I have been fiddling around with Node lately, and I really, really like it. A lot. It is intended for building fast, scalable network applications and data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices, but it is also very handy for one-off scripting.
I have been working on our Open Mapping site for our open data and open source apps, and I wanted to do a fancy-pants parallax effect on the front page so the content eats the header and reveals the footer as you scroll. This turned out to be some straight-forward CSS and didn’t involve any JavaScript scrolling action.
Always remember, you’re special. Just like everybody else.
We GIS professionals are an insular group. That isn’t entirely our fault. When a lot of us started we were the only people in the organization working on Unix workstations. We programmed in bizarre languages like AML and Avenue. We had an enormous rack of books we referenced to make a map, and we thought that was OK. Spatial wasn’t special, but it was other, because it sucked really bad.
But it is mostly our fault. We don’t use weird hardware or odd programming languages any more, and if I’m presented with a solution that involves a bookshelf I immediately start looking for a different solution. But that sense of other still exists in the GIS community. Not only that, we tend to revel in it, like a dog rolling around on a dead thing. We have even invented certifications to separate ourselves from others via placard. When we were pounding away on Sun workstations and were generally a wart on IT’s ass, when we really were other, nobody saw a need for GIS certifications. Now that we are no longer so different, certs are a big deal (or at least a vocal minority wants them to be).
A short time ago (2013-07-09) I rolled out a new release of GeoPortal with vastly improved UI/UX and aesthetics.1
Whoa. Browser support for this is crap right now (current Firefox and IE releases are out), but…whoa. This could be incredibly handy down the road.
So I guess animated GIF’s are a thing again. I didn’t want to see that coming. But one handy thing you could do with them is make tiny help snippets for web apps.