One of the steps I’ve been dreading on the current job is the documentation aspect. Documentation is a pain in my arse. Not only do I need to generate in-line documentation, but customers usually want a printable book that they can keep at their desk too. So I end up writing the manual twice — once in HTML, and again in a PDF using my favorite program for Mac, OmniGraffle.

That’s changed. I downloaded the ScreenSteps demo a few weeks ago, but like I usually do with documentation, put off actually trying it. I ran into an issue today with a complicated process that I wanted a user to test… she couldn’t get it with me explaining it over the phone or in text. I whipped out the demo I downloaded several weeks ago, spent about five minutes using it to take screenshots and typing explanations with circles and numbers, and then dumped it to a PDF and attached it to an email. She got the concepts and blasted through the test in one go. If I had one of those Staples buttons, I’d slap it right now — “That was easy!”

Unlike most of my favorite programs, this one isn’t Mac-only. It’s offered in both Windows and Mac versions, and both are kept up to date and seem to be released simultaneously.

I haven’t yet used it to create larger help files, and I haven’t explored the Screen Steps Live or Blog/Web export modes yet. I’ll probably revisit things in a month when this project wraps up and we move on to the next one.

Now: Three things I’d really like to see would be Windows CHM files, a way to draw and to call attention to where a user should click (such as an image of a mouse pointer with a bull’s eye) and some way to create programmer documentation (like PHPDoc imports or being able to import a MySQL table structure). Maybe also the ability to attach other files to it (media files, flash files, or .sql files…) But that’s kind of a wet dream. It’s an excellent tool as it is and trying to cast too broad a net would probably reduce the wonderful simplicity of the interface.

So, you upgraded to 2.5 a few days ago, and you’re using the Default theme until you have time to customize another one. And you got rid of the old Statspress plugin because after you started getting over 10,000 pageviews a month, your database got kinda full and rather slow. So for stats, you try the WordPress.com Stats plugin. And you see you’re getting one, maybe two, maybe three hits a day. Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot?

Turns out that the WordPress.com stats plugin registers pages that call the wp_footer() function. So if you don’t call wp_footer in your code, it’s not going to work. The function that the 2.5 default templates use is get_footer(). If you go into plugins, stats, and edit the only mention of wp_footer to get_footer, you’ll suddenly see hits start appearing. Or, just go to all your pages that you want to collect stats from, and add a call to the wp_footer() function before the get_footer() call.

Note: The wp_footer function either doesn’t get called, or the code won’t be placed in there if you’re logged in to your blog at the moment. It will only display for people who aren’t logged in.

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I have yet to play all three races, but the special abilities seem to be similar for all of them. From all sides, it’s fairly well balanced. The ships are inexpensive, durable, and yet dish out a lot of damage — especially late game. You want to get the ability to put fighter installations in at your earliest opportunity. You also really, really need to get as many crystal mines as you can at your first opportunity. Don’t think that sealing your borders will work. It’s quite possible to enter a system, cut across it, and jump out with a flotilla of smaller craft.

The research tree is *not* very deep. It’s innovative, just not deep. I realize that I’m more of a galciv2 audience as opposed to the quick smash-and-grab audience that SoaSE is made for, but I would like to see research trees in games that are too deep to actually finish out — you need to focus on doing one thing and get good at it, a’la Eve-online.

One of the neat features is that you can pay pirates to pay a visit to your enemy’s empire and attack one of their systems. They’ll bomb the planet that’s closest to their hangout. You’ll need a pretty beefy fleet to survive them, especially late game. Even on ‘easy’, the AI players are pretty sneaky about trying to outbid you.

Haven’t played online yet. I’ll append to this review after I do.

Summary: Good game if you like smash-and-bash strategy/tactics games. Not the top of the mark on beauty, depth, creativity, or any other place, but the whole is well-executed. If you liked Starcraft, you’ll play the hell out of SoaSE.

Just as an example — last year my taxes took a weekend, with the help (or lack thereof) of quickbooks. This past year, with Freshbooks, I had the numbers i needed in my hands in about thirty seconds.

The toy is durable even for my Kong-destroying power chewer, but she DOES need to be monitored with it or she would’ve completely removed the feet and gutted the squeaker by now. I’ve found that playing with it is a good way to train her that not all toys are to be destroyed; after she plays with it she’s a little more careful to actually lick and gnaw rawhide (as opposed to crunch and eat)… I stop her if she’s trying specifically for the feet or squeaker.

This toy gets a big waggly tail as opposed to just about everything else we’ve tried, which has mostly ended up with four paws in the air!

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Coda is Panic’s latest application, and is a text editor aimed at making web development easier. I have been a vim user for ages, but in a terminal window — I don’t like VIM’s gui for whatever reason. I’ve tried Dreamweaver, gVim, BBedit, TextMate, … just about everything under the sun, but I still keep coming back to vim. Coda has some improvements on all of these, but also some things that annoy the everloving heck out of me.

First off, the code completion is set to automatic all the time. That’s fine by me when I’m coding — but when I’m writing comments or documentation inside my PHP files, I’d like the autocomplete to stop. I had to switch the mode in preferences so that I’d hit f5 or esc to cue the autocompleter. This is a stupidly simple feature and I’m surprised that Panic, well known for promoting ease of use and fine-tuning the tiniest things about their interface, couldn’t see that this is annoying as all hell.

Second, Coda doesn’t take into account that a lot of web developers these days use source code management like subversion. Without the ability to integrate with subversion, the whole change management and upload thing is of limited functionality. I don’t *use* FTP.

The sharing feature is kind of a cool concept, but I didn’t really get to check it out… it would’ve been nice in the last office I was in where I was working with other developers on a site.

With the heavy framework-based development that I do, it would be nice if Coda had something akin to TextMate’s pluggable modules. I had a Symfony module that worked great, and I’ve written an autocomplete file for Zend for vim. But I can’t find a place to define additional words for the autocomplete functionality in Coda.

I wish I could find something positive to say about Coda besides “It’s a good website editor”, but I can’t really find anything that’s exceptional or unusual about it that I would use. Which frustrates me, because I love Panic and want to say great things about their products. Coda just doesn’t address the advanced needs of a developer who’s doing modern, industrial-strength PHP development… you’re going to need Vim with some customizations or TextMate for those features.

Jumpchart is basically a web mockup program for the web. It allows you to “wireframe” a website out in a quick and easy format using structural Textile elements — just like you would in a Wiki. You can work on the pages with multiple people and see how the navigation of the site flows. The best part is that you can then output the site in structural HTML, hit it with your custom stylesheets, and pretty much have a complete website.

It’s a great idea. But if I can only create 10 pages in the free version (when a typical webapp for me is at least 20-30 page), and I’d need to pay at least $25 a month — a lot for a small web app designer — for 100 pages, I’ll just keep using OmniGraffle, Google Docs, and email. My layouts are too complex and interactive to be mocked up in such a simple format. This would work great for people who are doing brochureware sites, but I wouldn’t recommend it for anyone who’s doing interactive stuff.

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