Nathaner dot com

Came across this while working on a web app with virtually no room on the 0 z-index for input to pop out, so I decided to make my own input box out of a div and some CSS.

Example:

Here is the DIV with all the form particulars in it:

And here is the CSS to make it work. margin-left and margin-top should equal a negative value that’s half the respective width & height of the div (400 x 400 -> -200 x -200). Also, this div needs to be on it’s own z-index layer to center correctly:

Using JavaScript, you can switch between showing and hiding this addon by changing the CSS style from hidden to visible and back and forth.

A few weeks ago I had the good fortune of getting a notification from Google that I’d been invited to test out their newest product Wave.  Since my gMail account isn’t old enough to walk yet though, I got in through a ‘nomination’ through a friend that was invited directly by google.  At the time of this writing, so called 2nd degree users don’t appear to get any invites of their own, so yes, there goes the majority of my readership looking elsewhere.  Anyways, for those of you not yet invited but still interested in The Future ©, my review follows.

The first day on was a bit of a ghost town.  I found myself reaching out to all the other established social networks in a desperate plea for company.  By default Wave will import any of your gMail contacts that have also been invited to join Wave.  Beyond that you’re on your own so far in finding each other.  A particulary interesting part is that Wave doesn’t yet detect properly who in your contacts list are Available, Busy, etc.  Wave can be used statically or collaboratively, but the innovation shines in live mode.

Day two I found more of the people that I know could pass a Turing test and the innovation to Wave started to come to life.  You can effectively instant message as you type in real time and respond before your other contacts are finished.  This is equally awesome and annoying because if there’s any attempt at  a large scale transfer of knowledge between multiple parties, the moving, flickering cursor or your peers typing is enough to consider giving an edge back to all those rounded CSS corners you’ve been making for years so you can cut someone it’s so distracting!  That aside, idle banter makes it perfectly suitable for the job.

Adding your contacts to a new wave is an entirely different story.  Currently there is no moderation system in place so anyone can add anyone else to anything.  This makes you begin to consider the brighter side of being a leper, though Google has already stated that it has a moderation system in plan waiting to be implemented.  For now though, it only takes one socially inept social media expert adding you to everything he’s been added to like “OMG Teh Best Thread Evur!  Post Some Cats!” because exponential growth isn’t the shit black holes are made of or anything before you realize there isn’t a very clear mute button to be found.

Your choices are “Archive” & “Spam.”  At first I chose archive because I like the guy alright I didn’t want to label him as a spammer, though the line being danced certainly doesn’t have any Zeros or F’s in it.  Once that didn’t work and it only popped back into my inbox every time someone else celebrated caturday, the evil side of me took over and I decided that two wrongs DO in fact make a right.  With the aforementioned lack of moderation you are also able to ‘collaborate’ or in a more widely known term ‘change everyone else’s posts to HAHA, DISREGARD THAT I SUCK COCKS and/or delete the contents of the wave entirely.’  Being a fair man I did both.

Once I was done having fun in this brave new world and it was time to actually test the usability of Wave, I had to find a use for it.  The majority of users I’ve seen have been playing with it as a threaded chat platform which on the whole gives it a bad rap.  The interface while gorgeous takes some getting used to.  It’s meant to look like an old fashioned desktop GUI but you can’t just drag the panes around all willy nilly.  They can be minimized, restored, or maximized so long as YOU PUT THEM WHERE THE GOOGLE TELLS YOU TO PUT THEM.  Reading chaotic multi-level chats gets much easier once you maximize the far right pane containing the wave which by default takes up only about 1/3 of the screen.  The playback feature is utter crap right now, so don’t bother using it unless you accidentally deleted something and needed to restore it by hand.

With all this gloom and doom you would think why am I even still using this application?  The truth is there is one thing right now that it does better than any other, even Google Docs.  And that is collaborating on various things where you can, with the help of plugins do video embeds, use voice and video conference, and even easily load up media attachments (though browser support is still hit & miss.)  For all of the internets’ successes one of it’s biggest downfalls is that it always compromised either throughput or richness of dialog with past attempts.  Wave seems poised to put that trick on its ear soon if those famously obsessive Google developers stick to the script.

Last weekend I completed my first ever 100 shirt run for Hackers on a Plane.  Being such a large step up, there were some mistakes that happened I wasn’t satisfied with, but running so close to the deadline I had to just keep chugging.  I’d like to thank Nick Farr of HACDC for taking a chance on me, and hopefully I’ll get to make better, more well-printed shirts and the like in the future.

In the next month or so, I will be planning a screen printing class at Pumping Station: One that we will announce closer to when we get the date set, so if you’re interested in doing stuff like this, keep your eyes peeled.

I’ll be at the University of Illinois Chicago this weekend for BARcamp Chicago along with other Pumping Station: One members.  I’m promised it will be a weekend of fun and free (as in beer).  PS:One will be sponsoring the event by having a computerized talk schedule set up outside each room.  I was up late last night plastering screenprints of our logo onto the old beige boxes.  There have been some problems getting screens to burn correctly as of late, so they didn’t turn out as well as I’d like, but good enough.