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Blogs » Archive for August, 2008
Target Settles Accessibility Lawsuit for $6 Million
Over two years ago, Bruce Sexton tried to get Target to make their web site, target.com, more accessible for blind users. Target refused, so Sexton sued. This week, Target have finally agreed to make changes to their site to accommodate visually impaired visitors, and will pay damages of $6 million to those affected.
Tagging is Not Just for Content
We all know what tags are in web terms, right? Well what if we extended the concept of tagging content, to include users with different levels of access, resulting in an infinitely extensible user access system. How else could tags be applied?
Rasmus Lerdorf: PHP Frameworks? Think Again.
This is the fist time I have heard Rasmus Lerdorf speak and it was entertaining to say the least. Refreshing would another way to describe it, I enjoy hearing real opinions and not holding back — Rasmus doesn’t hold back.
Just a short background, Rasmus Lerdorf is the creator of PHP and still continues as a core developer to the PHP project.
PHP frameworks
In his address he choose to highlight PHP frameworks (Drupal was not spared) and how poor they are at performance. Not only are they slow, but their "jack-of-all-trades" attitude leads developers down the wrong path by not using what is best for the job. He continues on by stating that PHP developers really need to think about performance for not only scalability reasons but for green reasons. If programs were more efficient it would cut the number of data centres and would reduce energy needs as a result. In our newly emerging age of energy awareness this does become an important aspect and I am glad that he is raising awareness.
Back to frameworks, he started by discussing a database heavy Twitter mashup that he created. This does a lot …
Would You Switch To IE8?
Sure, you use Firefox for web development. But all those plugins can really slow things down. Given the recent inroads Microsoft have made on their flagship browser, would you ever consider switching (back) to IE?
All’s Quiet on the CF Front…
This week was strangely quiet. Nothing much on the frameworks front; Open BlueDragon and Railo kept to themselves. Hmmm, looks like everyone is heads down coding… let’s see what they’ve got for us.
Code n’ Concepts
- Adobe have released a technote briefly demonstrating how images can be streamed. And if you’re working with CFIMAGE, Scott Pinkston reminds you to make sure you apply all the patches lest you find yourself pulling your hair out unnecessarily
- Ben Nadel’s OOPhoto project is still progressing – the latest installment is Encapsulating Form Processing In The Service / Facade Layer
- Raymond Camden answers a reader’s query about populating tooltips with a CFC and beats up on the CFFEED tag
- Following up from his ruminations on Business Logic, Doug Boude attempts to define just what is Application Logic
- Doug Hughes introduces the CFANT project, a toolkit for scripting remote CF deployments
- The MXUnit unit testing framework has been updated to 1.0.2
Are you a fan of nested sets to represent tree structures in your database? Nested Set Trees – a ColdFusion library for managing the various operations involved - has hit version 0.8.
SQL Injection attacks …
Attending Drupalcon 2008 - Szeged, Hungary
Well, I had intended to title this “On my way to…” but my travel has taken longer and my net access has been shorter than I had anticipated. Anyway, I find myself now in the lovely town of Szeged Hungary. Szeged is a small, attractive little town with tree-lined streets that has been converted to Drupaltown. There are over 500 Drupal devoted in attendance with what looks like a great line up of sessions and BoFs.
I find myself here to track what is the current state of the art in Drupal land. I have been using Drupal extensively for a number of community based and science publishing systems and have been very happy with the results. So I am keen to learn what else I can add to my toolkit — after all, Drupal has something like a billion contributed modules and I have only gone through a hundred or so ;)
The other key reason I am here is to see the uptake of Semantic Web technologies inside of Drupal. There are a few sessions directly addressing semantic tech, but I wanted to have the fireside chats with …
Another 100 Free Adobe AIR Books: First In, Best Dressed!
We’re at it again.
If you missed your opportunity last week to pick up a copy of the excellent pocket guide, Adobe AIR For JavaScript Developers (that’s the dead-tree version), then now’s your chance to grab a copy again.
We just set live the second of Akash Mehta’s tutorials on building applications with AIR, Learn Adobe AIR, Part 2: Build A Customer Management App. This time round, Akash looks at expanding the user interface of an AIR-powered app, by exploring how to implement drag-and-drop and window management features. He also touches on menu construction and native window interaction. It’s all useful stuff if you’re experimenting with Adobe AIR development.
And once again, we have a quiz, so you can test how much of the article you absorbed. The first 100 people to complete the quiz will receive a free copy of the pocket guide, Adobe AIR For JavaScript Developers (once again, that’s the print version) delivered to your door.
Plus the book is still available as a free PDF download, so if you miss out on the print version, be sure to grab it in digital form. This free PDF offer is available until the end …
6 Ways to Get Paid by Sharing Music
Sharing music online could get you in hot water with the RIAA, or it could make you money. We present six web sites that will actually pay you (either with cash or free music) to share your music with other users.
Better Than Free
The web has slowly cultivated a culture of free—everyone expects everything for nothing. Competing with free is difficult, but it’s not impossible… you just have to know what sort of things people are still willing to pay for.
Will Digital Textbooks Work for Students?
Amazon is reportedly going after the $5.5 billion college textbook market with the next version of their Kindle eBook reader. On the face that sounds great — cheaper, digital textbooks for students — but a new report finds that right now, digital textbooks are actually more expensive.
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