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News Wire: The iPhone Cometh

by Kevin Yank

iPhone JavaScript Experiments: Day One
JavaScript guru Joe Hewitt is not impressed with the iPhone as a rich application development platform. Lack of mousedown and mousemove events, for example, prevent developers from taking advantage of the iPhone’s multi touch display.
(tags: javascript mobile)
Firebug for iPhone
Firebug creator Joe Hewitt sensed the need for a Firebug-caliber diagnostic tool for the iPhone. He has built an experimental Python-based server that you can run on your desktop computer to provide a remote JavaScript console for an app on the iPhone.
(tags: javascript mobile python software)
Building a desktop application with Ext, AIR, Aptana and Red Bull
A proof of concept ends up producing quite a polished result: a desktop-like to-do list application that will run either in the browser (with Google Gears offline storage) or on the desktop (with Adobe’s AIR).
(tags: javascript air google)
Flip
A cute online tool that will rotate plain Unicode text 180° (upside down). The result is not exactly accessible, but it is impressive.
(tags: design)
jQuery 1.1.3: 800%+ Faster, still 20KB
jQuery keeps getting better with a massive speed boost. A smattering of new features, a revamped animation system, and a rewritten events subsystem round out this update. Also in this announcement: jQuery UI, a new drag & …

Wednesday, July 4th, 2007 | Posted in Industry Links | No Comments »

News Wire: The Business Case for Web Standards

by Kevin Yank

Instant.js (now with IE 6/7 support)
Exploiting the dynamic graphics features of current browsers (e.g. the canvas element), instant.js (along with corner.js, glossy.js, and loupe.js) adds special effects to images on your page that you can configure by applying special CSS class names.
(tags: css design javascript software)
Beta of Opera Mini 4 is here!
Opera has released a beta version of the new Opera Mini 4 browser for mobile phones. You can play with the live demo in your desktop web browser, or install it on your phone for free.
(tags: opera mobile)
Google says Vista search changes not enough
In response to Google’s antitrust complaint regarding Windows Vista’s Desktop Search feature, Microsoft has pledged to make changes to the operating system, but Google claims the changes are not enough.
(tags: windows google microsoft search business)
Yet another one more thing… a new Web Inspector!
Although it remains unclear whether or not it will be released along with Safari 3, the Safari team has announced a brand new Web Inspector window that brings most of the power of Firebug (the only exception being JavaScript debugging) to Safari.
(tags: safari css javascript http)
Implementing Silverlight in 21 Days
This tale from the trenches documents how a team of developers on Novell’s Mono …

Thursday, June 28th, 2007 | Posted in Industry Links | No Comments »

News Wire: Look Who’s Back from the Dead

by Kevin Yank

WCAG Samurai
An anonymous group of developers, led by accessibility guru Joe Clark, has published an independant review of the W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0. Independently reviewed by two additional experts, this document was a year in the making.
(tags: accessibility standards)
Trying not to pretend
Accessibility guru Joe Clark has announced his departure from the world of web accessibility. He believes current web accessibility standards are both sufficient and largely irrelevant, now that developers know how to produce quality sites without them.
(tags: accessibility standards)
Safari 3 Public Beta
Apple has released a public beta of Safari 3 for both Windows (XP and Vista) and Mac OS X 10.4. See Matt Magain’s blog post on SitePoint for more details.
(tags: safari software)
WWDC 2007 Keynote
In his keynote address, Steve Jobs demoed the new Safari 3 beta, including the Web Clipping feature that allows Mac users to create widgets from portions of web pages. Also shown was the Safari-powered platform for Web 2.0 applications on the iPhone.
(tags: safari)
Camino 1.5 Released
Based on Mozilla’s Gecko 1.8.1 rendering engine, Camino 1.5 is lightweight browser with a native Mac user interface. The new version includes feed detection, spell checking, session saving, and improved tabbed browsing, among other new features.
(tags: software)
The All-New …

Wednesday, June 13th, 2007 | Posted in Industry Links | No Comments »

