Author David

Dear Apple Inc.

Please fix the search UI in Safari on the iPhone.
I’ve been using the iPhone for some time now and overall, the interface is really slick. The buttons are consistently placed and this gives a really strong user experience. Everything appears to be in the obvious place.
The trouble is, I [...]

Some thoughts on developing my first Confluence plugin

I recently started building Confluence plugins. The first one being my Google Analytics plugin for Confluence. This post outlines my “journey” into Confluence plugin development. It documents a beginner’s pitfalls when developing with the Atlassian Plugin SDK. Hopefully others can learn from, or at least laugh at my mistakes.
Where I was starting [...]

Announcing: Google Analytics plugin for Confluence

I’m pleased to announce the release of my first Confluence plugin — Google Analytics plugin for Confluence.
It lists Google Analytics reports for a particular Confluence space – from within that space. The current version has 10 reports and shows the first 20 results for each report.

Top Content
Depth of Visit
Internal Search
Browser and OS
Browser Version
Screen [...]

Portal UI Design Patterns

Here are the slides from a talk I gave at the European Luminis User Group in Nottingham last week.
Outlined are some thoughts behind reusable UI elements in the Luminis portal at the University of Nottingham.
Portal UI Design Patterns

Changing boilerplate text in Confluence

We run Confluence with the (default) en_GB locale and language. For our purposes, some of the boilerplate text needs changing. This post describes how to solve this problem with a partial British English language pack that overrides only part of the Confluence interface text.

A simpler way to view attachments in Confluence

…or how to display attachments in an unordered list.
Something that bugs me in Confluence is the way that attachments are shown. The default view is a big table with just about all the information related to each attachment.
This is great if you want all this detail, but I’m a simple soul [...]

Using the Google Analytics Javascript API to show pageviews from Atlassian Confluence

Here’s a quick demo I wrote to test out the Google Analytics API.
It shows pageviews for an Atlassian Confluence wiki on a space by space basis.
You’ll need your own copy of Confluence hooked up to Google Analytics for the demo to work, so I’ve done a video demo too – no sound, sorry.

Confluence & Google [...]

Adding custom segments to Google Analytics

Here’s a quick screencast I made to show how easy it is to add custom segments – e.g. based on country/territory – to Google Analytics. There’s no audio. Sorry.

Adding custom segments to Google Analytics from David Simpson on Vimeo.

4 Useful Tips on Google Analytics Reporting for Confluence

Having installed Google Analytics on Confluence, you need to ensure that you’re not lost in a world of pretty metrics.
Make sure that your new analytics toy produces something solid and actionable. Anything less is just a shiny curiosity that your organisation will soon fail to engage with.
This article presents 4 useful tips [...]

Verdana must die for the good of the planet

If you’re using the Verdana typeface in your printed documents, stop now.
There is no need and it is helping destroy the planet.
Verdana takes up about 19% more horizontal space than Arial. So a switch away from Verdana could reduce your paper costs by up to 19%. For further savings, switch [...]