Firefox4 on 64 bit Ubuntu

Now that Firefox 4 final is out, I wanted to switch to using it rather than version 3.x on my Ubuntu 10.10 systems. You can download a Linux version of Firefox 4.0 from the Mozilla site, but it's 32-bit only. While it will run, the problem I found is that all of my plugins (libflashplayer, etc) stopped working. The solution is to install the 64-bit build of Firefox 4, which is available on a launchpad PPA. Thus:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:mozillateam/firefox-stable 
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

That gave me a new, working FireFox 4.0. Most of my extensions worked OK, with the exception of del.icio.us (fix here), and All-in-one sidebar (now uninstalled). And, weirdly, the language packs aren't compatible between 3.x and 4.0, but I assume that will get sorted in time.

Quick tip: SHA1 or MD5 checksum strings in Java

In a recent project (OK, I was processing FOAF data), I needed to be able to generate the hex-encoded string of a SHA1 checksum. The built-in Java security classes can do the heavy-lifting, of generating the checksum itself, but they deliver the resulting checksum as a byte-array. I needed the string encoding of that array. There are various code-snippets around on the web to do that, by iterating over the byte array and incrementally building up the string in a buffer, but they look low-level and inelegant. The following is much neater (written for SHA1, but the method works for the other digest formats):

public String getEncodedSha1Sum( String key ) {
    try {
        MessageDigest md = MessageDigest.getInstance( "SHA1" );
        md.update( key.getBytes() );
        return new BigInteger( 1, md.digest() ).toString(16);
    }
    catch (NoSuchAlgorithmException e) {
        // handle error case to taste
    }
}

Kudos to Brian Gianforcaro on StackOverflow for the tip

Ruby, rvm and Eclipse

I've switched to using rvm for all of my ruby development. Rvm makes it trivial to have multiple copies of ruby installed side-by-side, while trying to do that using apt-get was proving a big headache. It has brought one minor gotcha though: rvm runs a script from the .bashrc or .bash_profile to set up the environment so that a current – default – version of ruby is always selected. If the .bashrc isn't run, no rvm and hence no ruby. I have my Linux desktop set up so that I have a quick-lauch button for Eclipse on the toolbar docked to the edge of my screen. Launching Eclipse from there doesn't invoke .bashrc for the containing shell, hence Eclipse wasn't seeing my installed rubies. I could point to the actual location of the ruby interpreters, but my applications weren't able to load any gems.

My solution was to force Eclipse to run in a shell which does load .bashrc. This is simply achieved by the -i and -c flags for /bin/bash: i to force an interactive shell (which loads .bashrc) and c to run a specific command (Eclipse in this case).

Maven, Eclipse and Tomcat: alternative to WTP

Despite some frustrations, I like using Maven in my Java projects for its dependency management and standardized project layouts. Since I develop in Eclipse primarily, I use the m2eclipse plugin to make Eclipse maven-aware. Which generally works well, except in the case of developing web applications. Eclipse's primary tool for managing web application development is the web tools project or WTP. WTP takes a fairly heavyweight approach to web apps; in particular it likes to copy the contents of a project into a special location (typically ${workspace}/.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.wst.server.core/tmp0) and use that as the web application context. It has to re-copy, including maven dependencies, when code is updated. Partly for this reason, and partly because WTP and m2eclipse don't always play nice, I've been looking at alternatives.

A colleague recommends the Sysdeo Tomcat plugin for Eclipse, which runs only Tomcat (fairly obviously), not the other app-containers that WTP supports, but does so in-place: there's no need for code to be copied to a temporary context. Although there's no Eclipse update URL, it's easy enough to install the plugin. The plugin provides a Tomcat extension DevLoader, which puts dependencies (including maven-managed dependencies) on the app's classpath without them needing to be in webapp/lib. To enable the DevLoader functionality with Tomcat version 6, I had to follow the instructions on this blog post to make a devloader.jar, rather than follow the instructions on the plugin website (which I suspect worked for older versions of Tomcat).

