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Blogs ยป Archive for August, 2005
Java applets to gain new life in Mac Firefox
(Via MozillaZine) Firefox 1.5 for Mac OS X will have the Java Embedding Plugin built in to allow the browser to take advantage of the latest version of Java on that platform.
Java applets have had a rough time of it, as technologies go. Hyped beyond all reason when it first emerged, the technology was quashed by Microsoft’s sabotage of Java with the continual re-release of its out-of-date and stagnant Java Virtual Machine (VM).
Today, Java applets are an extremely capable technology. An ideal platform for building many of the rich Internet applications that everyone seems to be talking about, its biggest disadvantage continues to be the limited availability of the current version of the technology in Web browsers.
This is changing, however, with big-name PC builders like Dell and HP shipping their machines with Java preinstalled. Currently, one of the most troublesome holdouts is Firefox on Mac OS X, ironic since Apple is renouned among Java developers for supporting Java by building it into its operating system. Though Mac OS X has Java 1.4.2 built in, with experimental support for Java 5, Apple’s API for 3rd party Web browsers like Firefox is frozen at the now-obsolete Java 1.3.1, forcing applet …
Opera turns 10: Get your free registration code!
In celebration of 10 years of the Opera browser, the company is hosting an online anniversary party. Among other things, the site includes a slideshow history of the browser, a contest for the most creative “birthday wishes” submission, and… and this is the big one… free registration codes for the Opera browser!
It appears they are enforcing a two-code limit for each visitor to the site, but hey–that’s two free copies of Opera without ads that you didn’t have before. Jump on them before the party’s over!
Happy birthday, Opera — you never stop surprising us.
Microsoft’s Linux Lab?
ZDNetAsia ran an interesting article earlier this month that reflects a somewhat more mature view of open source internally at Microsoft.
It is obvious that a scorched earth policy on open source will not work for Microsoft, as they have discovered after previous attempts at using inflammatory remarks to debase Linux. Thus the company has started building an internal sandbox within which to explore Unix variants from Linux to Solaris to Apple’s OS X. The Windows maker is using Bill Hilf, a lifelong Unix/Linux expert to manage a lab that provides under the hood access to the competing OS.
I find it fascinating the trials and tribulations of setting up the lab - which Hilf reveals in the piece. It also suggests possible positive results of the exercise - that possible improvements to open source applications might be contributed from Microsoft’s Linux Lab and that Microsoft may be able and willing to improve how its systems interact with competing operating systems. This would be a necessary evil for them as many large Microsoft customers largely also run Unix variants side by side with Windows boxes.
Hilf may also be one of the drivers behind the company’s recent outreach …
Shell Scripting Recipes
The command line is many things to many people. Some users run in horror, preferring a GUI for point and click administration. Others will not work anywhere but in the warm glow of the Bash Shell.
I live in both worlds, having found wonderful system administration solutions in the open source world, my favorite being Webmin. However, I continually return the the command shell for many of my tasks and scripting needs. This has become even more convenient in my case using Mac OS X as my OS, having the benefit of a world-class GUI and the underlying BSD Unix tools.
For some time I have considered myself quite adept on the command line. That was until Chris Johnson’s Shell Scripting Recipes (Apress) landed on my desk. Johnson was introduced to Unix and the shell in 1990, 5 years before I had that pleasure and has surely become a master.
Taking a step back - many of us who manage servers will use the shell for SFTP or SSH sessions, managing applications such as MySQL, mail servers, web servers and so on. Additionally, we frequently will write some useful scripts for exercises such as backing up …
If I Had a Dollar for Every ‘border:1px dashed red’
Although this isn’t strictly web design, I think it’s worth mentioning.
While we web developers are often finicky creatures, each with our own working methods, habits and superstitions, there are some things that bind us all together. The day you coded your first CSS layout, was probably the day you met the CSS coder’s friend ‘border:1px dashed red’.
Whether it’s inline in the markup or attached CSS, there’s no quicker way of illuminating a quirky CSS problem than being able to see exactly where it’s happening with gaudy red borders.
Likewise, the JavaScripter’s longtime companion has so often been ‘alert(”The variable is: ” + variable);’. And for that matter, how many times have you added a paragraph of ‘Lorem ipsum’ text to a page of markup?
Now, after a while it may well have occurred to you to create a some kind of keyboard shortcut or macro to make it quicker to add this snippet text.
