Design Mockups, realtime, real easy

A few months ago, I introduced Balsamiq mockups into my project because using Excel spreadsheets to design my screens was just stupid. I couldn't really 'communicate' with the rest of the team in India.

I still remember the night when I pulled this out. I remember Amit from Intelligrape in India happily exclaimed, with hope in his timbre, "Oh Brent, this is going to be so much better for us. Thank you."

He was right. It has increased the team velocity tremendously. We are able to work through the screens in realtime over YuuGuu, drilling down to the finest points of the design.

Here are a couple of the screen shots. We even use it for some class diagrams and sequence diagrams.

in reference to: Balsamiq Mockups Home | Balsamiq (view on Google Sidewiki)

Getting a signed in user in Grails tests

I found this to be helpful. I just needed one more piece of information.

def subject = [
isAuthenticated: true,
principal: "admin"
] as Subject

SecurityUtils.metaClass.static.getSubject = {-> return subject }
Subject.metaClass.getPrincipal = {-> return "admin" }

This way, when I needed the user later on in the code, when I called getPrincipal, I got it. E.g.

JsecUser currentUser = JsecUser.findByUsername(SecurityUtils.getSubject()?.getPrincipal());

in reference to:

"void setUp() {       def subject = [           isAuthenticated: false,           ...       ] as Subject       SecurityUtils.metaClass.static.getSubject = {-> return subject }       ...   }"
- Nabble - grails - user - JSecurity-Plugin and Integration-Tests (view on Google Sidewiki)

Seems pretty cool.

I think I like this Side Wiki. Now, if it would only let me highlight stuff for context, etc, I would love that.

in reference to: Google Sidewiki (view on Google Sidewiki)