Playing with the JavaScript Date Object

I've been working on a couple of projects that require manipulation of the date strings in one way or another, and one of the things I wanted to achieve was to show a posting date in a list built from RSS, but this meant I would need to convert ISO Date format used in the Blogger RSS feed to a prettier format.

After a bit of Googling and tweaking code, I found a solution, which I will post at a later date, but in the meantime, here's a list of a few useful links relating to manipulating dates using JavaScript.

1. DateJs - Very useful little JavaScript utility for working with dates.
2. Parsing W3C's ISO 8601 Date/Times in JavaScript - Useful script that uses Regular Expressions to handle ISO Format Dates.
3. JavaScript Date Object -Estelle Weyl's useful article giving an overview of the JavaScript date object.
4. JavaScript Toolbox Date Formating - A useful library contains functions to deal with dates in Javascript, parse date strings, format dates to different output strings, and compare dates.
5. JavaScript Pretty Date - John Resiq's function to convert dates to "web 2.0" style strings, eg Something like "2008-01-28T20:24:17Z" would become "2 hours ago".
   
6. JavaScript ISO8601/RFC3339 Date Parser -Another approach to formatting ISO dates.
7. PHPDate - Jon Combe's jQuery port of PHP's Date function. Very useful!
8. JavaScript Source Date & Time - A list of scripts that might come in handy for some readers.
9. JavaScript date string formatting - Svend Tofte's interesting script. again, based on PHP's date function.
10. JavaScript Date Formatting - An Unorthodox Way -Most date formatting implementations use format strings where format specifiers like “mm”, “mmm”, “HH”, etc. are used for selecting different components of a date. Ates Goral tackles the date object from a different angle.

The Complete Guide for the jQuery Developer

Always on the lookout for useful stuff to share, I found The Complete Guide for the jQuery Developer today. Chirag Chamoli at WhiteBoard has compiled a really good list of useful jQuery resources, including blogs, tutorials, plugins, and more.

If you are interested in learning jQuery, or polishing up your skills, it's a great place too start. It's also worth checking out if you are looking for a specific plugin.

Note: Ignore the top list of links, they are all dead.

Cheers Chirag, top post!

14 Reasons IT projects fail

I found this article today, which, although IT project failures are a problem to business, still made me chuckle. As a member of a large (20 +) team of designers and developers, deadlines and project milestones are a subject close to my heart, and not always in a good way!

The following list is compiled from a CIO.com report, and I found it on Michael Krigson's blog on ZDNet. Read it and giggle...

Staffing Mistakes
1. Projects lack the right resources with the right skills.
2. Projects lack experienced project managers.

Process Mistakes
3. IT doesn’t follow a standard, repeatable project management process.
4. IT gets hamstrung by too much process.
5. They don’t track changes to the scope of the project.
6. They lack up-to-date data about the status of projects.
7. They ignore problems.

Planning Mistakes
8. They don’t take the time to define the scope of a project.
9. They fail to see the dependencies between projects.
10. They don’t consider Murphy’s Law.
11. They give short shrift to change management.
12. Project schedules are incomplete.

Communication Problems
13. IT doesn’t push back on unreasonable deadlines.
14. They don’t communicate well with project sponsors and stakeholders.

I noticed a couple of glaring ommisions, particularly:

1. Weak delegation. If you don't trust the judgement of those you delegate to, you should'nt be delegating to them in the first place.
2. Too many chiefs, not enough indians - Need I say more

These points all seem like common mistakes, but sometimes common sense is left on your project managers desk, while he/she is in a meeting to plan the next disaster!