Recent Blog Posts
Blogs ยป Archive for June, 2006
Jun 26, 2006 News Wire
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Fjax: Just say no
Simon Willison looks at a new “technology” called Fjax, which uses an invisible Flash movie to make AJAX requests instead of the browser’s native XMLHttpRequest object. In short: it is not useful in the least.
(tags: ajax flash javascript) -
A look at the new Content Referral CPA from Google AdSense
A more in-depth look at the new Cost Per Action (CPA) advertising that Google is testing. These ads will be distributed under a whole new system calle the Content Referral Network, which is separate from the current AdSense CPC network.
(tags: google advertising) -
Cellsea
A free tool that lets you upload a photo or point to one online and then manipulate it with a range of filters comparable to those you’ll find in any desktop photo retouching application. Preview the effects of your changes online, then download the finished product. Turns out this is at least a partial rip-off of similar service Snipshot.
(tags: design) -
Jitsu – Rich Web Application Framework
Yet another open source AJAX application framework. This one lets you build your UI using designer-friendly XML. A compiler reads in the Jitsu-specific XML and JavaScript and …
Understanding Routes with Routing Navigator
Rick Olson’s released a Routing Navigator plugin to help understand how the Rails routing system works for your application (note: it only supports edge rails, not v1.1.2).
To test it out:
- Create a new rails application$ rails routingtest
- Install edge rails into vendor$ cd routingtest$ rake rails:freeze:edge
- Install the routing navigator plugin$ script/plugin source http://svn.techno-weenie.net/projects/plugins$ script/plugin install routing_navigator
- Install the plugin’s CSS and JS file$ rake update_routing_navigator
- Start your application$ script/server
- Browse to /routing_navigator
- Modify your routes, rinse and repeat
- You’ll also want to add the following to the head of your layout if you want to inspect routes on any of your view pages:
<%= javascript_include_tag :defaults, ‘routing_navigator’ %><%= stylesheet_link_tag ‘routing_navigator’ %>
For the lazy and curious: the routes generated for a base Rails application:
Route
Significant Keys
Requirements
Conditions
/:controller/service.wsdl/
[:controller, :action]
{:action=>”wsdl”}
{}
/:controller/:action/:id/
[:controller, :action, :id]
{}
{}
…
An easy way to determine the best marketing strategies
Here is an easy way for you to determine the marketing strategies that work best:
Take a look at the professionals you’ve hired recently, and figure out how you ended up hiring them.
In my case here are examples:
- Physical therapist for tennis elbow: Referred by a tennis buddy who raves about him.
- Production for website: Radio ad followed by referral from someone in the industry.
- Boxing photographer: Referral from someone in industry.
- Restaurant: Great review in paper.
- Accountant: Listed on website as Quickbooks expert, then I interviewed him about his other capabilities.
- Pool cleaner: Referred by my in-laws, who use him.
- Hair cut: Referred by my wife.
- Lawyer: Google search for local attorneys along with name recognition from advertising and news about them.
- Financial planner: Met him on the tennis court.
- Web designer: Listed in a marketing book with reference guide to top web designers who know what they are doing in selling info products.
So in my case, I conclude that referrals are key, as are online listings.
Obviously this is a simple and non-scientific analysis, but give it a try and see what you discover. What do you conclude about how you buy, and how you should market?
The power of String.prototype.split() … almost
If you feel you’re not getting enough respect as a web developer, here’s a nice pie [profanity warning - don't click if you're easily offended] to throw at people.
Actually think the “time spent wishing a slow painful death on Bill Gates” segment needs expanding – Bill isn’t directly to blame. In fact it would be great if the IE team could be more forthcoming and put names to features, so we know exactly who to swear at: “Hi, I’m [insert name] and I’m the guy that put an undefined value at end of your array, every time you leave that trailing comma, resulting in bugs that will keep you amused for hours :)”.
A little bitter at the moment after getting stung by this special while playing with a Javascript version of this. Despite all things AJAXy, writing cross browser code still feels like flying blind. Allow me a moment of complaining…
From the spec (p103 / 104);
If separator is a regular expression that contains capturing parentheses, then each time separator is
matched the results (including any undefined results) of the capturing parentheses are spliced into the
output array. [...]
In fact this behaviour is nothing special to Javascript.
For …
Jun 22, 2006 News Wire
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We Now Support Microformats
Yahoo! Local rolls out support for the hCalendar, hCard and hReview microformats, and points to a number of useful tools for accessing this information.
(tags: microformats yahoo) -
Google Testing AdSense Cost Per Action (CPA)
Google is handing out invites to a new program where instead of getting paid for click-throughs, you can get paid for sales made through your AdSense ads.
(tags: advertising google) -
Sandy 1.0 BETA
Sandy is an ActionScript library for generating 3D graphics in Flash. Looks awesome!
