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Blogs » Archive for May, 2004
PowerPC on Intel!? Open Source Wonders…
Will the wonders of open source never cease? The crew over at PearPC have delivered a PowerPC emulator that enables numerous PowerPC-based operating systems to run on Intel platforms. This includes Apple’s Panther OS (10.3).
The developer’s have gone on the record in stating this is not for the slight of heart as they are at release 0.1.2, however, screenshots abound on the Internet showing OS X on Windows workstations. (And Steve Jobs thought hell froze over when he put a picture of iTunes on Windows XP on Apple’s home page!)
The project also enables users to run (PowerPC versions) Mandrake Linux 9.1, Darwin, OpenBSD and NetBSD. Many already know that Darwin (the heart of OS X) can currently be installed on an Intel machine as there is an x86 port.
PearPC is early in development and still working on performance, power save and system state issues, but their efforts bring a new emulation capability to developers of all kinds.
Additionally, with the recent release of the PowerPC architecture by IBM, the project may be able to take leaps and bounds with new development resources publicly available.
Sanddock released
On the hunt for yet more freebies to share with .NETing SitePointers, today, we have Sanddock by Tim Dawson, a free control which gives your application superb window docking abilities.
All Office 2003 styled, with even OneNote style tabbing, this is certainly one hell of a hot control. Coupled with the equally free SandBar control, your apps will have never look so good for so little ;)
A New InFusion
If you’ve been wondering what’s happened to The Fuse, you’re not alone!
Unfortunately, David’s had to hand over the reins of The Fuse due to unforeseen events. It’s time to farewell The Fuse… and introduce InFused!
InFused is the new incarnation of SitePoint’s Cold Fusion blog, headed up by Eric Jones, long time SitePointer and CF guru.
You can look forward to great ColdFusion tips, news and views here at SitePoint — and get InFused on a regular basis.
Welcome, Eric!
Risk Management and Open Source
One of the trickier parts of open source development is often when leveraging open source code and applications within commercial closed source solutions. Often the goal of the developers is to reduce the development lifecycle of an application by using proven open source components or applications already vetted by public use.
This may not be an issue for an internal-only private solution such as a private corporate intranet or extranet. Things can get sticky if this solution is shifted for distribution or sale to partners, clients or the public. Even more sticky if the completed solution is not intended to be distributed as open source.
Clarification: Having worked on a mixed-source project, when I note a solution that would incorporate open source but sell commercially as closed source, it is understood that this solution would adhere to the open source licenses for those components included and provide the source for those pieces with the application while not disclosing any code intended to remain proprietary.
Intellectual property (IP) management, risk management and code escrow have been around in some form for some time. These fields are in varying levels of maturity and often grow as court systems set …
Call For Information-Based Web Developer sites
http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=169965
Please visit the above link, which gets into the elements of a strong Web Site for any professional, including a Web Developer.
In addition, please take a look at the following article on the same subject:
http://www.itprosuccess.com/articles_fifteen_web_design_secrets.shtml
I’d like to begin collecting as many examples as possible of Web Designers/Web Developers who include the following elements on their own Web Site:
- Testimonial(s) on top third of home page (which immediately establish credibility);
- Free articles, white papers, case studies of web sites that work and don’t, and other resources that educate and inform their audience (which gets them interested, and positions you as an expert);
- Headlines and sub-heads that grab the attention of visitors, and keep them interested (e.g. they are curiosity-inducing, or show real benefits);
- Solid guarantees that competitors can’t match (which takes the risk away from the prospect);
- Copy that talks about the prospect twice as much as it talks about the web designer/developer (which draws the prospect in);
- Ways to entice visitors to leave their contact information so that the Web Developer can follow up over time to continue to build credibility; and
- A focus on a specific target market, with strong marketing messages that appeal to that market’s unique …
About PHP usage
The question of who is using PHP has been asked many times. We all know PHP users include everyone from Britney Spears to the UK Labour Party’s Big Conversation. In fact Dream Lab Canada maintains a directory of PHP Powered Sites broken down by industry sector.
For me what’s more interesting, right now, is looking at where PHP is being used; where is it being deployed (Internet vs. Intranet / Extranet), what problems are people solving with PHP, what design decisions come into play when building a online gallery vs. a groupware tool, how do requirements influence CMS design when comparing an online magazine vs. a corporate Intranet, etc. etc.?
