We know how it is. You like to hack. You like to develop software -- or maybe you just like to watch developing software coming together (there are stranger hobbies). You've been known to play with alpha software. Yes, yes, you truly live on the edge.
But you're an adult (well, you know, mostly. Chronologically, anyway). You have responsibilities. You need a stable environment for your data. Your documents. Your pictures. Your.. ahem... multimedia collection.
You can have the best of both worlds. The openSUSE project has announced the arrival of the Factory LiveCDs. Whether you're a hacker or just curious about what's going to unfold with openSUSE 11.0 later this year, this is a great way to get a sneak peek without disturbing your desktop.
The liveCDs are, according to Stephan Kulow, xdelta files running in conjuction with the most recent liveCDs, and come in both GNOME and KDE varieties.
Still not quite ready to test? You haven't too long to wait. OpenSUSE 11.0 is scheduled for public release on June 19 of this year.
IBM has announced that it is joining the OpenOffice.org community. The company will contribute code already developed for Lotus Notes and will assist development in an ongoing basis. From a user perspective, there's no word on what tangible changes we'll see in OpenOffice.org in the near future. But open source development has never been a case of "too many cooks spoil the broth," so we're going to take this as good news.
While OpenOffice.org is open source, the software is based on StarOffice, which was developed by Sun. So IBM is hardly the first major corporation to get involved in developing the Microsoft Office alternative.
The partnership is not one way. While OpenOffice.org applications will likely benefit from IBM's expertise, the open document format is gaining wide acceptance as a standard. The more companies that partner with OpenOffice.org, the better support there will be for ODF in other applications.
Two weeks ago we saw the first wave of third party applications for the iPhone. But because Apple has yet to open up the device and provides an API (Application Programming Interface) for software developers, making third party applications right now is not for the faint hearted or even regular developers. A couple of weeks ago in MacBreak Weekly, Leo Laporte called for Apple to open up the iPhone immediately and he could not see any reasons preventing that happening. What Mr. Laporte, and most pundits, seems to imply is that providing an API is a straightforward process. Publish the API online and let the developers use it, right? If only it were that simple.
An API is a contract between the provider (Apple) and the consumer, who in this case is the software developers. As with any contract, once it is published, a level of trust is established between the provider and the consumer. This means the provider describes the functionality accessible by outsiders in the API, and that functionality will work as advertised. The consumer has to depend on the provider to keep their word so the consumer can develop applications base on that functionality.
But establishing an API also means restricting internal development freedom for the device. It is no longer simple to rework a particular function to provide better capability or performance without substantial testings to ensure the existing APIs are not broken. There are a few ways to deal with this situation.
No Apple hasn't finally given us what we want by releasing an official iPhone SDK so developers can create true apps for the phone, but that doesn't seem to be holding back enterprising hackers. Erica Sadun at our sister site The Unofficial Apple Weblog has released a basic text editor and even a screenshot app for the iPhone, while Gizmodo has MobileTerminal, a command line app that should allow for all kinds of iPhone hackery goodness.
Gizmodo also makes a great point: the code for MobileTerminal is being hosted at Google Code, which could mean a number of things, including:
Apple hasn't fired up the cease & desist engine just yet
They are quietly sanctioning this kind of hacking
They're listening to demand and are working on opening the phone up
While we're likely to never hear word from tight-lipped Apple on an official iPhone SDK until it's actually made available to download, power users and iPhone enthusiasts are sure to take some solace in the fact that iPhone hackers seem to have opened it up quite a bit on their own already. We'll definitely be keeping an eye on what grassroots iPhone apps appear.
Ever wanted to get started with developing applications (be it on the desktop or on line) in a Windows environment? For those using Windows on a day-to-day basis may well be aware that Microsoft's development environment can be somewhat expensive to get into. However that is about to change a little, as Microsoft is releasing Visual Studio Express Editions, allowing you to delve into coding, without the prohibitive expense of a full-blown edition.
Not only that, but Microsoft has now released a new site to enable new hands to get in on the developer fun. The Beginner Developer Learning Centre is where "you'll find a rich array of learning content that starts with the very basics, and guides you through step-by-step to becoming a fully-fledged developer!". What more could you ask for to get started with Windows development?