(tags: flash) -
Download a Flex / PHP Framework, with Source Code
An excellent way to get started in the still-experimental area of building Flex applications with PHP on the server side. A skeletal application ready for you to deploy and then modify.
(tags: flex php) -
Bindows – First Ajax Framework to Support Accessibility
Before the rest, there was Bindows — perhaps the first mature framework for building desktop-like AJAX applications. Now this framework is the first to support section 508 accessibility for screen readers and magnifiers.
(tags: ajax accessibility) -
a parser generator for PHP – *finally*
Need to parse esoteric text file formats in PHP? What you …
Jun 21, 2006 News Wire
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RE: What Web Application framework should you use?
Matt Raible agrees the situation in the Java web framework world is confusing, but believes that Struts Action 2 is the best bet of all the players right now.
(tags: java) -
A beginners guide to Dependency Injection
A nice “no prior knowledge” introduction to the curly topic of Dependency Injection (also known as Inversion of Control) as it applies to enterprise Java development.
(tags: java programming) -
hKit Microformats Toolkit for PHP
Drew McLellan is developing a PHP library to easily parse microformats (e.g. hCard) out of a given URL or HTML code string.
(tags: php microformats) -
Standardista Table Sorting (A client-side JavaScript Table Sorting module)
Nice, unobtrusive script for adding sorting facilities to any HTML table. It’s been around for awhile, but it’s so slick we’re posting it anyway.
(tags: javascript) -
Scoopt Words – sell your blog content to the media…
Neat concept. Sign up your blog and get paid when editors wish to license your content.
(tags: business) -
How much traffic does the top keyword position garner on Google?
Chris Smith explains how he used a small hiccup in his Google rank to estimate the difference …
The Inevitable AJAX Book
The following is republished from the Tech Times #141.
Perhaps inevitably, SitePoint has published an AJAX book. Build Your Own AJAX Web Applications goes on sale today through sitepoint.com, and comes with a free Introduction to AJAX video tutorial by yours truly.
I remember hanging out with some of the big players in the computer book publishing world at O’Reilly’s sales conference in Sebastopol last year. One of the reps responsible for selling all of the companies’ products to book stores cornered Matt Mickiewicz and I: "We’ve got six AJAX books coming out in the next three months. Where’s yours?"
Truth be told, SitePoint has never been the first to publish a book on a given subject. We prefer to hang back a little and wait until we have something unique to say.
Thus, you’ll find that Build Your Own AJAX Web Applications is an AJAX book that stands out from the crowd. Where we have seen other books on the subejct fail time and again is in providing an answer to the question of accessibility: how can you produce AJAX applications that don’t disrupt the browser’s …
Flickr, Zooomr and API Parity
The following is republished from the Tech Times #141.
An issue I touched on in my editorial on Web 2.0 Connectedness bubbled to the surface this week with news that Flickr had denied a request from competitor Zooomr for access to the Flickr API so that Zooomr could import users’ Flickr photos and metadata (e.g. tags) for them.
Now before you hit the warpath, I should point out that Flickr has approved requests for API access from other competitors like Riya and Tabblo in the past. Something about the directness of the competition that Zooomr represented for Flickr tipped the scales, however, and Flickr made the call. Via email to Zooomr:
…we choose not to support use of the API for sites that are a straight alternative to Flickr.
Founder Stewart Butterfield even shared his reasoning on the FlickrCentral forums:
With respect to granting a commercial API license to a direct competitor: we might not. [...] In the case of a truly direct competitor (and, so far, we have very few), we probably wouldn’t. And I don’t see that as malicious on our part: why should we burn bandwidth and CPU cycles sending stuff directly to their …
ActiveRecord receives pessimistic locking
Jeremy Kemper just added pessimistic locking to ActiveRecord:
Person.transaction do
person = Person.find(1, :lock => true)
person.visits += 1
person.save!
end
Jun 20, 2006 News Wire
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Microsoft Expression Web Designer
A brief review of Microsoft’s new competitor to Dreamweaver, recently released as a public preview for free download.
(tags: wysiwyg software) -
window.onload (again)
More progress on running JavaScript as soon as the document has loaded, but not waiting until external resources like images have loaded. Includes fixes for IE and Safari, and Opera 9 now supports the DOMContentLoaded property like Firefox.
(tags: javascript safari ie opera) -
Spam Filtering Statistics from oreilly.com
A daunting look at just how bad the spam problem really is.
(tags: email) -
How to Manage Memory in PHP
A look under the hood of PHP’s memory management facilities.
(tags: php) -
What Web Application framework should you use?
An incisive, if inconclusive look at the current state of play of Java web application frameworks.
(tags: java) -
Defecating on a JDK
A typically venemous reaction to Sun’s announcement that the JDK for Java 6 will include a pure Java database (Apache Derby). Turns out the database won’t be in the JRE, and nobody really asked for it, so is Sun just polluting the Java platform?
(tags: java opensource) - Java SE 6 Beta 2 …