Give Me Your Code

I can understand that potential employers -or even clients- would like to have a look at what you have done in the past, beyond what is a visible presentation or application interface. Although in the past I haven't been asked for anything else than my portfolio and live URLS, I am willing to *show* some of my code (personal projects) during an interview, in case they need more convincing. However, during my current job search I have been asked to package and send real world samples (read: code I've wrote for my clients), without any guarantee that they would even call me.

"(...) just send us some code samples of work you have done for your previous clients or employers, and we'll determine if you are a good fit for the position".

There are several things wrong with this request. First of all, any work I perform on time paid for by a client is not mine to handle, even if I keep the source for future reference o requests by the client. I mean, if I was a hiring manager and some guys shows up with code samples that are confidential by definition, that'd be an instant red flag: how can you trust somebody that can easily do the same with the work you will be paying for?

Besides, I think during an interview you can really assess if somebody knows what he/she says to know. If a developer can describe in detail how something is done, showing pieces of code is kinda superfluous, don't you think?

To top it off, the message came from a not so corporate email account, which makes me think this is probably a scam of some sort.

So, I can't tell how *usual* are request of this kind, and am unsure of their legal implications. I'm pretty sure I only own the rights to what I've done on my own time, and that I could show (not send in a email) during an interview.

Towards Open Source Flash Development

If you haven't read Carlos Rovira's excellent article at on how to mount an open-source environment to develop Flash application, I strongly suggest you do. Beyond the process Carlos details and whether it is feasible for you to introduce it to your day to day work, it might open your eyes to what you may want Flash to be in the future.

Carlos Rovira is an spanish developer who is focused on enterprise level applications, and has been writing on Flash and Flex for some time now on his personal weblog (Spanish). In English, he has been writing articles for Flashweek (Actionscript.com).

Powered by Detroit Around the Corner

The Powered by Detroit conference is only two weeks away. If you haven't registered yet, follow this link for an additional discount on the conference pass, which also includes a cupon for a $100 discount on Macromedia Certification Exams.

Picture of Monkey Surfing

When reviewing and cleaning my search logs I always find interesting stuff. First of all, most of the entries are from people that once were looking for software cracks, serial numbers, and all that kind of stuff, and their queries were cached by search engines. Once those are out, the rest are legitimate searches, so I don't know why do people expect to find here a "picture of a monkey surfing"? But, so your search yields a result, here it is, a picture of a monkey surfing.

So, does anyone care to share what odd search entries have you found on your own blogs or websites?

Netscape Unveils New Web Browser

I just finished installing the beta version of the Netscape 8.0 web browser, and it looks pretty cool. During installation, I was able to import not only bookmarks, but my browser history, preferences, passwords, etc., from any of the other browsers I have installed in my workstation. It also comes with a little weather gadget and ready for RSS feeds, but according to this ZDNet report, security has been one of main focus of this release.

Quick Tip for Flash on Firefox (Revisited)

Yesterday, I was saying there was a simple solution to overcome an apparently simple issue ocurring on Firefox, when attempting to make a Flash movie strecht its height to the available space in the browser window, using the height parameter of the object and/or embed tags. I offered a CSS solution, but, as noted by Brajeshwar, I took for granted the understanding of the trick, and failed to explain that there's more to it than just throwing in the hack.

First of all, Firefox is most respectful of standards, and will take seriously whatever doctype you declare on your HTML document. As a matter of fact, if you are using the page to ONLY contain a SWF file, you could just not declare a doctype and avoid the problem altogether. However, not declaring a doctype means that the browser will render your HTML in a 'pre-standards' way, which might not be what we need either, especially if the HTML document contains more than just the SWF file; this is where my proposed workaround enters the stage.

body, html {
height: 100%;
overflow: hidden;
}

Here we are forcing the recognition of height (or rather a percentual height) as a valid attribute of the body and html tags, thus granting them access to all the vertical space available in the browser window, without affecting anything else determined by the doctype in place. Now, I accept is not pretty, however, I think it is not a crime to bend the strictness of the standard whe it doesn't kill anybody, just know what you are doing.

Thanks to Brajeshwar for reminding me of my responsibilities as a community blogger.