Now with that said I can get on with the review. I first looked into the service last spring when I wanted to watch the Flames 09 playoff run. It’s a good thing I didn’t purchase it then because that run didn’t last too long. At the start of this season I looked into it again and hesitated for the first few games of the season. The $160 price tag was a little hard to swallow, but when you break it down to $20/month the price doesn’t seem near as bad.

I’ve now been using the service for almost 2 months. I’ve watched almost every Flames game this year along with other games along with many frantic OT periods and shootouts. Here’s what I like so far:

• The video quality: this seems to vary depending on the source feed but overall it’s awesome. Especially the Hockey Night in Canada feeds. Even at the 800kbps feed the game looks great at full screen on my 24″ iMac.
• Top Scoreboard: keeping tabs on all the other games currently being played is easy with the top scoreboard. It’s also a nice touch how the games ending soon or in OT are highlighted in red. I’ve used this many times to quickly switch to a 3-2 game ending in a couple minutes. That’s good hockey right there.
• Game Archives: the amount of games currently archived is crazy. I can go back and watch all the Flames vs Oilers games from the last couple of seasons or watch the Pens / Caps playoff series from least year whenever I want. Finding a game to watch is really easy sorting first by season, then team and the date.
• Multiple Feed Speeds: my current home internet connection is 1Mbps. So I’m unable to use the highest quality feed of 1.6Mbps. I use the 800Kbps most of the time but have also used the 400Kbps option when watching on a laptop from somewhere in my house with a weak wi-fi signal.
• Watching Coaches Corner: when I first started watching intermissions and commercial breaks were blocked but this doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. Thank you NHL as this was quite frustrating. Watching Don Cherry again from Costa Rica is awesome.
• Widgets: the widgets are awesome. If I jumped into a game part way through I can easily find out who has scored, and where on the ice they scored from while still watching the game.
• Time Line Bookmarks although I haven’t used this feature very much I really like the idea. When watching on archived game the time line has a series of colored dots depicting different highlights in the game. Clicking on one quickly takes you to watch that point of the game.

That’s a pretty big list but no software is without it’s flaws.

• Adaptive Feed Speed: the idea of an adaptive feed speed is great. But when I select the option it says I need to install the NeuLion plugin. Great, have a link for me? This should be a more integrated experience.
• Full Screen Widgets: in order to check the stats I have to exit full screen, thus minimizing viewing area, to see the stats. There should be a way to view the stats while in full screen. That being said, I wouldn’t want any more buttons while in full screen.
• Live Video Controls: while watching a live game, which I do most often, you cannot use the rewind, fast forward or restart video controls. That’s fine, just don’t leave them there for me to click. I think these also may need the NeuLion plugin that I have yet to install.
• Remember Me: when logging in to NHL Gamecenter there is a remember me check box just like many other web apps. Unfortunately, this one does not work and I have to login every single time.
• Doesn’t Always Use Best Source Feed: I’ve noticed on at least one occasion that Gamecenter did not use the best source video available. For a Flames / Wings game at the beginning of the season the NHL decided to use a standard def grainy feed from detroit instead of the higher quality high def CBC Hockey Night in Canada feed.

Overall I really love NHL Gamecenter and do not regret my purchase. I’ve even considered upgrading my internet to accommodate the highest 1.6Mbps video feed. The service is so good I may consider buying it when I move back to Canada although I’m not sure how the blackout restrictions will affect me. So if you’re like me, living in a foreign country and need your hockey fix, look no further than NHL Gamecenter.

Don’t over use negative margins

Yes there is a time and place for negative margins. But if your find yourself using these on a daily basis then there’s probably and easier and better way to fix what you’re doing. Most likely a padding or margin on a parent element that can be adjusted. Use the box model properly, it makes debugging and editing the css later on much easier.

Don’t position every element

When trying to make a design pixel perfect I’ve seen developers relatively position every paragraph, link and heading in a div and change their top and left properties to line up with the flats. Not only is this a bad practice it is actually more work and causes more cross browser problems than adjusting padding and margins properly. Once again, the box model is your friend.

