With the UK currently stumbling to a halt due to snow I've been working from home. I like working from home, it has many advantages like the time saved in commuting, and the fact that you usually know your own hardware/software setup better than works.

One thing it has highlighted is that as a software developer your actual location is now totally irrelevant. Even for team based projects you do not all have to be in the same physical location. Our physical and online worlds have become so enmeshed that is it now common place to be able to work productively from anywhere.

So with that in mind I thought I'd do a quick round up of my favourite remote working applications. Some are more "best practices" with recommendations if I've been using a specific product. Warning: all recommendations may contain nuts.

1. Online Code / Asset Source Control

Having your code in an online repository is an absolute life saver. Not only does this contribute towards a "Business continuity" plan for regular working, but it means you can get to it from anywhere. We should all be using source control anyway, but having it online means that it's much more easily maintained and you are not moving code around on USB keys.

I use an application called Beanstalk. www.beanstalkapp.com. They have worked well for me so far, and the basic account is free.

2. Virtualisation

The Virtual PC software market has moved on considerably in the last few years. To the point now where there are free versions of virtualisation software that allows you to create virtual pc's inside your actual physical pc. I use this at work and at home for a few reasons. Firstly I don't even have a physical development server anymore, it is a virtual windows 2003 server, and secondly this is great for setting up specific testing environments. Need a windows XP running Internet Explorer 6? Create a new virtual image and install XP, it is far more reliable than multiple IE's or other Internet Explorer emulation software.

I use VM ware server 2.0, its totally free (Virtual pc's operating system licences aren't so be careful) you can get it here: http://www.vmware.com/products/server/

3. Instant messaging / Skype

Communication in any team is important, especially so if you are working remotely. If no-one can contact you then appearances may be that you aren't working at all, which is bad news. I use Skype http://www.skype.com/intl/en-gb/ which can be used for chat and messaging.

The obvious benefits are that it is free, and means you can have team discussions online. More recently I've encountered several companies that actually use Skype as their main communications tool. They don't even have desktop phones anymore.

4. FTP clients / File synchronisation utilities

Ideally you can still provide any of your in-office functionality at your remote location. So being able to implement change releases is essential. I use a combination of Filezilla http://filezilla-project.org/ which is a free FTP client, and Beyond Compare http://www.scootersoftware.com/ which is a file comparison tool. Ideally I'd like to learn ANT, but just haven't got round to it yet.

5. Online file storage

Services like DropBox https://www.dropbox.com/ are invaluable for the online storage of files. We always have online briefs, and Photoshop designs flying around the place, so storing them in one central online location is an ideal way of ensuring that you always have the latest version. It also avoids the problem of not having the project spec, and not being able to work.

I personally use Google Docs for this http://www.google.com/docs I've found it to be a very flexible easily maintained way of storing pretty much any format of document.

I was discussing some ideas for an application framework this morning with the team, and one of the issues we hit upon was having a common directory for templates, but serving them up as if they were from a different directory.

The idea is to have one instance of a reusable skinnable template, that appears to live on several sites.

IE all the content lives in "webroot/content/templateName.cfm", but is actually served up by many sites, IE "127.0.0.1/site1/template1.cfm", "127.0.0.1/site2/template1.cfm" ... etc

In this way they can be re skinned or adapted as needed, and they aren't database driven. The main stumbling block for the discussion was the need to actually create blank versions of each of the named templates, in each of the sites, as ColdFusion server would error on the request.

I spent twenty minutes trying to work it so that my Application.cfc's onRequest or onRequestStart method would intercept the request before it was actually made, but that just wasn't working. My other idea was to use the onMissingTemplate method, but the server is only running ColdFusion 7, so that was a no go (I figured I could catch the missing template request and just re path it, although I'd have to assess if that was really inefficient due to almost every page request logging as failed).

My eventual solution was Isapi rewrite. I am re writing all the requests to the same template, and just passing in the template variable. In that way I can request pages that don't actually exist, but they appear in the url.

Create an index.cfm template like this:

For this example I am using the free version of Helicon's Isapi rewrite, you can get it here: Link to Helicons Isapi re write

In the example below I have altered the first page link to look like it is actually a .cfm template request, just in case you want the url string to have a .fileextension look to it.

So when you fire it up and test it you just see /page1, /page2 etc, and the pages don't actually exist.

I'm not experienced enough with Isapi rewrite to know if there is a downside to this, but bookmarking in a browser still works correctly, so I can't see an issues at present.

If you are anything like me, everyday you are smothered in a stack of emails from various companies all delivering html formatted, image heavy flyers persuading you to buy whatever dead horse they are flogging. I know it is my own fault, after all I signed up to them in the first place, I've only got myself to blame. As I find myself checking (and deleting) these email on an Android mobile device now it has become hassle-some. So I set out to unsubscribe from the majority of them, which is where the inspiration for this article came from.

In a short period of time I have unsubscribed from around a dozen different email newsletters, and because of this the differences in the methods used to accomplish this have become glaringly obvious. I was very surprised at the variations in the methods used, some are very user friendly, and others are very much not. I won't name the companies involved.

Case one:

By far the easiest user interaction, this is a simple link from an email that provides you with a screen confirming your UN subscription. No prompt is required from the user, you are simply unsubscribed. All the data is passed seamlessly behind the scenes.

Case two:

Almost the same as above except that you are taken to a screen where you have to commit an action. You are presented with a screen displaying your email address, and prompted to click a button to confirm the UN subscribe action. This may be a handy safety net to step errors from the casual clicker.

Case three:

Clicking on the link from an email takes you to a generic page with a form on it. They have not transferred any form of token from the email so you are prompted to enter the email address you want to UN subscribe. Entering your email address takes you to a screen confirming your action. This additional step is unnecessary, and doesn't add any value at all.

Case four:

In this scenario we are passed to a page where we have to login. The subscription details are attached to an account application, and as such your credentials need to be verified. Based on passing an encrypted token from the email a user could easily be logged in automatically. Actually requiring a username and password adds an additional level of complexity. Once I logged in I then had to navigate to the subscription settings and choose to unsubscribe with a form similar to the ones mentioned above.

Case five:

In the most convoluted example I have come across so far I actually had to create an account. I arrived at the UN subscribe page and found that to subscribe did not require an account, but to change my subscription options did! This was a very strange scenario, requiring a user to create an account to stop emails. Once you have created an account the subscription options were managed through a form like the ones mention above.

Conclusions

I think the thing to keep in mind with functionality like this is the balance between usability and the business objectives. An obvious point to note is that businesses do not want their users to UN subscribe to their emails. This is their user base and they do not want to lose it. Still it is worth considering just how you interact with your customers, even when providing functionality you do not want them to use.

After all you can always just 'Mark as Spam'.