Monday Links - Week 254

ZenPen

I really like this minimal browser based text editor. I wonder if something like this could be used to bridge the gap between a plain old textarea and a full on wysiwyg editor. — CR

GistBox

I’ve been using this on and off for a couple of weeks now. It’s an alternative interface to Github’s gists that supports labelling and searching. I’ve found the labelling particularly useful for grouping gists related to the same project together. — CR

Ruby Manor 4.0 videos

I haven’t had a chance to watch any of the videos, but this link is worthy of inclusion solely based on the effort Murray has put in to getting these videos edited and published! — JM

Bootstrap without all the debt

Bootstrap is a simple way to get a new website looking half-decent, but it can be difficult when you decide you want to move to something more sophisticated. This article explains how to use Bootstrap in a way that makes it easier to change to using your own custom CSS. — JM

Good Citizen

Imagine a software system where there is no need for you to spend your time programming defensively; your objects will be used responsibly, and your methods will always be passed sensible arguments. This low-friction utopia can be approached by establishing some simple programming rules so that every class acts as a ‘good citizen’ in the society of classes collaborating at runtime.

I found myself referring to this old article recently to explain why I’d prefer not to generate nil references in the first place rather than litter the code with if statements. — JM

The Zakim IRC Teleconference Agent

I’ve been really interested to hear Chris Lowis explaining how the W3C Audio Working Group remote meetings work. They use a combination of teleconferencing and this useful-sounding IRC-bot. I’m particularly intrigued by the mechanisms that the chairman can use to control the meeting and those that the scribe can use to aid minute taking. — JM