippets, commands, and preferences. Located in this list is an HTML language icon, it looks like this . Once this is selected you should see a large amount of code to the right. Past the above code directly in the following position after patterns = (

That’s it, you’re done. How you can access tons of jQuery snippets and code examples directly inside TextMate.

If Imulus were a person, what would its personality be?
They would be someone who constantly tries to excel and push to better themselves. A person who would be a professional but also not have a bug up their ass. They would be so excited about their work, they find it hard to fall asleep at times.

Star Wars or Star Trek?
During my childhood years, it was all about Wookies, lightsabers, and X-Wing fighters. At 5 years old, my Dad and I soldered LED’s all over my Millennium Falcon. Although, as I got into high school and my love for science grew, I started watching Star Trek:TNG and also got hooked on the movies with the original cast. It’s amazing my brain has enough room for programming languages, OOP concepts, and database schemas with all the obscure, nerdy knowledge in there. KAHHHNNNN!!!

What is your most embarrassing story?
Blowing myself up. During my early part of college, my friend and I were filming a scene for a computer game we were making. I had strapped a home-made black powder charge to my chest to simulate a gun shot. We had put a little too much powder in the charge and after depressing the button to ignite it, a fireball the size of a beach ball fired from my chest. I wasn’t on fire but I went against everything I was taught by running around, arms flailing, trying to find water to dump on me. After the fiasco was done, my chest and neck looked like they had a bad sun burn. Thankfully, my Mom was there to comfort the wounds and the ego. The most embarrassing part is the video still exists out there. Somewhere.

If money were no object, what would you do with your life?
I would try to build a house. I know a little bit about most aspects in house construction but it would be nice having the money and time to figure it all out. Another area I would like to dabble in is creating independent computer games. Like game development, I’m ecstatic to be in a field where so many talented people can come together to produce a product from the idea phase to seeing it fully functional on screen. Or I can combine the two and build an old school arcade cabinet and then sleep on a hammock at the beach all day long.

What do you do for fun?
Listen to dirty talk radio with my headphones on causing my co-workers to look at me weird as I’m laughing out loud. Recently, I have found a love for cooking. My wife helped me discover that the art of cooking is really the science of chemistry. Someday, during some free time, I need to watch the dozens of Good Eats episodes saved on my TiVo.

Favorite Programmer joke?
“Keyboard not found. Press ‘F1′ to RESUME.”

Bonus joke. Warning… its very dirty:
4920736177206d79206769726c667269656e6420666f6f6c696e672061726f756e6420776
9746820616e6f74686572206775792e204920616c6d6f73742066656c6c206f66662074
6865206c6164646572206a65726b696e67206f66662e

What does curiosity smell like?
Smells like victory. Humanity has grown because we are, by nature, curious. We have made some pretty amazing discoveries because we were curious. I feel curiosity is how we learn where we are, where we’re going, and why we’re here. Answering 2 out of the 3 is a good average.

What made you decide to co-found a company?
My father was a big entrepreneur and I inherited that particular gene. Since late high school, I’ve started three businesses. Third time is a charm. When you start a company, you have to know your weaknesses and you need people to complement your strengths. My two previous businesses did not have the diverse talent needed to be successful. Given the opportunity to work with two of the most talented and well-rounded people I’ve met was a no brainer.

In one word for each, describe the 3 owners.
I have one word for all three:
Passionatededicatedinspirational (that’s a word right? I’m using it in Scrabble.)

What are you afraid of?
I’m afraid of losing a finger. It’s a little selfish I know, but I feel my productivity would suffer dramatically. When I code, I use a lot of keyboard shortcuts and it is second nature for me to use all my fingers for production. It would take awhile to re-train my body and mind to get back to the speed before an accident like that. That is why I never go bowling; those ball returns are dangerous!

If there was one place in the world you could travel, where would it be?
Tokyo, Japan. I would love to learn Japanese and visit Tokyo one day. Being a huge gadget man, what better place to visit!? It’s a country I find amazing with its culture and society constantly trying to better themselves. It seems like a beautiful place where architecture blends both ancient and modern ideas.

If you could sit in a bathtub full of something, what would you chose?
I first thought a bathtub full of money, but I’m sure the Secret Service would arrest me for mutilation of national bank obligations. My second option would be a bathtub full of foam. I imagine I would feel like I was floating and that experience would be very relaxing. My bad attempt at weightlessness.