With it getting harder for U.S. companies to recruit foreign nationals for jobs in the programming and engineering, could they all start a shift towards opening facilities in Canada?
Microsoft has announced that they will be opening a software development center in Vancouver. This will be set up due to the fact that it's getting extremely difficult to employ skilled workers with the present immigration quotas in place. U.S. businesses have been urging Congress to lift quotas on the number of visas issued by the government, making room for more skilled professionals especially in the software engineering field. And there is a big battle brewing over that between business owners, middle class Americans, and the Government. Bill Gates has been striking at engineering careers, saying that more American students could be convinced to enter the field if engineers from other countries are imported. However others see it as a threat to their country, and wage protections for U.S. workers. Is Microsoft really having trouble finding employees, or are they just having problems finding employees at the wage they are interested in paying?
Why the move to Canada? Canada does not employ such strict quotas on the number of visas it issues every year, with an emphasis on skilled laborers that are focused on starting a life in the country.
Microsoft is planning to open its Vancouver facility by the end of the year, with 200 employees, expanding to 900 within a few years.
EasyPHP is a great little web server package, as you might expect, it has the usual LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) stack, with phpMyAdmin, and a few other things. The only issue you might have with the EasyPHP 1.8 release is that it uses PHP 4. This may not be a problem unless you really need some of those sweet new features from PHP5. No word yet on when the folks at EasyPHP will be including PHP5, but we hope it will be soon. The more web development you do in PHP, you start to want those new features more and more. If you need a PHP4 based web server for testing or other purposes, EasyPHP is great.
If you just can't get enough of that PHP5 goodness though, you're out of luck, especially for someone who doesn't want to go inserting PHP5 into EasyPHP and bringing the whole shebang down on their heads. There is a web server solution that includes PHP5 in a slim package that is seamless and you could almost say exciting. WAMP5 installs quick and does a kill job of it. It more accurately reflects the fact that this is Windows not Linux we're using, thus the WAMP name. A great part of WAMP is the built in service support and simplified administration panel.
The downside to WAMP is that it is only a desktop installed application, not playing nice with your portable web-serving needs. While not a real drawback, it can be useful to have a portable web server running on a stick for a web developer on the go. EasyPHP does work well on a portable drive, so long as you can live without PHP5 for a bit. For most things either web server package will work just fine. They both are small downloads, easy to install and run without a hitch, and make your life easier. Both packages are also free, which helps with sticker shock.
Remember the days when you had to change each file one by one on FTP and re-upload? Yeah, those days are over.
So you use basecamp for project management or Google's apps, or something else, but how do you track your time on a project? basecamp offers time-tracking, but you have to pay a bit for that feature. Any cheapskates out there who like to get something for nothing, even if it means remembering yet another logon to yet another website? Many of us would jump at the chance, it isn't like any of us have a problem with web accounts, how many do you have again?
Toggl is an excellent solution, offered in a completely savvy web 2.0 interface that gets you where you want to go. The site tracks time and lets you hit a toggl (whoa, go figure) button to start and stop your "billable hours" timer. I was a bit wary at first that toggl wouldn't offer a way to change the time it had recorded, leave you stranded with pushing the button every 108 minutes until you got the right amount of time, but my worries were completely unfounded. I was ready for something much harder than clicking on the box and reentering my own length of time.
If you think pie is easy, toggl is easier. Complete with a reporting feature and multiple projects, toggl's goodness clocks in (pun somewhat intended) at the right price of free. As you know, our motto here is one more happy cheapskate, or wait, I don't think we actually have a motto. I'll have to get back to you on that. meanwhile check out toggl, and you will never wonder if you charged your client enough for the hours you spent on that killer project.
Add "toggl" to your spell-checker, jack, and you won't be disappointed.
There are many advantages to designing with Cascading Style Sheets. CSS is extremely easy to learn and rework once a basic site framework has been established. Websites, or website components can easily be changed into something totally different just by swapping a single CSS file, or a line within a CSS file.
