In order to lower friction and the hurdles to pass, users need to be provided with a reason to trust you with the information they supply. The time and effort required to complete a form should be appropriate for the task at hand. A constant battle between the reward for completing an action and the effort it takes to complete it, is at play at all times.

Easily show multiple, overlapping events across calendar days and rows.

RESTClient is a Java application to test RESTful webservices. It can be used to test variety of HTTP communications.

jsPDF is an open-source library for generating PDF documents using nothing but Javascript. You can use it in a Firefox extension, in Server Side Javascript and with Data URIs in some browsers.

This isn't about commercial software vs. Open Source software. It's about assessing your real needs and understanding the cost-benefit balance before making significant financial decisions. Don't try to dust your crops with a Blackbird. All you will do is crash. Manage the growth of your company intelligently, and before you know it you'll be getting invitations to play golf with the big boys.

So here’s an overview of how things are going to work in Rails 3.

Large scale server deploys using BitTorrent and the BitTornado library.

So you downloaded inaction_mailer, and you had a folder full of e-mails generated while writing your app?

An ActionMailer delivery method to save mails as files in a directory.

Helium accepts a list of URLs for different sections of a site then loads and parses each page to build up a list of all

FreeMind is a premier free mind-mapping (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map) software written in Java.

A global h2 style probably isn’t going to last more than a month before everyone starts changing it inline or by id. This means that global styles end up getting in the way 8 months down the line.

Fuck acronyms, really

Lots of hidden costs.

sing Google’s JavaScript Library CDN comes with a 1/3 of a second tax on missing. (Note that a tax like this applies to opening connections to a any new host: JavaScript Library CDNs, advertisers, analytics and visitor tracking, etc. This is why you should try to reduce the number of different hostnames you serve content from.)

I am sick of hearing people say, “Oh, I love your code, I wish I could do that.” You can. The only reason you can’t is because you don’t practice enough.

Generate syntax-highlighted slides from Markdown

This means Basecamp migrated from the first Rails release up to the edge one. So how come people say so frequently how hard is to update their applications from Rails 2.1 to Rails 2.2? And the answer is simple: plugins.

Rails 2.3 has a ton of really nice functionality locked up in monolithic components. I’ve posted quite a bit about how we’ve opened up a lot of that functionality in ActionPack, making it easier to reuse the router, dispatcher, and individual parts of ActionController. ActiveModel is another way we’ve exposed useful functionality to you in Rails 3.

Joe Programmer: That guy is such an asshole.