Design vs engineering: not an either-or

A serendipitous collision of two worlds through links passed via Twitter today. First, a nice rant from Andraz Tori from Zemanta: Do semantic web interfaces have to be ugly?. Tori bemoans semantic web applications that let their clever technological underpinnings and perfect abstractions hang out for all to admire, rather than focussing on helping the user to achieve their goals through superior user experience design. Well and good. Then I got linked to an article by Brian Zmijewski of Zurb: Fewer engineers please!. In this piece, Zmijewski argues that smaller project teams are better: if two pizzas can't feed the team then it's too big. In particular, the suggestion is that there should be fewer engineers messing up the user experience design (ok, I'm paraphasing a bit ... but only a bit). Separate from the main thesis (I'll come back to that), the most interesting part of the article is the furious reaction in the comments, mostly from engineers who claim that the only role of designers is to "pretty things up", presumably by picking exactly the right shade of pastel or something. Of course, if I can borrow an American phrase, that's a total crock. Designers do much more than that. But equally, engineers shouldn't be parodied as introverted inaesthetes either. Nobody wants to develop a poor product or let down customers and users. It's bad for business, but it's fundamentally unsatisfying to work on something that people don't like or won't buy.

What's most depressing to me is to hear from both sides "No, we solve problems - that's our training". And it's true, both engineering training and design training focusses on solving problems. Which is right? Well, it's not a zero-sum game, so both camps are correct – up to a point. What we need more of, in my view, is really thinking about the end-user. The design community have, traditionally, had a greater strength in this regard, but it's a teachable skill and it's a skill that should be shared and developed, not hoarded. Design thinking should not the sole purview of designers. Let's work together to build some non-ugly semantic web interfaces, and other great products.

Are small project teams better? It's axiomatic that adding more people that necessary just increases waste and delay, but arbitrary rules are silly. It depends what you're trying to achieve. Yes a small teams can do good work, but, for example, nearly two thousand two hundred people built the LHC. That would be a singularly big pizza.

In summary: fewer arbitrary rules and demarcations, more user-centred renaissance developers.

Skype and Ubuntu: lost notification sounds - solution

I use Skype for Linux very successfully on my 64bit Ubuntu 10.04 distribution – it's a great way to call in to the daily scrum at work, for example. Recently update-manager upgraded my Skype to version 2.1.0.81, at which point I stopped hearing notification sounds (e.g. the incoming-call notification, which is pretty handy!). I still got on-screen popup notifications where enabled, and I could still make calls and hear callers, but no notification sounds.

The solution was to go to the gnome-volume-control, and massively increase the slider for Alert volume slider. It had been at about 20%, it's now set at about 95%. However, I can once again hear skype notifications – at pretty much the same volume as before. So I don't know what's changed between gnome-volume-control and Skype: there may have been an update to the volume control that I didn't notice go by, or maybe this version of Skype is more sensitive to that setting. Still, at least that's one more annoyance is off the list.

A bit of gentle advice for student projects

Because my email address is attached to some the Jena source code, I quite often get direct email from students seeking help with projects. In general I don't mind this, though I'm sufficiently busy with actual work that I can't offer much direct support. My usual feedback is that most people need to get much clearer what they are actually to do. Often they come with very vague ideas:

I have to complete my project on ontology. Can you please help me to create a Jena interface?

Which gives pretty much nothing to go on. As a UI designer, you need some idea of who you are designing for, and what they care about. Here's my standard advice, which I've given out sufficiently often that it's worth repeating it in public so that I can just refer to it in future!

My core advice would be to get much clearer what you mean by "Jena interface" – (or however you've termed your project) without more context, I don't understand what that means, and I suspect you don't really understand it either.

So my suggestion is: consider a person using your interface when it's completed. Ask yourself some basic questions about them: are they beginners or experts? Are they a programmer, end-user, ontology designer, or what? What are the most important tasks do they need to do in order to succeed in their role? For example, an ontology designer might want to load an ontology file that someone else has created and add their own annotations to it, to fit their customers data needs. Or, a programmer might want to search for an ontology that would help them represent concepts about wildlife for a media catalogue program, so that users of the catalogue can tag consistently. By making this description as detailed as possible, you get a much clearer understanding of your users' needs.

Then ask yourself what are the three most important features of your interface that would make those users' jobs easier. Imagine them sending a twitter message: "Hey, this interface is really cool, it allows me to do X really well!" And that gives you the starting point for your design process.

By the way it doesn't matter if you are only doing this as a student project, not as a real product. Either find a group of real users to work with, or make up some users and jobs for them to do. That way, you'll end up with a more interesting interface, and it will make it much easier for you to write your end-of-project report!

And by the way, specific questions about Jena should be asked on the Jena support email list.