CSS designers always seem to have a few different elements that they commonly use over and over in all designs, these can include navigation elements and form fields, among other items. Smashing Magazine has compiled a list of 53 CSS Techniques that you couldn't live without, linking out to tutorials on CSS navigation, tabbed navigation, bar graphs, rounded corners, hover effects, image map, submit buttons, custom bullets, and sidenotes. Whether you are new to CSS, or have been in it for a while, these are some great tutorials to have archived as reference materials.
Among our favorites, "Learn to Say No" --something every developer should learn before they burn themselves out -- Also, "If everything is equally important, then nothing is important," a philosophy that is difficult to explain to management, but is ultimately genius. You absolutely must prioritize in modern development, there's just too much to be done to move forward without priorities. If you assign an equal weight to every task and goal, you'll find yourself spinning in circles at your desk late at night, pondering why you picked Computer Science over Pre-Law during that first semester of college.
We really hope Andres leading a team of coders, because he certainly gets the basics.
The beta release of My.Netscape drops tomorrow as a new, improved personalized start page. The enhanced UI is clean and clutter free with no ads (so far). You have access to almost 100 modules to customize your page, including our very own Download Squad module (shameless plug warning) and you can add your own RSS feeds too. There are however some "not yet's" you might find yourself wishing for, such as:
Personalized data from your old My.Netscape account, including your bookmarks (they are presently working on a migration utility).
Module developer docs (a development kit is promised soon).
On the whole, My.Netscape is a well-designed start page amongst a field of other well-designed Web 2.0 start pages. Developer documentation will help but, as for now, its functionality isn't nearly as wide ranging as competitors such as Netvibes or Pageflakes. Still, the new My Netscape has the potential to bring an infinitely customize-able start page to a whole new demographic, much as Netscape's social news site launch pushed that concept to an untapped audience.
Get badged, by going to badged.net, where you can simply build a custom badge widget for your site or blog. The list of available badges you can include in your custom widget is pretty good:
Digg This Story
Sphere It
Add to Technorati Favorites
View Blog Reactions (via Technorati)
Add to del.icio.us
Add to Furl
Add to Netscape
Add to Yahoo! Myweb
Add to Google Bookmarks
Add to Newsvine
Add to Blinklist
Add to Reddit
Add to Blogmarks
Add to Magnolia
Add to Windows Live
Add to Tailrank
Add to Favorites (Internet Explorer)
Email This
You type in your site URL and name, check the boxes, and get the code at the bottom of the page. It could not be any easier to do and you can insert the whole thing at the bottom of your posts, your site, whatever. Sweet, slick, and fan-tas-tic. Here is what the actual badge I created looks like:
[Via The Global Geek Podcast]
NSFW (Not Safe For Work), a universal sign that something is objectionable or inappropriate or offensive online, is now going to become a part of many web developer's standard coding techniques. The idea is to put the rel="nsfw" attribute in link (a href) tags, much like the currently widely used rel="nofollow" attribute. This NSFW attribute will denote objectionable content that might get you in trouble with your big-brother-IT department. There is even a greasemonkey script for Firefox to block links that have the NSFW specification in the page's code. It is a smart idea, and may help computer users everywhere avoid NSFW content a bit more easily. However, I wonder if we still click on NSFW links, knowing that the link is not acceptable because of our insatiable curiosity, but I will leave that up to the statistician, Gallup pollers, and techie-shrinks for now.
Script.aculo.us is an amazing framework for enriching your website's user experience very easily. Built on top of the very popular prototype javascript framework, scriptaculous makes AJAX cake, and gives everyone the power to have a sexy AJAX-powered website, yes everyone. Scriptaculous is a tiny (140kb) javascript framework that gives you the power of effects, several dynamic data components, and all you need to know is a little bit about HTML and how to read. If you already have your own website, it is not hard to do. Follow these steps to AJAX up your site in no time:
Unzip the archive somewhere, preferably somewhere you will find it again. This is key.
Upload the whole thing to your web server, and put it where ever you like, again, it should be somewhere you can find it. Once again, finding it is key. You will need to link to these files from your web page, so putting the files in a sub folder of your home directory (root for you unix junkies) is a good idea.
In the header section of your web pages, you need to put this code:
As you might notice, the code has to point to your uploaded script.aculo.us files. You would replace the "ajax/" portion with your own path depending on the name of your subfolder.
