Recent Blog Posts
Blogs » Archive for December, 2007
Cookies and sessions in Rails 2.0
As we know, HTTP - the protocol that the web is built on is stateless - meaning that every transaction with the server doesn’t know anything about the previous transactions. To get around this, we use cookies to track session and emulate statefulness. Basically a cookie is stored on the users computer, which provides a key that the server can use to retrieve any session information.
In previous versions of Rails, we had a number of choices for our session stores - PStore, ActiveRecordStore, DRbStore and MemoryStore. PStore was always the default, which stored session data in a temporary file. This scheme did have a number of limitations such as race conditions in certain situations (That is, if two instances tried to write to the same session at the same time, your data could be come clobbered - storing a large information from an number of AJAX calls is one cause) as well as scaling issues - running multiple servers is pretty well impossible using PStore.
As a result most production systems would use one of the other stores, notably ActiveRecordStore which stores all of the session data in the system database.
To get around these limitations in PStore, Rails 2.0 will be …
24 Ways 2007 Underway
For the third year running, 24 ways (to impress your friends), the annual advent calendar for Web designers, has begun. For the twenty-four days leading up to December 25th, the site will publish one mini-article per day from the Web’s best and brightest.
The entries so far include:
- Transparent PNGs in Internet Explorer 6 by Drew McLellan
- Get To Grips with Slippy Maps by Andrew Turner
- The Neverending (Background Image) Story by Elliot Jay Stocks
- Capturing Caps Lock by SitePoint author Stuart Langridge
Congratulations to the team behind 24 ways on putting together yet another dose of inspiration to tide us through this busy festive season!
@media Ajax Presentation: Metaprogramming JavaScript
Dan Webb, one of the seven rock star authors of SitePoint’s upcoming title The Art & Science of JavaScript, gave a presentation at @media Ajax last week titled
Metaprogramming JavaScript.
Dan has been good enough to make his slides available via slideshare. While they’re obviously less meaningful without the accompanying audio, it’s an interesting topic and the slides are worth persisting if you’re curious about just what is possible with JavaScript.
| View | Upload your own
Incidentally, the chapter that Dan contributed to the book covers the same topic — it’s one of those rare chapters about a programming language that makes you go “Wow!” (it’s definitely more of the “science” than the “art”).
The book’s available in January, folks. And it’s a cracker.
ColdFusion Technical Journals, Past and Present
The latest issue of Fusion Authority Quarterly Update (FAQU), the only print journal on ColdFusion, is now available from Fusion Authority.
First, a bit of background. Once upon a time, there was a ColdFusion magazine, The ColdFusion Developer’s Journal (CFDJ). Produced as part of a stable of technical journals by publishing company Sys-Con Media, it was a glossy affair, packed with advertisements, and included articles by many of the world’s best ColdFusion authors.
The publishing world is cut-throat. Over time, advertising started to take over the content, and nowhere was this more apparent than the accompanying web site, which became overrun with popups, intrusive flash ads which covered the articles and auto-playing video commercials. The quality of the print magazine started to decrease, and allegations of Sys-Con using blog material without permission started to rile developers.
At some point, Adobe decided it no longer wanted to support Sys-Con by purchasing ads in CFDJ, given it had lost a lot of community support. Sys-Con inked a deal with Microsoft instead, and decided to discontinue CFDJ in favour of a publication on Silverlight. Which was all fine - no one would have missed it much - until they decided to announce the new …
SitePoint CSS Reference Closed Beta
You’ve probably heard some whispers – well let’s be honest, some very loud shouting – about a new, super cool reference site we’ve been working on here at SitePoint HQ. First off the blocks is the CSS reference that our technical editor Andrew has already claimed is going to rock your world! Written by SitePoint Forums veterans Tommy Olsson (AutisticCuckoo) and Paul O’Brien (Paul O’B), this reference is designed to be the definitive reference for Cascading Style Sheets on the Web.
Beginning today, we have launched a closed beta of the SitePoint CSS Reference. For the next month or so, access will be restricted to SitePoint Forums members signed up before December 1, 2007.
If you’re reading this, chances are good that you’re included in that group. If you are, we hope you will get in, look around, poke, prod, tear it apart, and tell us what you think. We’re looking for all kinds of feedback from usability, functionality, and performance to any typos you might find in the content.
After a month of recording your feedback, we’ll implement as many of your recommendations as possible before letting the rest …
Getting those first 10 Clients
In my first post, I asked for comments from readers about topics they would be keen to see me cover. A number of people responded with some fantastic questions, with a handful at least asking along the lines of marketing, and how I went from sitting at an empty desk, to getting the first few months work in the door.
Well, for starters, I cheated. I had worked in the web industry for a number of years, so I already had quite a few contacts, and one of the first things I did was get in touch with other freelancers, particularly developers (remember, I started as a designer) and offered to help them out with any overflow work they couldn’t handle.
I ended up with a handful of clients that way, and some immediate work, however what I found was also interesting. I expected to do the work behind the veil of their business names, however I actually found that these colleagues trusted me enough to deal directly with the clients, and just provide a small kickback to the freelancer. Sweet! Not only did they send me work, they trusted I would do a good job, and I therefore made sure I …
Free Podcast: The Principles of Beautiful Web Design
Jason “the designer man” Beaird, author of SitePoint’s The Principles of Beautiful Web Design (currently available in a limited, hard-cover signature edition), recently gave a presentation as a guest lecturer to the User-Centered Interface Design class run by Aarron Walter at The Art Institute of Atlanta.
Jason’s talk drew upon the core design principles he discusses in his book, and provided students with some practical advice on what to expect in an agency environment. After the talk, Jason joined a class critique of a redesign project students had been working on. I think students were a little nervous about being critiqued by the guy who wrote a best-selling book on design, but once they realized how down to earth Jason is, they gained their confidence back.
Aarron has made the audio and slides from Jason’s talk available on his personal site.
Download:
- Jason Beaird’s Guest Lecture Podcast (MP3, 43MB)
- Jason’s Presentation Slides (PDF, 4.3 MB)
Firefox Rendering Bug Fixed in Record Time
When Mozilla released Firefox 2.0.0.10 last Monday, the release notes made it out to be a relatively minor update correcting, as usual, a small number of security issues. As it turned out, however, the release contained a nasty surprise for developers whose sites relied on Canvas.drawImage, a JavaScript feature of recent browsers that lets developers display images with effects like rotation and drop shadows.
Firefox 2.0.0.10 completely broke this feature, causing images to disappear from sites that relied upon it. JavaScript effects libraries like instant.js suddenly stopped working, and developers had no way to fix the problem, because, as far as Firefox was concerned, everything was working perfectly.
A bug report was quickly filed, and helpless developers began reporting in. “Customers are complaining because their Firefox automatically updated to 2.0.0.10 and now they can no longer order photo prints in our shop,” wrote Klaus Reimer, highlighting just how serious a bug like this can be in the real world.
Mozilla developers mobilized quickly, and were able to produce a fixed version of the browser just 16 hours after the original bug report. The release team then took over to push Firefox 2.0.0.11 out the door in record time. “It’ll be the fastest turnaround …
Sponsored Links
Logo Design, Web page Design and more!
- Custom logo designs created ‘just for you’.
- Pick the design you like best.
- Only pay if you’re satisfied with the result.
Download sample chapters of any of our popular books.