There have been surveys of PHP’s use in the past, such as this one from Zend and another from Interakt but neither, from my point of view, explored these type of questions.
There are two things nagging me, which is what’s prompting this stream of thought. First I have a hunch there are whole PHP “user groups” not being addressed or being heard from, largely swallowed by “mainstream” PHP users (those building either personal sites on small online ventures). The second nag is there’s PHP functionality which seems to be being under utilized, …
Linux Not Just SkunkWorks
A recently released study by Forrester Research, Linux Crosses Into Mission-Critical Apps, shows Linux is now widely considered mainstream at some of the largest companies in North America.
For years, Linux was introduced at many companies in the skunkworks of an IT department. These tended to be unsponsored projects or prototypes to encourage consideration of the platform. Now that all levels of business have seen the reliability and scalability of Linux and applications such as Apache, MySQL and others, Linux does not necessarily have to be deployed in the shadows.
In that survey, Forrester Analysts Brad Day and Laura Koetzle interviewed more than 100 companies, half of whom report more than $1 billion US in revenues and account for more than 5000 employees each. The survey also found more than half had Linux deployed in production, running servers for web hosting, mail as well as critical back office functions such as crm and data management.
As with many technology trends, widespread adoption begins only after billions have been spent by the world’s larger companies in research, development and deployment. IBM’s massive investments in Linux and open source is often credited for pushing corporate IT into serious evaluations of Linux.
The …
CMS using WACT
Pavel Chtchevaev recently dropped this message into Sitepoint’s Advanced PHP forum, announcing LIMB, a PHP CMS that uses WACT’s template engine.
WACT is still in an evolutionary stage so significant customization was required by LIMBs developers but it’s great to see someone taking advantage of WACT already and turning the results into Open Source. That it’s possible to use some of WACT while ignoring the rest is part of WACT’s design “philosophy”, as collection of components as opposed to a rigid framework.
It’s also interesting to look at some of the template source in LIMBs demo (you need to download the source from SF right now if you want to examine the templates although they were available online until today).
Know there’s some degree of scepticism regarding WACT’s approach to templating - ironically it’s probably easier to “sell” to developers with experience of ASP.NET or JSP Taglibs than to PHP developers used to Smarty.
What’s worth noting is how the mark up is declarative - you declare the elements that should appear in the template just like HTML is declarative - you declare a table for example - there’s no imperative if/else type logic in the template. The power of this approach becomes apparent …
Latest Flash Components and Add-Ons
Well, it seems like folks have been busy developing components and add-ons for Flash lately; here’s a quick round up of the latest developments that caught my eye.
First up is the B-LINE CHARTING COMPONENTS 3.0 from B-LINE EXPRESS; a set of charting components that can hook into sources from most common application servers, XML or just plain text as well as support for DataProvider and data binding.
Be sure to check out the drilling capabilities example and the animation / 3D rendering example.
Priced at $295.00, it’s more expensive that other offerings such as WebAssist’ Dynamic Flash Charts, but the feature list is more extensive and is aimed at all levels of application developer.
Second up is a very interesting offering from MakingThings,an AS 2.0 library allowing you to control their device sets and modules from within Flash.
There are many modules on offer from the site from controlling sensors to motors, and reading the list of potential applications on the site, I’m off to the bank now to check my balance to see what I can afford to get…All in the line of experimentation!
Understanding Unicode
One of the tougher issues on the modern web is that of internationalization, often shortened to i18n (’i', then 18 more letters, then ‘n’). The world-wide web truly lives up to its name, and even if your site has a local audience you still may find yourself dealing with foreign letters, be they names with German punctuation or quotations in a foreign language.
The ultimate solution to the foreign character problem is Unicode, a truly enormous standard which attempts to document and provide encoding for virtually every character in every language known to man, with space left over for future language developments. A great starting point for understanding Unicode is Tim Bray’s essay, On Unicode. If that leaves you thirsty for more, Joel Spolsky’s The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets (No Excuses!) makes for great reading as well.
So now you understand the basis of the i18n problem, how do you go about solving it in your own work with the web? Thankfully, the W3C have two useful documents on the subject as part of their Authoring Techniques for XHTML and HTML Internationalization series: Characters and Encodings 1.0 and Specifying the language of …
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