Next, put the one line of code into your pages or posts where ever you want the effect to take place. Let's say you have a content div element you want to have all the sudden appear in the page, all you do is wire the "SlideDown" effect (one of many in script.aculo.us, download the cheat sheet here) to a button, link, or other clickable element on your page. The code to trigger the SlideDown effect from a link looks like this:
Why use an <a> tag? First, it is super simple to code (everyone knows it), and second, users think it is an ordinary link. They will be quite surprised when they find out it isn't normal at all. I call this "hacking old-skool users into using web 2.0 unknowingly" (or something like that).
Anyway...be sure your div tag has the id="content" because that is the name of the element the SlideDown effect will be applied to once you click the "link" we just made. Make sense? Good. NOTE: Something to remember is that your DIV will be shown on the page automatically by default, unless you first hide it, so the visual magic of an effect such as SlideDown can really be displayed. To "hide" our div by default so your content won't appear until you click the link we just made, you will need to add an inline CSS style (or add one in your CSS file, if you have one) so the content div ends up looking like this:
<div id="content" style="display: none;">This is the content.</div>
You'll notice (I hope) that the underlined code is the part that hides this div by default. When the SlideDown effect is triggered by clicking on the <a> link, it will automatically change the div's display property, so don't worry about having to do that.
Try it out, and have fun! It should slide down your content, which can be anything you put in that div tag, video, audio, pictures, more javascript, an iframe, whatever, use your imagination. There are tons of different effects you can use, so you should check them out at script.aculo.us's website, since they have great demos and even combination demos for different sets of effects.
Since the script.aculo.us wiki is large and contains a lot of information to consume all at once, I have compiled a basic script.aculo.us effects cheat sheet of sorts for your quick and dirty coding enjoyment. You can download my PDF cheat sheet here.
Have fun AJAXing your site, and once you're done, come back and give us a link to your site so we can see what you've done with the place. I'd love to check out your site with the framework in action. It can do some wicked cool stuff. You can build entire sites out of script.aculo.us including AJAX drop-downs, AJAX page loading, and custom stuff. Let me know how your site turns out with it.
NOTE (to lightbox and TinyMCE users): There are some special instructions on integrating script.aculo.us with both of these other frameworks, since they all use Prototype to some extent. You can find TinyMCE help here (script.aculo.us wiki) and most lightbox frameworks list this info on their support page or forums section of the site. Have fun!
If you do hard-core web development, which do you use? IE 6 or IE 7? I would rather use Firefox, but I have to develop for IE, since most of the world still uses it. Sure IE7 is new, IE6 is old, and they are similar, yet it is tough to develop for both, especially when you can't really install both together on the same machine. Microsoft is going to help you out with that. On November 30th, Microsoft released the Internet Explorer VPC testing image. This is a virtual PC image that lets you run IE 6 and IE 7 on the same virtual machine. The image is built on a pre-activated copy of Windows XP SP2 underneath so that could be fun for all kinds of other things too. The catch here is that the image expires on April 1, 2007. Still, it isn't a bad idea to download it and is going to help me make and break IE 6 and 7 stuff a lot faster now. You can download Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 for free to run the image (if you don't have it already). The IEblog states that the VPC image will also run on Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 (download it via connect, Windows Live passport sign-in required) if you're running Vista. Mary Jo Foley, (of Microsoft Watch fame) has written a great article on this over at her new home at ZDNet's "Unblinking Eye on Microsoft" blog that you might find interesting. Be aware, the VPC testing image is around 500MB to download, so go get yourself a cookie, a candy cane, some egg-nog or something while you're waiting.
We know how it is. You like to hack. You like to develop software -- or maybe you just like to watch developing software coming together (there are stranger hobbies). You've been known to play with alpha software. Yes, yes, you truly live on the edge.
Two weeks ago we saw the 
No Apple hasn't finally given us what we want by releasing an official iPhone SDK so developers can create true apps for the phone, but that doesn't seem to be holding back enterprising hackers. Erica Sadun at our sister site 
EasyPHP
Developer Andres Taylor drops some serious science with "
Script.aculo.us
