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Blogs » Archive for March, 2006
Attack of the killer BBs
You may have picked this up already but if not, it’s time to think about phpBB and security again. A couple of relevant links - Bot Authors Targeting phpBB Forums and phpBB mass hack being prepared?.
Without wishing to say anything bad about phpBB, would strong recommend investigating alternatives. Two of note - Fud Forum who’s main developer is Ilia Alshanetsky, author of this PHP security book and PunBB, which is noteworthy given that these guys use it. Both have tools to help migrate from phpBB.
Flex 2 is not “all or nothing”
Ever since Macromedia announced Flex 2 and made available pre-release versions, I’ve been gritting my teeth as more and more cool news has surfaced about what Flex 2 will be capable of.
Because Macromedia Adobe will not be offering free licenses for non-commercial users of Flex 2 as it did for Flex 1, I’ve avoided recommending the technology to people despite the steady stream of exciting news that has come with the successive pre-release versions (now Beta 2).
The latest exciting tidbit — which has forced me to grudingly give the platform another look — is that Adobe has developed the Flex-AJAX bridge. The name is slightly misleading, as it’s really more of a Flex-JavaScript bridge, but it does help Adobe fend off some of the perception of AJAX as a Flex killer.
This bridge is an extension library for Flex that, when loaded, allows JavaScript code in a page to communicate with a Flex application, getting/setting property values, manipulating user interface elements, and registering JavaScript event listeners for elements inside the Flex application that would otherwise only be accessible to the ActionScript code within the application. Likewise, the bridge allows the Flex application to reach out into the containing HTML document, get/set …
MozBackup - Backup tool for Firefox & Thunderbird profiles
Although this isn’t strictly web development, I figure that many of us are likely to (if you haven’t already) encounter this issue at some time –particularly with Firefox– so it’s worth mentioning here.
This week I found the buzz of setting up my shiny, new, dual LCD PC was tempered by the tedious task of getting the all the software and settings I like set up just right again. Of course, this comes with the territory of setting up an out-of-the-box computer, but often things were much harder than they should rightly have been.
Thunderbird was a great case in point. While it operates beautifully, I was quite surprised at the level of hoop-jumping that was expected to do something as simple as move mail and settings from one install to another. I’m apparently not alone either as Matt (Magain) was saying he had to import his mail into Eudora and then export it to Thunderbird to get a satisfactory result.
Anyway, rather than bleat about this, the good news is I did find a third party solution that not only reliably transfers Thunderbird’s mail, filter settings, accounts and extensions, but also backs-up your Firefox bookmarks, extensions …
Kevin Hulsey’s Illustrator Master Classes
This has been around for a while, but if you’ve even doubted the power of Illustrator, this is a great refresher. After reaquainting myself with Kevin Hulsey’s amazing technical illustrations, I’m still not entirely sure whether I want to:
a) launch Illustrator and start drawing in a blur of inspiration, or:
b) permanently uninstall it and ne’er let it’s name pass my lips again.
As you can see, the finished pieces are remarkable, if for no other reason than the sheer bloodymindedness it would have taken to complete them — his ‘Empress of the Sea’ drawing below clocked in at 960 hours, or 120 eight hour days on the same piece. The level of detail is truly mindnumbing, from the green salad in the salad bar to the Drambuie bottles in the cocktail bar to the free weights in the gym. The guy is a stickler.
The great thing is Kevin doesn’t show-off while hording his secrets away, but instead takes considerable time to demonstrate exactly how he gets his results. Starting with nothing more than a set of detailed blueprints, Kevin creates the three vanishing points he’ll need to give the ship it’s spacial …
How-to Track Global Search Trends
Google is now providing trendinig data for every keyword in their database.
Try this:
1. Visit the keyword tool
2. Enter a keyword such as “PHP”
3. From the drop-down menu select
Voila!
Google will show a bar shart that shows the total search volume by month, as well as the months in which the search volume is the highest.
min/max-width/height supported by IE7!
In my announcement of the second preview release of IE7 Beta 2 yesterday, I mentioned that there was little available information about what was new in this release. Well, as one might expect, those details are beginning to surface as as people try out the new build.
For me, the most exciting news so far came from Dave Shea, who reports that this latest update supports the min-width and max-width CSS properties, and presumably min-height and max-height as well!
