Many developers are forced to develop on small screens: Travelling, Coworking spaces, changing project locations, you name it. But what can you do to improve your workflow if you are bound to a small screen? This presentation tries to give some answers and suggestions.

1. Small Screen
Development
How to make the most out of sparse screen real estate

2. /me
• Ralph von der Heyden
• ralph+developer@railslove.com
• @ralph
• http://rvdh.de/

3. Screen real estate...

6. But...

8. Find the ideal small
screen workflow!

9. Step 1:
Show as much
information as possible

10. Full Screen

11. Don‘t waste precious pixels

12. Multitasking is a myth

13. Distraction free

14. Usability experts
recommend it...

16. How much do you
waste going non-
fullscreen?

21. Dock: 94720px
Menubar: 26880px
Working window: 902400px
Full Screen: 1024000px

22. Diagramm

23. ~10% wasted pixels

24. another ~10% for the
app‘s toolbar

25. Conclusion
• Keep the dock hidden
• Switch your apps to full screen if possible
➡More information at a glance

26. Which applications do
we need as Rails
developers?

27. Rails equipment
• Browser
• Terminal
• Editor

28. Browser:
Google Chrome
• ⇧⌘F opens full screen
• ⌘L
• puts the cursor in the address bar
• shows tabs, bookmarks etc.
• ⌥⌘← and ⌥⌘→ switches tabs

29. Terminal: iterm2
• (in early alpha, but „works for me“)
• ⌘-enter switches to full screen
• hold ⌘ for a second to see the tabs

30. Editor: MacVim, vim
• Choose an editor without a toolbar
• MacVim supports full screen
• Terminal editors support full screen via
iterm2
• Textmate isn‘t bad, either, but has
annoyances (e.g. drawer)

31. What are the problems
when developing on
small screens?

32. Problems on small
screens
• Finding the information you need
• Interacting with a specific process
➡Switching between applications

33. Switching on big
screens...

34. Switching on small
screens...
⌘-tab

35. (Usually, there is a bit of ⌘-tab
on big screens, too.)

36. What‘s wrong with...
⌘-tab
?

37. Danger of overshooting

39. ⌘-tab
⌘-tab-tab
⌘-tab-tab-tab
⌘-tab-tab-tab-tab
⌘-tab-tab-tab-tab-tab
⌘-tab-tab-tab-tab-tab-tab
⌘-tab-tab-tab-tab-tab-tab-tab
⌘-tab-tab-tab-tab-tab-tab-tab-tab
⌘-tab-tab-tab-tab-tab-tab-tab-tab-tab
...

42. ⌘-tab

44. Alternative: Visor
Global keyboard shortcut:
⌘-tab

45. Conclusion
• Switch to a command line editor
• Make the terminal your comfy place
➡Avoid confusion while switching between
your main applications (overshooting)

46. Command line editor*
*(This is the hardest part)

47. Choices
• VIM
• Emacs
• Set it up right

48. OSX font rendering?

49. iterm2 haz it

50. Color schemes?

51. 256 colors are enough
for everybody

52. You‘ll have to live with
limitations, but maybe
that is worth it.

53. Make the terminal your
comfy zone

54. Make the terminal your
comfy zone
• Get a decent shell and prompt
• Set up easy process switching

55. Shell
• zsh: oh-my-zsh
• bash: bash-it
• completion, templates, you name it...

56. Easier process
switching

57. Easier process
switching
• CTRL-Z suspends processes
• CTRL-F alternates between
suspended processes (if you set it up)

58. Easier process
switching (zsh)
• Alternate between backgrounded
processes with CTRL-F
• bindkey -s '^f' "fg %-n"
• export HISTIGNORE="fg*"
• fg to bring up the last bg process
• YOU WILL HAVEdoesn‘t work with ruby) !!!
(the preexec part
TO FIX oh-my-zsh

59. Assumption: Running 3
processes in 1 shell
• bash/zsh
• rails console
• vim

60. Switch from vim to
shell and back
CTRL-Z
fg

61. Switch from vim to rails
console and back
CTRL-Z CTRL-F
CTRL-F CTRL-Z

62. Shell our from your
editor
• :!command to run something
• :! to see shell history

63. Why is it better than
tabs?

64. It just feels better.
(more smooth, natural, efficient, ...)
And works everywhere.

65. More information at a
glance

66. Use panes

67. tmux
• terminal multiplexer
• Very powerful
• Does not support OSX clipboard
• (though there is patch for the 1.3 version)

69. iterm2
• Very easy to use
• ⌘D vertical split
• ⌘⇧D horizontal split
• ⌥⌘←/→/↑/↓ switches between panes
• Touchpad scrolling
• Not as powerful as tmux (no rearranging of
panes etc.)

71. Take-aways for all small
screeners:
• Switch to full screen
• Lern you some terminal-fu
• Try a command line editor
• Some stuff is also useful for big screens,
server admin etc.

72. What do you think?

73. Sources
• http://oinopa.com/2010/10/24/laptop-driven-development.html
• http://www.apple.com/macosx/lion/
• http://code.google.com/p/iterm2/
• http://code.google.com/p/macvim/
• https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh
• https://github.com/revans/bash-it
• http://www.google.com/chrome/
• http://tmux.sourceforge.net/