In This Issue...

• Introduction
• Acid3: Pulling Browser Behavior Into Line
• Sun Buys MySQL For $1 Billion
• Cross-site Ajax in Firefox 3
• New Technical Articles
• Techy Forum Threads

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Introduction

Kevin has his hands full finishing off our next book, so this issue of the Tech Times has been written by sitepoint.com's Managing Editor, Matthew Magain.

It's an honour to be asked to write a guest spot for the Tech Times -- and luckily for you, dear reader, it's been an exciting couple of weeks in the web development world!

The news I'm most excited about is the launch of our first title for the year: The Art & Science of JavaScript. I hope you'll forgive my obvious bias when I state that this book is a must-have that will change how you approach JavaScript forever!

The book was authored by a jaw-droppingly impressive team of JavaScript experts, and contained within are some of the most cutting-edge projects that you can tackle using the language -- creating mashups, rendering sexy graphics, and even building a fully accessible 3D maze using CSS and JavaScript! This is most certainly not a beginner's book; it's one that will inspire you to build cool stuff.

We're also pleased to announce that Tech Times readers who are thinking of attending the Web Directions North conference in Vancouver, BC in a couple of weeks are eligible for a discount of $50 off the standard ticket price.

Just enter the code "WDN-SP" when purchasing your ticket, and you'll receive it at the discounted price of CDN $845. Click here to register to attend.

Acid3: Pulling Browser Behavior Into Line

With the announcement late last year that IE8 passes the Acid2 test for CSS rendering (or will pass, when it's released), the Web Standards Project team members have their sights set on the next phase of their mission to encourage browser makers to provide a consistent experience for web users.

While Acid2 focused on the static rendering of HTML and CSS, the Acid3 test (which is still under development) will put browsers through their paces to assess how well they implement the Document Object Model and ECMAScript specifications. If you've ever spent any time trying to work out why even the simplest script doesn't behave consistently across multiple browsers, this is bound to be good news for you.

What's even more exciting is that you can contribute to the test!

Ian Hickson is the primary driving force behind Acid3, and to date has compiled 84 scripting tests. In order for there to be an even, round number of 100 tests, Ian has asked for the public to contribute an additional 16 tests. He's even created a simple test development console, which you can use to verify that your test returns the value that it should. You've still got a few days to submit, and the authors of any tests that are accepted will receive credit in the comments of the final script.

If you know your JavaScript (and, more importantly, you know your browser bugs), this could be a very unique opportunity to contribute to an interoperable Web.

And if you're curious how the browsers stack up, John Resig has published screenshots of how each of the browsers perform against the (still incomplete) test. Initial results suggest that all of the browsers have a fair amount of work ahead of them in order to pass the test, but it's fair to say that IE has more than most. I'm sure this comes as no surprise to many of you.

Read the blog entry:

JavaScript & CSS Blog: Stylish Scripting by Matthew Magain Help Create The Acid3 Test For JavaScript Compliance (No comments)

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Sun Buys MySQL For $1 Billion

Open source enthusiasts were reeling this week when Sun Microsystems announced that it will be purchasing MySQL AB, the company behind the development of the popular MySQL database software, for US $1 billion.

The spin from both camps was positive, but what does the deal mean for web developers? And what impact is it likely to have on other open source projects?

To attempt to answer these questions, we need to look at a number of factors, including Sun's history with open source technologies, its competitors, and the success of other open source technologies that have been commercialized.

While it's not without its detractors, there's no denying that Sun has a pretty solid history when it comes to involvement in the open source world. The company claims to be the biggest contributor to the open source community, a claim that, based upon its release of the Solaris source code in 2005, and the Java programming language in 2006, is difficult to refute.

But there is other evidence of Sun understanding the value of keeping software open source and free: projects like OpenOffice.org and NetBeans have healthy communities and promising road maps. In fact, if you examine Sun's current offerings to the corporate world, the only key component missing from the portfolio (and one that competitors such as Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft already offer) is a database. MySQL, with over 10 million installations worldwide (including high-traffic sites such as Google and Facebook) is a natural fit.