With these properties, designers can put together page layouts that will stretch to accomodate different screen resolutions, but will also stop stretching at a certain point to preserve readability. Expect a great many new designs to begin taking full advantage of this feature, but a separate style sheet will still be necessary to apply a fixed width for IE6 and below.
A Belated Word on The JavaScript Anthology
SitePoint’s latest title, The JavaScript Anthology, has been out for over two weeks, and I just realized we never mentioned it here on this blog.
<selfpromotion class=”blatant”>
If you’re serious about JavaScript (or even if you’re serious about getting serious), this really is our sweetest title yet. Granted, I edited the thing, so I’m a little biased, but the fact that I like it even better than my own book should say something. First of all, it’s written by two heavyweights in the world of DOM scripting (née DHTML):
James Edwards, better known as brothercake, is the man behind UDM — the Ultimate Drop Down Menu, which has the distinction of being not only the most cross-browser-compatible hierarchical menu system, but also the most accessible, as it fully complies with the W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0.
In the chapters he contributed to the book, James covers a lot of ground: he offers an introduction to JavaScript that focuses mostly on how it can and should be used in modern, best-practice web development, rather than dwelling on mundane details like variables and if-else statements; he gives a remarkably sanguine treatment of frames and pop-up windows, …
Updated IE7 Beta 2 Preview
While the “official” Beta 2 release of Internet Explorer 7 still awaits the upcoming Windows Vista Beta 2, Microsoft has publicly announced an updated build of its “Beta 2 Preview”.
Although official word on the changes in this new build have not been forthcoming (an ongoing problem in the IE7 preview process), this updated preview is said to be “layout complete”; that is, none of the changes to be made between now and the final release of Internet Explorer 7 should affect page layout. I wouldn’t bet on that, but I would certainly recommend this release as a solid basis on which to begin compatibility work on your own sites.
This release coincides with the opening of Microsoft’s three-day MIX 06 conference in Las Vegas, the web site for which, incredibly, does not display correctly in Firefox (the title image, “A 72-hour conversation:” is cropped so as to make it unreadable).
WS-DeadParrot
It’s rant time again (apologies - move along unless you’re feeling fiesty). It’s that REST vs. SOAP thing. There’s another round of debate traversing various blogs. This time it seems to be SOAP’s final death throes. If SOAP and all that makes little sense, know that you’re not alone and that you can happily ignore it and focus on smarter options.
Anyway, David summarizes from a distance while Tim Bray nailed the detail nicely a few weeks back in WS-Angst, which began with this post (which boils down to: “show me your data structures” vs. “show me your apis”) and finally ends up in this;
If you have Microsoft saying “well, the best approach is to make this elaborate infrastructure we’ve spent billions of dollars building out optional”, then the debate is over.
And make no mistake - it’s truly over. Forget whatever bizarre use cases WS-* support; when the real world starts doing this it’s time to move on. You want message routing? Try this…
< ?php
$in = ‘http://api.search.yahoo.com/WebSearchService’.
‘/V1/webSearch?appid=YahooDemo&results=10&output=php’.
‘&query=SOAP’;
$data = unserialize(file_get_contents($in));
file_put_contents(’/dev/null’,serialize($data));
?>
WS-Headless
On the one hand this is all forgivable human failing - too many architects spoil the WS-Broth. Design by …
AdWords Offers Demographic Site Targeting
Want your advertising message to reach 18-24 year old women?
Now you can with Google AdWords.
With the AdWords site tool, you can pick your preferences in up to three different demographic categories. The system will analyze your preferences and create a list of available Google Network sites that are popular with that audience. If you select multiple demographics, the AdWords system will look for sites that match all of your preferences. For instance, you might ask the site tool to look for sites popular with users who have children, or for sites popular with men earning a high income. The site tool will then return a list of sites whose audience tends to match those demographic descriptions.
The demographic data comes from comScore Media Metrix, which at the moment is only profiling US based visitors.
All the data comes from comScore’s panel, which is comprised of US-based Internet users who have filled out a demographic profile and installed software that allows comScore to track what Websites they visit.
This means, for the time being, your demographically targeted campaigns have to be focused on the US market.
More info.
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