My problem was that I tend to skip between different editors for different types of work. I find JEdit is nice for heavy coding, Dreamweaver is faster for big-picture layout work, and EmEditor and PSPad load up fast for quick edits …
Stockholders approve Adobe/Macromedia merge
As of today, one of the two major barriers to the Adobe/Macromedia merge has been overcome. Stockholders of both companies have voted over 99% in favour of the merge. This keeps the deal well on track for its anticipated completion in Fall 2005.
The one remaining hurdle is approval of the transaction by the US Department Of Justice (DOJ), which on July 11th issued a second request for information from the two companies as it evaluates the legality of the merger under antitrust regulations.
Has project management gone out the window?
I’m working with two very skilled development teams. Both do excellent development. Both come from world-class educational institutions, and have Fortune 500 and emerging venture experience.
But neither provides the type of project management I expect, which includes:
- A project plan with dates
- Success meeting deadlines
- Frequent communication with me about progress, risks, issues (actually, this only applies to one of the two)
- Ability to accurately estimated resources required
- Builds released on time
- Providing status reports on time
- Asking me how I want to learn about project status and updates
I find this annoying and frustrating. I know that with trends like agile development, spiral development, and other forms of “build the bridge as you walk on it” development, accurately projecting project timelines and issues is difficult.
Still, communication is a KEY part of client relationship management. Many skilled IT professionals need to improve in this area. Otherwise, clients will not be as loyal to you as they otherwise could.
In project leadership you have to manage 4 things:
1. Client expectations (making sure client has no unrealistic dreams about what the project will do).
2. The process (classic project management 101).
3. Results (making sure the client gets the results they expect, regardless of whether you …
How Readable is Your PHP?
New today is a post on Smoking toooooo much PHP entitled Six deadly PHP sins, this week…. The article gives a quick list of tips for PHP developers on why they definitely should avoid in their code.
One of the entries is titled Every variable should start somewhere. In a previous blog post, I mentioned how frustrating it was to be trying to read some code and asking yourself, ‘Where does this variable come from?!’. Alan labels PHP language constructs such as extract and eval as ‘evil’ because they disguise and obfuscate code. That isn’t news. However he makes a valid point - that using these types of shortcuts is not a security problem in itself - the security problem occurs when your code is too hard to understand and you inadvertently introduce additional problems.
Take register_globals for example. The register_globals feature in itself is not a security problem, but the fact that it makes understanding and reviewing code so much harder can easily lead to security holes throughout your code. The PHP manual states that ‘register_globals will inject (poison) your scripts will all sorts of variables’ which …
Use Stunnel to Secure POP, IMAP and SMTP
I have been toying with running secure pop and smtp email of late for a few roaming users as well as myself. It has been quite simple to setup running on Postfix and largely moves toward securing the transaction of checking email (other than from a man in the middle attacks, somewhat unlikely).
The beauty is leveraging Stunnel - which allows one to configure your preferred mail server as you wish and simply intercept your secure ports (for example Port 995 for POP3s and 465 for SMTP). This may not be the way to tacke it for the large scale as one can build secure configurations into the mail server - though it has worked nicely on a small scale for me during testing.
A bonus to use of Stunnel is its indifference to what mail server one is running - and its sole dependence fortunately is on OpenSSL - which most of us have by default on our boxes.
Stunnel has a straightforward Man doc and some simple examples that will enable you to test quickly. Obviously insure your mail client handles SSL connections - fairly universal at this point.
I also had a bit of a dated HowTo in …
Google doesn’t trust all links
In O’Reilly Radar > Search Engine Spam?, Tim O’Reilly addresses concerns that their network of sites, which includes Perl.com, XML.com, and others, is “selling PageRank” via text link ads.
As Danny sullivan points out in his comments, a lot of companies (including the former owner of Danny’s Search Engine Strategies conference) are selling the same type of advertising, cashing in on the economy created by search engines’ reliance on anchor text to generate search engine rankings.
Google engineer Matt Cutts chipped in to support the use of the rel=nofollow attribute on ad links. He also stated that he had been aware of O’Reilly’s link sales for some time, and that “parts of perl.com, xml.com, etc. have not been trusted in terms of linkage for months and months.” Further, that “just because a site shows up for a ‘link:’ command on Google does not mean that it passes PageRank, reputation, or anchortext.”
Those words, if they are heard throughout the SEO world, are sure to shake the confidence of many text link brokers… it’s about time. Smart link traders will be moving toward a model that makes it easier to use their networks for advertising that isn’t solely targeted at spiders.
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