□BATUHAN İÇÖZ□

Category: Blog

  • Menu Experience of 21st Century?

    I was writing an iPad application for a client, a restaurant. App is still under development and at this point I’m not allowed to share who my client is or what we are doing specifically. But I can say it’s a menu app, a simple menu app with few features.

    While I was thinking about this app I thought about creating a platform like MenuPad, but cheaper & easier to use version of it. And I want people to create the app inside my web app on the web, then download & publish it, unlike MenuPad, I think. These menu/catalogs apps should be downloadable on the App Store and it also should have an optional ordering feature.

    But I want to do something different, I wanted to ask people’s opinions on this subject. I’ll be asking this on HackerNews and maybe on few other platforms, and then update this post with those ideas. I also want to ask people about how can I get the best UX? Does anyone knows a good article about menu UX? But I’m not just asking about the UX, I want ideas on every aspect of this.

    Some of my ideas (I can’t share the ones that I’ll be coding for my client’s app, I’ll update this post once the app is released):

    • Social sharing (Facebook Like for menu items perhaps?),
    • Optional ordering features depending on your location,
    • Should be integrated with sales devices (like printers and other sales equipment that is used in a restaurant or a coffee shop)

  • Find your Facebook ID (with JS)

    More than 6 months ago, I’ve launch a very, very simple tool to find a users or pages Facebook ID. I’ve done that with PHP and then forgot about it.

    2 months later, in FriendFeed, someone needed to find their Facebook ID and instead of showing them Graph API, I remembered my ID Finder and send the link. Someone in the comments said I needed this ID Finder as a standalone web site. I didn’t see the need but then someone else offered me “fbidfinder.com” domain name and I was like “well, it can’t hurt, could it?”.

    So I’ve rewritten the old tool and opened FBIDFinder.com. I’ve used Silex, a light PHP framework, with its template engine. I don’t know why I did that. I feel stupid. Why, you may ask. Because I didn’t need it. I didn’t need any server-side languages.

    A week ago I changed my server and realized FBIDFinder.com is not working anymore because this new server (which had the old IP of my old, PHP supported, server) didn’t have PHP installed. While fixing it, I’ve hated myself for using PHP for this kind of tool. It was and is unnecessary. Today, in this beautiful sunday, I’ve rewritten this simple tool again. In 5 minutes. Without any server-side language. That, I feel, is the right way.

    Now it’s running on Amazon’s S3 and it works fast. Really fast. Why? Because it’s just plain old HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

    I told you this story because,

    1. I needed to write something on this blog,
    2. To warn you. Do not use server-side languages when you don’t need them. It’s silly and stupid. It used your servers resources and you can need those resources. Unless there is some kind of business logic you need to keep as a secret, simple apps are better with client-side technologies. That’s in my opinion, of course.
    To use the tool click here and to see the source code, here.