The B-log

As some of you may already know, I have been working on a spreadsheet to track and log testday results from Litmus. My first release on Google Spreadsheet ha received some excellent feedback and some good suggestions. After deciding to implement these suggestions, I toiled with Google Spreadsheets for a good couple hours trying to get it to do what I want (mainly with charts). The best analogy I have for how that went is that it was like two children sitting in opposite corners of a small room, nose to the wall screaming “YOU DO IT!”, “NO, YOU DO IT!”, “NO, YOU DO IT!”…

You get the idea.

So I started to chew on ideas of how I could improve on the spreadsheet, without Google, but still allow the spreadsheet to be shared. I eventually settled on Microsoft Excel 2007 as my program of choice for the spreadsheet. I wanted to use Open Office, but found Microsoft Excel 2007 to be much more prepared for the task at hand. Once I had exported my Google spreadsheet to .xls and imported it into Excel, it was just a matter of making the improvements.

Now that I had the spreadsheet set up the way I wanted, I ran into the second dilemma. How am I going to share this as easily as Google does it. My first thought was, “Google must know!”. So I googled a bunch of different searches trying to find a way to “share” Excel spreadsheets.

After about an hour of no luck, I remembered that Microsoft Office 2007 allows sharing documents on a network and over the internet through Sharepoint. After a little research, I realized that I would have to set up a Sharepoint server. Something I was not prepared to do. It sounded way to grandiose a thing just to share out one little spreadsheet.

I finally thought to myself, “what if I can convert the spreadsheet into html? People won’t be able to modify the spreadsheet, but they will at least be able to get to it and view it easily enough.” So I did a little digging through the Excel menus and found that it has a facility that allows me to convert XLS files to “Web Pages”.

But wait! This is a Microsoft product. It is probably going to convert it to html and add all kinds of ActiveX crap and thus won’t work properly in Firefox.

Much to my surprise, this was not the case. Excel quickly converted my spreadsheet into a bunch of files that made it cross-browser compatible. Each worksheet of the spreadsheet was created in it’s own .htm file, all the charts were conveniently converted into .gif and .png images, and excel even kept all my formatting and styling through a .css file.

All that was left was to try it out. Upon loading the main .htm file from my desktop, I noticed that everything was laid out as it was in the excel file. The charts had become a bit degrade, but it is still quite readable. Excel even created tab buttons at the bottom of the screen so that I could navigate from sheet to sheet.

That being successful, I just uploaded the files to the appropriate locations on my people account, which is where it exists now.

For your viewing pleasure:
http://people.mozilla.com/~ahughes/Litmus_Results.htm

While this isn’t a perfect solution, at the very least it allows people to view the Litmus Testday results quite easily now. I can also modify the spreadsheet, save to html and easily upload any changes. I can also import the raw data into Google Spreadsheets for collaboration if needed. It just won’t have the pretty charts there.

I hope you find it somewhat useful.

Last night, Cesar and I were given the opportunity to go see the San Francisco Giants play my Toronto Blue Jays at AT&T Park thanks to a free ticket courtesy of Dan Portillo. Thanks Dan.

Unfortunately, since we took the Caltrain and didn’t board until 7:01p, we missed the first 3 innings of the game. Which, coincidentally, would turn out to be the most exciting innings of the game. You see, all of the runs were scored within the first 3 innings.

It wasn’t a total loss however. I was able to see AT&T Park, which was a good experience. For anyone who hasn’t been inside the walls of AT&T Park, it feels like an old ball park and overlooks the bay. It definitely felt a lot different from watching my Jays play back home in the Skydome. I also was able to snap a few pictures while at the game, which I have posted on my flickr. To see them, follow the link I added at the top of this page.

On a final note, next time I need to dress warmer. A t-shirt, shorts, and cons are not ideal attire for a San Francisco night. As I learned the hard way.

I look forward to the next time I can watch the Jays play the Giants. Hopefully we can do better next time. Go Jays!