Posts

Showing posts with the label javascript

Using the Excel Sunburst Chart for Visualizations

Image
Though not a new concept, Office 365 (Excel 2016) has a Sunburst Chart type (a.k.a. Multi-level Pie or Donut Chart) that is very handy for presenting hierarchies. Here are some ideas to consider: A series of project portfolios: A phone "wheel" like a phone tree (recently used this idea myself): There is more sophisticated color formatting available in a variety of JavaScript libraries such as FusionCharts and HighCharts , but having the chart type in Excel makes it very approachable for those wanting an ad hoc visualization that doesn't require any programming.
Read more

Phaser for HTML5 Game Development

Image
Just starting on an adventure in HTML5 game development using Phaser and thought I'd keep notes online. There's a bigger picture application goal that I have in mind, but it will start as a series of exercises and I want to record them while I'm learning. First I wanted to create an example of a polygon moving around the screen using the cursor keys. After some exploration of the examples and reading documentation it boiled down to this basic example. First the index.html file: 1: <!doctype html> 2: <html lang="en"> 3: <head> 4: <meta charset="UTF-8" /> 5: <title>Polygon Test</title> 6: <script src="js/phaser.js"></script> 7: <script src="js/polytest.js"></script> 8: </head> 9: <body> 10: <div id="phaser_game"> 11: </div> 12: <script type="text/javascript"...
Read more

Managing Programming Projects: Don't Lose Sight of Reality

If you're a project manager who came from a programming background it's amazingly helpful to dig back down into code for a day just to remind yourself of how the process really works. Regardless of the approach to project management (Agile, Waterfall, etc.), at the most basic level the development process remains an exercise in code / test / repeat. It's a very satisfying exercise, but it makes you appreciate that there is a lot of detail behind each feature or requirement. It's my belief that the greatest productivity gain for programmers individually is to have as rapid a code / test loop as possible. This is one of the biggest advantages of interpreted script languages (e.g. JavaScript) over compiled languages. There are obvious productivity benefits to being able to see your work quickly and there are psychological/motivation benefits as well.
Read more