position:fixed

Well well, I have learnt something new this morning. I think this new thing comes under the category of "how did I not already know this" but equally there is always the category of "kill IE6, please!".

I suspect that had IE6 dies off a good few years ago, I would already know this new technique as it is not supported in IE6. But I am very much of the opinion that we no longer need to support IE6 perfectly. I do not want to go into detail about browser support, I have spoken often enough about my thoughts on the matter.

So, onto the interesting part. Have you ever wanted to create a layout with an element which has a height of 100% minus some pixels? Or an equivalent for the width of an element? I know that I have on many occasions. Each time, I have had to either accept it cant be done or utilise some seemingly clever JavaScript to achieve my goal.

But, no more! position:fixed can now be our saviour. Picture the situation where you have a two column layout with your navigation in the left column and content in the right column. You want the left column to have a solid background colour and be 100% in height but leave a 50 pixel space at the top of the column. You might use the following markup:

<!DOCTYPE html>

<html>

<body>

<div id="LeftNavigation">

    <ul>

        ....a series of links

    </ul>

</div>

<div id="Content">

    ....some content

</div>

</body>

</html>

Now if you apply the following CSS:

#LeftNavigation {

    position:fixed;

    top:50px;

    bottom:0;

    background:#cccccc;

    overflow:scroll;

}

#Content {

    margin-left:310px;

}

You should see things exactly as I described above. The key styles are on the LeftNavigation DIV, the position, top and bottom styles. You should be aware that this is not supported in IE6 but I have found it works in all the browsers I have tried.

If this is also new to you, have a little play - it has certainly brightened my day!

Jamesnorton.com

I have launched my all new website at http://www.jamesnorton.com.

I wanted to get something out there to represent me and who I am and what I do, but the site is not complete. It will move forwards and change and be enhanced over time.

One thing you can all help me with is a potential Webkit bug particularly prevalent in Chrome but also an issue in Safari which I just cannot get to the bottom of. If you view the site in a Webkit browser and you get weird large white patches at the bottom of the screen, please do reply to this post with details of which browser you are using.

Otherwise, enjoy the site and feel free to provide any feedback you like.

Macro to micro blogging

You will obviously have noticed the quiet on this blog over the past 6 weeks.

Yes, its true, I have moved most of my activity onto Twitter now.

I have neglected my blog. I have found that I have a little less to say on here than I would like because I now only talk in units of 140 characters! I would encourage you to follow me on Twitter and that way you wont miss out!

I will endeavour to make more updates to my blog, but I will always keep updating Twitter...

Process

There is nothing like a discussion about process. Everyone has their own ideas, every company works differently.

I have recently taken a lot more interest in process. Last month I became a Certified Scrum Master and those who know me will know that I am a Scrum advocate. I think its a fantastic process. I have worked on a couple of projects that used Scrum and it has proven itself to be very successful.

Its a deceptively simple process which is far too often badly implemented. A poor implementation of Scrum is more damaging than not using Scrum in my experience.

I am not going to attempt to explain how Scrum works, I will leave that to the Wikipedia. Whilst not the best explanation, it will suffice. I personally enjoy using Scrum as it involves doing lots of small pieces of work which are well understood and can be fairly accurately estimated leading to reasonable expectations from clients and higher quality end product. I also believe that the speed with which issues can be surfaced is a massive benefit.

Doing Scrum badly will lead to more problems than if you were not doing Scrum at all. It is for this reason that most Scrum trainers will suggest that until you are experienced at using Scrum and implementing it well, you should follow the Scrum process pretty much to the letter.

A bad implementation of Scrum can force issues down and stop them being surfaced, can lead to inefficiencies as everyone attempts to work out what is going wrong and instead of opening up the process for all to see, it closes down the Scrum team and cloaks the detail in useless rhetoric.

I want to work on projects using Agile with Scrum. I do not want to be agile when I should be Agile nor vice-versa. I make a distinction between agile and Agile and its an important one.

When talking about agile with a lower case "a" I mean that I will show a more literal agility - responding to change, trying to prototype quickly and generally being flexible. This is great for a client but dangerous. Too much agility will lead to timelines slipping or the dreaded overtime!

Agile with a capital "A" on the other hand is a process and a set of techniques including but not limited to Scrum and XP. When I am being Agile, I will not respond to change in the same way, the person requesting the change has to follow a specific process, a simple process and one which is totally transparent. I have never heard a client complain about having to do that when the result turns out to be a better product. The process protects me and my Scrum team from being distracted, allowing quality to rise whilst also forcing the clients priorities to be my priorities.

From this realisation I have chosen to be Agile not agile.

JSquared 2.1

I am very pleased to announce that JSquared 2.1 has been released as of this morning.

Check out the website for yourself, follow the JSquared blog, download the code and read the docs.

Recent times

I am sure you will have noticed that posting has been light on here the last few weeks and I thought it might be interesting to talk a little about what I have been doing.

I have spent most of my spare time working on JSquared. The code base is coming on nicely now. I have completely re-written some parts of it even since the latest release and I am getting close to being code complete for the next version. Some more demos will come soon as well, but you can get more information on that over on the JSquared blog over the coming week or two.

Recently I have achieved the status of Certified Scrum Master. This is something about which I am very excited. I believe that Agile with Scrum is a fantastic engineering process. I have seen it in action myself whilst I worked at LBi and I am actively looking to assist Betfair in making the transition to this process. It can be painful and without doubt we are not yet getting it right, but with time, I am sure we will.

Now that I am officially certified, I feel more able to push things forward with Betfair and I have gained a great understanding of the process. I even think that I might bring some of the principles to my "normal" life, though I am not sure my wife will like a daily scrum meeting!

Hopefully I should be able to work on some more exciting things over the coming months than in the last few and I will be sure to blog about any and all the exciting happenings in the world of Betfair. For now, it seems I am far more an observer than participant in this great interface development world in which I live and work.

JSquared 2.0

For those of you that might have missed the news, I released JSquared 2.0 today, April 5 2009.

This version represents a massive step forwards for the library. There is a whole new website to go along with the massively revamped code base. The documentation has become much more extensive and the website now features demos of how some of the library works.

The best thing to do is to check out the website for yourself, follow the JSquared blog, download the code and read the docs.