What is your favorite/least favorite part of your job?
The thing I most look forward to is coming to our building and working on cool applications formed from the heads of some very talented people. I love thinking of smart yet simple ways to solve problems. It gets my blood pumping to find a solution and to write an elegant, reusable method for a project. My least favorite part of the job is the random bug. No matter how hard you try to reproduce it, it never shows it’s ugly head until you’ve THOUGHT the bug was annihilated. Then, out of no where, the bug is glowing on the screen, laughing in your dumb face, mocking you the whole time.

What’s your favorite movie?
Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Great sci-fi story with, (back then), state-of-the-art effects. What more could you ask for!

If you were a font, what font would you be? (Yes, this one is for the designers entertainment only. I realize you hate me for this.)
Fixedsys: Simple, down to the point, old fashion, and even funny to some.

Over the past few months we’ve moved back and forth between Intense Debate and the default Wordpress comment system for Imulus Insights. Over this time period I’ve had the chance to get a bit more fully involved with Intense Debate’s foundation, plugin, and structure. This process has for the most part been a massive headache. However, I have to admit that if the service weren’t something we felt had potential we wouldn’t have stuck with it. I’m a fan of admitting when something isn’t a good fit and moving to find a different solution. In this case the benefits seemed worth it so we stuck with it and now Intense Debate is fully integrated and styled into our Wordpress install.

That said. I have some criticisms.

Let’s take a brief look at some of Intense Debate’s HTML:

Okay, I’m not going to spend too long on this as I think the image above illustrates pretty well why working with Intense Debate’s DOM structure is a nightmare. Still, I’ll talk about a few of my major annoyances.

Wrapper, wrapper, wrapper, small-wrapper, smaller-wrapper…

First, Intense Debate is filled to the brim with what seem to be uncessary divs, wrappers, classes, and ID’s. For the life of me I just can’t see why they would need five or six wrappers for specific elements. I just don’t think their users really need that much customization potential. If it was my call I would make the trade off between four wrappers with ID’s and Classes for a simpler system that’s easier to work with. Granted, maybe I can’t ajax in every element on-demand but at least the product would be easier to work with.

Names should be used to make things easier, not harder.

Second, the naming convention they use could be a lot more straight forward. Instead of:

#IDSubscribeToThisWrapper

perhaps stick to something a bit simpler:

#idc-subscribe

Document your DOM.

Third, provide better documentation for your developers. I spent a good chunk of time on the Intense Debate CSS documentaiton page, and while the page is a good start to documentaiton, it by no means has the depth of information that is required to “style” each indvidual element of Intense Debate. If you’re going to add ~200 classes and IDs to customize the applicaiton, at least document it so I can see what I’m working with.

I spent some time on the comment customization layout on the Intense Debate site — and while some of the options are nice, it’s not quite enough. For instance, Intense Debate allows you to link to your own CSS file for style customizations. However, they don’t offer any sort of example CSS file if you want to see how they did things to begin with. This… would be a nice thing to have. Granted I can work with a web inspector to see their styles, but it’d be much nicer to have a tangible CSS file that I could go thourgh.

My wish.

I recognize that some of the above criticisms are being done in order to provide their users with the most amount of customization possible. However, I feel that if customization is the end goal Intense Debate should take a different approach all together. Here’s what I suggest:

Give customers two choices.

1. The ability to use your generated HTML in a widget format (like currently exists)
2. A set of Wordpress template tags that can be used to run functions dynamically without generating the HTML

I would have a substantially reduced amount of criticism is I was able to use the Intense Debate service without having to deal with there ridiculously dirty HTML. Template Tags would allow me to pick and choose what portions of the service I want to incorporate, as well as the ability to style things exactly to my liking with my own HTML stucture. No more !important; declarations, no more individualized Intense Debate only stylesheet, just simple, clean, easy to use Wordpress template tags. This is how the majority of plugins currently work for Wordpress and I see no reason that Intense Debate can’t follow that method. And considering they’ve been purchased by Automattic I’m hoping this is in the works.

End Verdict

I have to admit that the comment traction gained from using Intense Debate is worth the sacrifice of dealing with it. However, I hope they realize they have a long way to go to make their service developer friendly.