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Blogs » Archive for December, 2006
News Wire: Google Rips Off Yahoo!
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Google Blatantly Copies Yahoo!?
Google has apparently ripped off Yahoo!’s page to market a branded version of Internet Explorer 7. The designs match very closely, and the screenshot has been tweaked in a few conspicuous places.
(tags: google yahoo! ie) -
Java Platform, Standard Edition 6 Release
A major new version of Java is now generally available. Major new features include scripting language support, core support for web services, improved performance, subpixel antialiasing on LCD monitors, and better support for desktop OS features.
(tags: java) -
calc5.com – online calculator with symbolic calculations and graphs
This graphic calculator is an amazing example of what can be accomplished with the canvas support in browsers like Firefox, Safari, and Opera. In Internet Explorer, which doesn’t support canvas, graphs are generated more slowly with VML. (thanks lox)
(tags: javascript html) -
HTML Pie Chart at TheGoogleCache
Web-based tool for creating pie charts, resulting in a downloadable image you can post to your blog or web site. Based on GDGraph library for PHP. (thanks jamesbooker)
(tags: design php) -
Is your plugin Naughty or Nice?
WordPress 2.1 is on the verge of release. This post provides vital pointers for …
News Wire: Developers Don’t Design?
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kuler
Wicked-cool color theme creation tool from Adobe Labs. Generate themes using different color combination algorithms, rate themes that other users have shared, and download any theme you like for use in Adobe Creative Suite 2 applications.
(tags: design) -
Showing Good Form
This entry in the 24 ways series provides a fantastic example of why using a table to lay out a form—even when it has a tabular structure—is not a good idea. Screen readers don’t process tables and forms at once, and so your form isn’t accessible!
(tags: accessibility css html) -
Algorithms
More than 300 pages and a free download (but possibly not for much longer), this late draft version of the new book, “Algorithms” by Sanjoy Dasgupta, Christos Papadimitriou, and Umesh Vazirani contains a wealth of information on programming algorithms.
(tags: programming) -
JUnit Reloaded
A very nice run-down of the changes that have been made in JUnit 4. If you’re familiar with test-driven development and Java, this article may be all you need to get started with unit testing in Java.
(tags: programming java) -
Google Checkout Now Free Until 2008
Google Checkout will continue to waive its 2% + $0.20 fee …
Handling a Resource Crunch: A Lesson Learned the Hard Way
The first Friday of every month is always an interesting day for me. I review all of the timesheets and invoices for the previous month, approve the payroll, initiate wire transfers to pay offshore vendors, and get a clear view of how business went during the previous month. I’ll also see how things are shaping up for the following month and look for ways to avoid any imminent problems or conflicts.
I was pleased to learn that both December and January will probably be record months for our offshore development group, with 100% increase in revenues over the same period last year. This is terrific news, but it’s not as easy as it seems. First, our resources are effectively at 100% allocation for the next 12 weeks. This is great for profit margins but also brings the risk of having to say ‘no’ to a client with an immediate need, or have clients waiting weeks for simple services. We’ve worked hard to gain our clients’ trust so either of these options is unattractive.
To make matters even harder, my wife and I spend January at our place in Southeast Asia and there’s almost no Internet (or even phone) connectivity there. …
News Wire: “Flash Killer” WPF/E Preview
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Anatomy of a Drag and Drop
An enlightening breakdown of just what makes a JavaScript-powered drag-and-drop effect work, and how the implementations of the major JavaScript libraries (script.aculo.us, YUI, and mootools) differ from one another.
(tags: javascript) -
Beta II: The Audio Fix
A bit late off the mark on this one, but beta 2 of Flash Player 9 for Linux is now out, and it contains big improvements to audio output, which was reportedly flakey in the first beta.
(tags: flash linux) -
ColorJack: DHTML Color Picker
Small and simple, this color picker control is free to use in your own projects. Unfortunately, the sample code is quite obtrusive and fails completely when JavaScript is turned off. Anyone up for crafting an unobtrusive version of this?
(tags: javascript software) -
Google Code – Updates: JSON in GData
JSON is now supported by Google Base, Blogger, and Calendar feeds, greatly simplifying mashups based on these services. Still waiting for JSON Google Search results though. (thanks andrewk)
(tags: ajax javascript google) -
Rails 1.2: Release Candidate 1
Again, playing catch-up a little with this one. Rails 1.2 is nearing release with the addition of REST-aware controllers, …
CFCs for the common developer Part 2
So last time we learned the basics of creating a CFC and the overall structure of a very basic CFC. Today we’re going to talk about the different ways in which we can use this CFC in our code.
So how do we access this function in our CFC? Can we just include it into a CFML page using the CFInclude tag or is there more to it? If you guessed there’s more to it then you are spot on! CFCs have a few ways in which they can be used, tag based, script based and yet another tag based implementation.