One concern that web developers may have is that the licensing terms will change -- what if Sun decides to start charging a licensing fee for each of the installations of MySQL?

In my opinion, this just won't happen, simply because Sun realizes that it hasn't bought a database -- it's bought a community. A community of employees, developers, and clients.

Related to this is the question of whether development of the cross-platform releases of MySQL will stagnate, with Sun's energy being focused on compatibility with the Solaris platform. Here's what MySQL's VP of Community Relations, Kaj Arnö, had to say on the matter:

"I don't expect (the development of MySQL on Solaris) in any way to be at the cost of other popular operating systems (Linux, Windows, Mac OS/X, other Unixes etc.) or development environments (PHP, Ruby on Rails, Perl, Python, ODBC, C++, C#, VB etc.). MySQL grew with LAMP, and MySQL without LAMP at its core is simply unimaginable. It was MySQL's part of LAMP that interested Sun in the first place. Hence I don't see Sun having a platform migration strategy, but to continue to be an integral part of the dot in .com."

In short, Sun understands the business model around open source software, and it wouldn't have invested $1 billion into a company only to screw over its users for a short-term profit when the long-term prospects -- driving MySQL into the corporate arena with paid support -- look so bright. There are plenty of other open source databases (PostgreSQL, for example) with comparable features and performance that customers would quickly migrate to if they were unhappy.

And as for the figure paid by Sun? While some would suggest the number was low given the size of the MySQL user base, $1 billion is a lot of money in anyone's eyes. Let's take a look at some other recent open source acquisitions [source]:

• US$210 million for SUSE Linux (Novell)
• US$400 million for JBoss (Red Hat)
• US$500 million for XenSource (Citrix)
• US$350 million for Zimbra (Yahoo!)

I'd say the MySQL team would be feeling pretty happy with themselves right now. Who said there was no money in open source software?

Cross-site Ajax in Firefox 3

John Resig has posted a good summary (including demo code) explaining how one might write cross-site XMLHttpRequest calls, a feature currently implemented by the beta 2 release of Firefox 3:

"In a nutshell, there are two techniques that you can use to achieve your desired cross-site-request result: specifying a special access-control header for your content, or including an access-control processing instruction in your XML."

What's particularly exciting is the code that's required to take advantage of this feature. For example, to request an HTML file from a remote domain, you might do the following (you'll need to download Firefox 3 first, of course):

var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
xhr.onreadystatechange = function() {
  if ( xhr.readyState == 4 ) {
    if ( xhr.status == 200 ) {
      document.body.innerHTML = "And the winner is... " 
      + xhr.responseText;
    } else {
      document.body.innerHTML = "ERROR";
    }
  }
};
xhr.open("GET", "http://sitepoint.com/example.php",
true);
xhr.send(null);

Does this look familiar? Aside from the inclusion of the domain in the URL parameter of the open function, this code is identical to the standard Ajax calls that you're probably already making.

Of course, whether cross-site Ajax requests are a Bad Thing™ or not is a debate that will no doubt rage for years, until so many browsers support the functionality that it actually becomes useful. Once we reach that point, it's my bet that a whole world of new mashups, apps, and other services will open up (and, yes, people who don't understand cross-site Ajax will no doubt do stupid things with it, as they did when Ajax became the new hotness a couple of years ago).

Of course, this functionality is probably still a while away from being implemented across all browsers. But it's nice to know in advance that at least someone is putting effort into minimizing the effort required to implement the features of tomorrow.

Read the official documentation at the Mozilla Development Center for more information (and maybe check out the documentation for some of the other features to come while you’re there).

Read the blog entry:

JavaScript & CSS Blog: Stylish Scripting by Matthew Magain Cross-site Ajax in Firefox 3 (8 comments)

That's all for this issue -- I hope you've enjoyed reading, and I welcome your feedback. Kevin will return to the helm in two weeks.

All the best,

Matthew Magain
techtimes@sitepoint.com
Managing Editor, sitepoint.com

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