News Wire: Ruby on Everything

by Kevin Yank

JavaScript 1.8 Progress
jQuery’s John Resig summarizes enhancements to JavaScript that are now available in the nightly test builds of Firefox 3. Warning: this ain’t your father’s JavaScript!
(tags: javascript firefox)
Google Gears ORM
In what was an inevitable development, the first (simple) object-relational mapping library has been built on top of Google Gears, the client-side database framework launched last week by Google.
(tags: javascript google software)
Toggler
From Art & Science of CSS author Jonathan Snook, a nice, little script that enables users to select a range of checkboxes just by clicking and dragging the mouse over them.
(tags: javascript software)
HTML Entity Character Lookup
Even more useful than it looks at first glance, this page lets you look up HTML character entity codes by typing in text that’s “similar” to what you want (e.g. type “tm” to get the trademark symbol). Mac OS X Dashboard widget also available. (thanks lox)
(tags: html software)
Give your web app international appeal
A slick solution to translating your PHP-powered web site into multiple languages using the gettext functions, which are available in most PHP installations. (thanks paul.annesley)
(tags: php i18n)
Obscuring HTTP
Jeff Perrin provides a thoughtful critique of ASP.NET Web Forms based on the fact that they obscure the simplicity of HTTP in attempt to …

Wednesday, June 6th, 2007 | Posted in Industry Links | No Comments »

News Wire: Zend Framework is here

by Kevin Yank

Zend Framework 1.0.0 RC1 released
The “official” PHP web development framework nears its first release.
(tags: php software opensource)
What the heck is “VBx”?
The codename for Visual Basic 10, that’s what! Microsoft is still working to finalize the upcoming VB 9 release, but it has developed a wishlist for VB 10, which will return to the language’s dynamic roots by bringing it to the Dynamic Language Runtime.
(tags: .net microsoft)
Google Web Toolkit 1.4 Release Candidate
The next major release of GWT is almost ready for release. It features smaller script sizes, quicker startup times, a handful of powerful, new widgets, and the ImageBundle, which combines multiple images into a single file to boost performance.
(tags: google opensource gwt java)
Audible Ajax Episode 21: Dojo Offline on Google Gears
In an exclusive podcast interview, Dojo announces that its Dojo Offline library for supporting offline storage in browser-based web applications has already been updated to use the just-announced Google Gears offline storage engine by default.
(tags: google javascript opensource)
Last.fm Acquired By CBS
In a deal worth US$280m, US media giant CBS has acquired the music-based social networking site Last.fm.
(tags: business)
34 Places to Get Design Inspiration - Online and Off
There’s some serious design inspiration to be found in this list of sites, …

Friday, June 1st, 2007 | Posted in Industry Links | 6 Comments »

News Wire: Is PHP Doomed?

by Kevin Yank

PHP Interview questions from YAHOO
A few questions from the exam (or at least one of them) that Yahoo! administers to applicants for PHP development jobs. A few were a little bit “memorize the function names” for me, but others, like “How do you debug a PHP application?” are great!
(tags: php yahoo!)
Silicon Valley Could Use A Downturn Right About Now
TechCrunch, the blog that spreads the good news about the latest Silicon Valley start-up, says that, these days, the Valley sucks. Sounds like Bubble 2.0 is in full swing…
(tags: business)
Money for Nothing
Joe Hewitt, the creator of Firebug, responds to the TechCrunch rant. In his opinion, the repeating bubble-to-burst cycle we are seeing has little to do with technology, and a lot to do with the way the US government raises money by provoking inflation.
(tags: business politics)
Formal Weirdness
CSS guru Eric Meyer explores the unsolved (and unsolvable) issues with the styling of HTML forms. In short, if you try to make the current standards apply to forms in a consistent way, you lose the ability to even set the background color of a text field.
(tags: css standards)
JavaScript “Associative Arrays” Considered Harmful
Andrew Dupont busts the myth that JavaScript associative arrays should be created with …

Friday, May 25th, 2007 | Posted in Industry Links | No Comments »

With Simply JavaScript, the book I co-wrote with Cameron Adams, officially off to print, I’m now able to resume publication of the SitePoint News Wire. Thanks to those who continued to submit links during the downtime. Enjoy!

Pimpin’ Products Ain’t Easy
Amy Hoy demonstrates how to put your product’s best foot forward on the Web, and points out some common mis-steps you should aim to avoid. (thanks gnarly)
(tags: business marketing design)
The No Shit Guide To Supporting OpenID In Your Applications
Dan Webb: “With this post I’m going to blast through the absolute essentials you need to get started…” (thanks gnarly)
(tags: standards rubyonrails identity)
Instruct Search Engines to come back to site after you finish working on it
Shows how to send a 503 (Network Unavailable) error to search engines while you are making modifications to your site. (thanks apachedude)
(tags: http search apache php perl)
Objecty
A JavaScript library that makes it dead simple to embed video in your web pages. I’m not sure I like the custom attribute it requires, but its better than most alternatives. “It’s meant to re-swizzle the whole paradigm. (Or something.)” (thanks gnarly)
(tags: flash javascript media software)
EJSChart :: 100% Pure JavaScript Chart
Currently in beta, a JavaScript library for generating stylish and interactive …

Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007 | Posted in Industry Links | 1 Comment »

News Wire: W3C Launches HTML Working Group

by Kevin Yank

W3C Relaunches HTML Activity
The W3C’s new HTML working group, co-chaired by Microsoft’s Chris Wilson and the W3C’s Dan Connolly, was launched today. The group aims to have the next HTML recommendation out in 2010 (less than 4 years from now), and to converge with the WHATWG effort.
(tags: standards html)
Quick Apollo Update / Labs Release
According to Adobe’s Mike Chambers, the company is preparing to release the first public alpha version of the Apollo platform. This first release will be focused on Flex developers, with some initial undocumented support for HTML development.
(tags: adobe flash flex)
JScript IntelliSense in Visual Studio Orcas
The March pre-release of the next version of Visual Studio (code-named Orcas) includes improved JavaScript IntelliSense, much like that supported by other JavaScript-aware editors like Aptana and IntelliJ IDEA.
(tags: software microsoft asp.net ajax javascript)
*+ tests
James Edwards (aka brothercake) experiments with some CSS hacks that target IE7 only while being perfectly valid.
(tags: css ie)
W3C restarts HTML effort
Google’s Ian Hickson comments on the launch of the W3C HTML WG on behalf of the WHATWG. “Suprisingly, the W3C never actually contacted [us] during the chartering process.” He also provides instructions on how you can get involved in the new WG.
(tags: html standards)

Got a link you’d …

Friday, March 9th, 2007 | Posted in Industry Links | No Comments »

News Wire: Cracker adds backdoor to WordPress

by Kevin Yank

WordPress 2.1.1 dangerous, Upgrade to 2.1.2
The download of WordPress 2.1.1 was compromised by a cracker that added a backdoor security hole to the blog software. Creator Matt Mullenweg: “This is the kind of thing you pray never happens, but it did and now we’re dealing with it as best we can.”
(tags: php security)
Adobe Creative Suite 3 To Be Announced March 27th
Adobe will announce on March 27th the next major update to its suite of software applications including Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and Flash. The new versions are slated to ship sometime in Spring 2007.
(tags: software wysiwyg flash design)
New hacker trick may expose Oracle databases
Security researcher David Litchfield has found a way around the permissions system that assures the security of many Oracle databases, greatly increasing the severity of a number of common SQL injection vulnerabilities that affect these systems.
(tags: databases security)
Apache Tomcat 6.0.10
Apache has released Tomcat 6.0.10, a new major release of the free web server that contains reference implementations of the JavaEE servlets and JSP standards. This is the first stable version to support the new Servlet 2.5 and JSP 2.1 specs.
(tags: java software opensource apache)
Google is Testing New Adsense Ads
Scattered reports like this one indicate that …

Wednesday, March 7th, 2007 | Posted in Industry Links | 1 Comment »

News Wire: PHP Group accused of security incompetence

by Kevin Yank

PHP Group accused of security incompetence
“PHP developer Stefan Esser has said he will go ahead with plans to disclose dozens of security flaws in PHP in March, hitting back at criticism that the “Month of PHP bugs” project is nothing more than dangerous, self-serving publicity.”
(tags: php security)
URL Rewriting to Prevent Duplicate URLs
A brief refresher on why it’s a good idea to avoid having your content accessible via multiple URLs (note: redirects are fine), and how to implement URL rewriting on an IIS server so you don’t have to lose sleep over it.
(tags: iis http search)
Building the YUI Browser History Manager
Yahoo! engineer Julien Lecomte blogs about his experience writing the new Browser History Manager in the Yahoo! UI Library (YUI), and the difference between this new solution and previous aproaches to the Back button in Ajax applications.
(tags: yahoo! javascript)
Free Hosting of YUI Files from Yahoo!
Following in the footsteps of Dojo, which offered up free hosting of its JavaScript library thanks to AOL late last year, Yahoo! is allowing developers to link to the YUI library files on its own servers for free.
(tags: yahoo! javascript)
FeedBurner’s View of the Feed Market
Feed stats provider FeedBurner has released a fascinating report that compares the …

Saturday, February 24th, 2007 | Posted in Industry Links | 7 Comments »