Don’t float every element

As with the positioning statement there’s rarely a time when floating every element is needed. Float only what’s needed and never declare a float globally. Ex:

#content div { float: left; }

This may be a quick fix when first starting a layout but what if you have other divs inside your #content that are not supposed to be floated. You’ll end up adding float:none for every div that shouldn’t be floated. The css above is also the perfect recipe for the IE6 double margin bug.

Don’t use !important

If you’re using !important it’s usually because something else is wrong in your code and you’re not using the cascade properly. Remember that !important is also inherited so in order to override an !important value you’ll need to use another !important! So the next time you go to add !important to your css take a good look at your parent elements and fix your code properly.

Group your css properly

The most common reason people use !important is because their cascade isn’t working properly and they need to overwrite a value. By keeping your CSS organized properly and keeping the cascade in mind when writing your code you’ll soon be writing better code, faster and easier. The basics of keeping your css organized are to declare global elements at the top and then getting more and more specific further down your css. This is not a small concept and definitely deserves it’s own blog post.

1. Edit httpd.conf

   This file is found in C:\wamp\bin\apache\Apache2.2.11\conf. Uncomment this line will include the apache virtual hosts setup file.

   Include conf/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

   Search for <Directory /> in the httpd.conf file. The “default” settings here are really restricted so for a local dev setup you can change them to:

   
   <Directory />
    Options FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride None
    Order deny,allow
    Allow from all
</Directory>

   Security note: now doing this will open up your local server to be seen by everyone. This means that everyone in you office can ping your machine (good for testing). This also means if you’re a one man show or contract plugged directly into your modem (do people still do this) you’re opening your localhost via port 80 to the world.

2. Edit httpd-vhosts.conf

   This file is found in C:\wamp\bin\apache\Apache2.2.11\conf\extra. Remove the example <VirtualHost> entries and add the following for each project.

   <VirtualHost *:80>
    DocumentRoot "C:\ProjectPath\"
    ServerName ProjectName
    ErrorLog "logs/ProjectName-error.log"
    CustomLog "logs/ProjectName-access.log" common
</VirtualHost>

   In the above example DocumentRoot is the path to the root of your project, usually where the index file is. ServerName is what you’ll type in your browser to access the project. If you set this to “myProject” you’d access in the browser by visiting http://myProject. ErrorLog & CustomLog are the error logs for each project, if you don’t include these lines all errors will be logged to the regular localhost error logs. I don’t use these often but keep them just in case.

3. Edit hosts

   Your hosts file is found in C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc. For each project you added in step 2 add the following entry in to the hosts file where ProjectName is the same as the ServerName variable you set in the httpd-vhosts.conf file. This tells the browsers on your system to pass all calls from http://ProjectName to your localhost.

   127.0.0.1    ProjectName

4. All Done

   Make sure all your files are saved, restart WAMP and test. That’s it! When ever you want to add another project just start at step 2. Once you get used to the process you’ll be setting up a new project on your local dev environment in less than a minute.

My goal for this blog is for it to become a mind dump for all my fellow devs at The Hangar Interactive and Critical Mass. For anyone else who stumbles upon the blog, the more the merrier. The more people I can get following web development best practices the better as it just makes my job easier. I’m also hoping that the blogging will help me become a better writer so I can quickly and clearly get the thoughts out of my head.

A few things to note about this blog:

It’s built on HTML 5!
This is my first attempt at using HTML 5 and I’m sure I’ve got a few aspects wrong but I’m excited to be learning this new
standard which I think we’ll be seeing much more of very soon.

No IE6 support.
Given the audience I hope to attract here I shouldn’t be seeing IE6 users. In fact I haven’t even opened the site in IE at all yet! Cutting IE6 support also made the decision to goto HTML 5 a lot easier.

Powered by WordPress.
In my opinion, this is the best free publishing platform out there.

About 30% complete.
As the post’s title states, this blog is a work in progress so if something looks broken, it’s only because I haven’t gotten to that part yet. In time (hopefully not too much time) it will all come together.

Designed by Hale.
I’ve been strictly a developer for a long time now. Designing this site is the most time I’ve spent in Photoshop in a long time. Feel free to pick it apart and send me your thoughts. Just remember, being the creator of this site I have the right to completely ignore you (Scott I have the right to ignore you at all times, not just in regards to this site).