Tag Based Implementation #1
Now CFCs ,at their most basic level, are a lot like custom tags. In order to use the functions you create in a CFC you have to call them and then output the data they return. So for our greeting CFC we would call it like so:
<cfinvoke component=”greeting” method=”getGreeting” returnvariable=”myGreeting”>
<cfoutput>#myGreeting#</cfoutput>
This will display Welcome guest! Enjoy your visit and please come back soon. wherever we output the variable myGreeting. Here we are using the CFInvoke tag to “invoke” our CFC, which is just a fancy way of saying “to call”, “instantiate” or even “create”. The CFInvoke tag takes a good amount of attributes but we only care …
Sql Server Full-Text Search Protips Part 2: CONTAINS vs. FREETEXT
Full-Text Search is neato! And here is how to get started using it.
Free Video: Recognizing Web 2.0
I’ve just put up a free video of the slides from my talk, Recognizing Web 2.0, which I delivered recently at a meeting of the Victorian Association for Library Automation (VALA).
The following is republished from the Tech Times #153.
In the week between being asked to speak on the subject of Web 2.0 and delivering the talk, I spent a lot of time turning over in my head the loose collection of concepts that have come to form the foundation for Web 2.0.
I’ve covered what Web 2.0 is about in the past; however, presenting this talk to a largely non-technical audience meant taking a fresh look at these ideas. As I assembled my slides, here’s what I came up with:
- sites as applications
The progress of browser technology has enabled developers to produce richer user experiences that, in some cases, enable web sites to take the place of desktop applications, with the benefit that your data is stored online and is accessible anywhere you can get Internet access.
- user participation and the wisdom of crowds
…
Managing Client Expectations: User Acceptance Documentation
A common question on Sitepoint’s Business & Legal forum is, “I’ve delivered what I promised but my client keeps asking for small tweaks, support, and advice. How do I determine when a project is over, and how do I communicate this to my client?”
Most web developers have experienced the ‘never-ending project’ and can sympathize with a developer in that predicament. It’s not easy to balance great service with the need to put some boundaries and limits on what you are willing to do for your client, and it’s especially tough when you are just starting out and you need to have 100% client retention!
The good news is that there’s an easy and simple way to prevent this problem: the User Acceptance document.
User Acceptance is just what it sounds like – an acknowledgement from your client that you’ve fulfilled your part of the deal (as set out in the original contract) and the project can end. User Acceptance is commonplace in the software industry and usually consists of a User Acceptance (UA) document which the client signs and returns once the work has been completed
to their satisfaction. In addition to putting some legal structure and accountability around the …
News Wire: Liquid vs. Fixed
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Resolution vs. browser size vs. fixed or adaptive width
An excellent collection of links to the current thinking on fixed width vs fluid width layouts (and the grey areas in between).
(tags: css design usability) -
IE expressions ignore CSS media types
Using Microsoft’s proprietary CSS expressions in your screen style sheet will see those property values applied when printing as well, despite your having a completely separate print style sheet.
(tags: ie css) -
script.aculo.us morph effects
script.aculo.us 1.7 beta 1 is out, and includes new CSS morphing effects. Specify a new set of CSS properties that an element should morph to, and script.aculo.us will take care of animating its colors, border sizes, and more.
(tags: css javascript software) -
How To Subclass The JavaScript Array Object
JavaScript guru Dean Edwards discovers a way around difficulties with extending JavaScript’s Array object in Internet Explorer by stealing an iframe’s copy of the Array object. Dean suggests this technique might resolve inter-script interference entirely.
(tags: javascript) -
Thoughts About How to Subclass The JavaScript Array Object
Following up on Dean Edwards’s breakthrough using an iframe to extend the Array object, Hedger Wang instead uses …
Free at Last: Firebug 1.0 Beta
Joe Hewitt has released the first public beta of Firebug 1.0, the single most indispensable Firefox extension for web developers (yes, it’s even more useful than Web Developer—which I realize is a big call). What’s more, he’s keeping it free.
In defiance of realistic expectation, each version of Firebug has easily been twice as cool as the one that came before it, and this new release is no different. Here are my favorite enhancements:
- You can undock Firebug into its own window—multi-monitor users rejoice!
- The DOM inspector now offers full in-place editing of your document structure, not just attribute values.
- The DOM inspector’s CSS tab reveals all applicable CSS rules for elements, including properties inherited from ancestor elements, and lets you toggle on/off and edit individual style declarations.
- The DOM inspector’s Layout tab pops up guides, rulers, and shaded boxes in the main browser view to illustrate the CSS box model as it applies to each element that you hover your mouse over.
- The Net tab graphs the request times for all files that make up a page, meaning I can just about throw away the Tamper Data extension, which I previously …
