.vbs or .js is what you want. They run from cscript.exe in the shell. wscript in the GUI.
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/d....mspx?mfr=true

http://www.naterice.com/articles/51

I'm with everyone else, there has to be a better/easier language than batch scripting. Beyond what has already been mentioned, you can always get crazy and install python or get butterflies to do the work for you.

I don't know what I think of this mock-up webpage:

That's pretty cool, but it doesn't work without noScript on.

Just stay away from comic-sans..

Green + yellow looks a bit glary, if you toned the yellow to something softer it'd probably look pretty cool actually.

Pretty sure it will be possible but you need to spend time to set it up....

Might need two files according to http://www.dostips.com/DtTipsFtpBatchScript.php
but def seems possible

I only use that font in Notepad++. I do want to attempt kind-of-sort-of handwriting @font.

Okay. I'll try some other colors, like light brown or something.

I hate using Gimp so much. Those illustrations took way longer than they should have. I use illustrator at work, and I hate that too. Something about using computers to make 'art' is off-putting to me.

If you liked the Netscape documentary you might like these:

http://www.bloomberg.com/video/game-changers

They don't go into that much depth but they are a good watch.

I've watched the ones from Google, Twitter, Facebook, Netflix, Steve Jobs and the dude from Virgin Records.

Thanks for links shoe will check them out

Does anyone have any examples of software that have really nice looking/functioning welcome screens?

I know people legitimately can dislike them, but we have a legitimate need for it (a lot of our users download from external sites and a blank grey box is very uninviting and intimidating, also since we introduced it a lot of users say they actually like it a lot).

It's really difficult to design, and I'd love to see examples of what people think are good splash/welcome screens in software.

Please add a "stop showing me this" option. That's what I want to see when I see a splash screen.

Of/c!

Yeah. That's literally all I want to see.

I have a Pylons app that allows the user to perform a few operations that take a long time (a few seconds to a few minute) to complete. What I do is have the app poll the server at regular intervals to get the current state of the operation (or the results if done). There are a number of possible end states from the operation that influence what the web app does.

Right now its a pain in the ass to test the front-end code of displaying the results since it can take a few minutes to get there.

I'd like to set up a dummy backend that returns static json that I can use when working on the front end code.

Any ideas on how best to do this?

For things like that I just create a bunch of temporary files (or a single file that serves different output based on query string), these are all your test cases and you can just request them like that locally.

Another way that works well is have every request go through a function, the function in dev mode can route it to the local page, or the live server. This way it's easy and you can be 100% sure that all requests are routing correctly.

Is that what you mean?

Yeah, that's exactly what I mean.

I was thinking about having shadow controllers on the server for all of my ajax calls and then just have a js function that routes either to the test or real controllers based on a js variable (which I could set through a config value).

It just seemed a little hacky and I was wondering if people had come up with something nicer than this. I'm sharing this code with two other people (and ideally more in the near future) so I'd like something that grows relatively easily.

I wrote an ASP.net wrapper for a forum API to bring two membership systems together, and every HTTP request was routed through this function:

This makes it super easy to switch from live to dev environments, the Settings.ForumAPILocation is a constant that differs in each environment and routes the request to the correct location.

On the dev server the requestURL file can simple response.write any output you want. It's pretty flexible and safe imo. There might be a better way of doing it though, idk.

Here's my current idea:

* Add a record mode property (and recording name)
* Add a function to the Base Controller that checks if that property is set.
** If it is set I'll hash the request url and parameters together and store the record name, hash, and json response.

* Add a playback mode property (and recording name)
* Add a function to the Base Controller that checks if that property is set
** If it is set I'll hash the request url and parameters together and check for a stored response for that name and hash. If no response stored I'll use the real controller method.

I think this should work well and should be fairly easy to use. Thoughts?

Not quite as interesting as the current discussion, but yes, I think this looks way better than yellow and green:



The new colors were painful to work with. Finding a color that works for the links was nearly impossible, and the only way it works is with text-shadow. I painted myself into an ugly corner with this one, but oh well.

I also changed the ink drops by erasing the second shine. I like that better.

has anyone read The Art of Computer Programming by Knuth? Thoughts?

everyone in _coders at work_ says they have it on a bookshelf but few say they've actually read it. afaict, it's sort of a _remembrance of things past_ for software. i hope to read it someday.

that seems like an apt comparison. i was pretty blown away by this quote on knuth's website:

"I retired early because I realized that I would need about 20 years of full-time work to complete The Art of Computer Programming (TAOCP), which I have always viewed as the most important project of my life."

i mean, wtf? that is the kind of thing a hugely ambitious novelist or artist will think. i have never heard of someone say something like that about a technical work. also, he decided to completely cut himself from email so he could focus:

"I have been a happy man ever since January 1, 1990, when I no longer had an email address. I'd used email since about 1975, and it seems to me that 15 years of email is plenty for one lifetime.

Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration. I try to learn certain areas of computer science exhaustively; then I try to digest that knowledge into a form that is accessible to people who don't have time for such study."

The whole thing seems pretty badass and makes we want to read it.

depends what you like to do on vacations, but i would buy the TAOCP and read it on a beach one book at a time. you can skip large portions of it if it's getting a little terse, or just put it away for hours/days and pick it back up.

unfortunately, i don't take those kinds of vacations anymore.

Been away for a while... too long infact.... but now im back!

Oh... also, just moved to Vancouver from London

Nice, what's Vancouver like? Why did you move? I also want to leave London at some point.