Thursday, October 27, 2005

Re: War on Terror - bash style

When I first read the title "War on Terror - bash style".. i thought it was a typo instead of "War on Terror - bush style"

Good read... I meant the bash one

War on Terror - bash style

Seriously (geeky) hilarious - http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/ThinGuy?entry=the_war_on_terror_as

Charles Petzold on Visual Studio

 
Avalon's dynamic layout sounds interesting. I actually may be doing a POC on Avalon sooner or later for one the projects here! Hoping the work comes through soon!!
 
Dinesh.
 

Thursday, October 20, 2005

AJAX Apps

Word Processor:
http://www.writely.com/

Calendar:
http://www.kiko.com/

Todo List:
http://www.rememberthemilk.com

Monday, October 17, 2005

Re: Project Anyone??


I generated the pdf of the deverloperworks site and it looks just fine.

It all just depends if you want to play with js or read the article.


Like u said the PDF thing worked fine. What I was a bit confused was how the page style changed. I thought it was doing something funny with javascript. But later it was nothing to do with js; but CSS. With CSS you can specify the media type as well as explained here. So the print css was a no frills style which was auto used when printing.

Actually wanted to play with Greasemonkey.. but will try it later.

Sunday, October 09, 2005

Re: Project Anyone??

Revo,
 
I generated the pdf of the deverloperworks site and it looks just fine. If your purpose is just to read the articles then I don't see why you would want anything else. If you want the frills and colors, then do what mohnish suggested.. Say "File -> Save As" and select the type as *.mht, thats a web archive. I tried that too, its even better than the pdf!
 
It all just depends if you want to play with js or read the article.
 
Dinesh.

Friday, October 07, 2005

Re: Project Anyone??

Also related to this, you guys aware of any JavaScript(js) tools. One thing I use a bit is the Javascript console in firefox. But only get errors for lousy methods I have writen. Is there any way I can get all the js loaded by a site. Or the dynamic tracing/state of all the js variables/methods etc that are currently loaded/working in a page.

Download this extension for Firefox. Here is his site. Probably the greatest invention for Javascript ever. Not exaggeratating!

As for your problem... why don't you just use the 'email this page' link to email the page to your 2 1/2 gig gmail account? Or even easier why not just "File -> Save Page As..."?

Re: Project Anyone??

Just install pdf995 - http://www.pdf995.com..

Thanks,,, I was aware of that tool. First the pages are not very printer-friendly. Too many extra elements. Also the idea was to first get the underlying format. And then try to make some Greasemonkey script to modify the developerworks pages and add another; say PDF link.

Also related to this, you guys aware of any JavaScript(js) tools. One thing I use a bit is the Javascript console in firefox. But only get errors for lousy methods I have writen. Is there any way I can get all the js loaded by a site. Or the dynamic tracing/state of all the js variables/methods etc that are currently loaded/working in a page.

Thursday, October 06, 2005

Re: Project Anyone??

Revo,
 
Just install pdf995 - http://www.pdf995.com.. It installs as a printer and when your page asks you to choose the printer, choose the software one and it will print it to a pdf.
 
Dinesh.

Re: What is Web 2.0?

I had read the article recently. That term seems to have got a lot of buzz of late. I guess one of the things that really got it moving was AJAX interfaces.

What I'm starting to notice is that a lot of 'concept' apps or whatever you want to call it are just trying to ape what regular desktop apps do. Now that there is the new idea of making http requests asynchronously which don't require page refreshes, people are going crazy using it as a hammer and seeing everything as a nail. From the few I've seen - they suck. Sure they are all jazzy making full use of dhtml, now with xmlhttprequests behind the scene. But they are a usability nightmare. They are slow as hell. AJAX is a new concept and with people trying to take it to the limits they are abusing the browser. When you want to use a web app you expect it to work in some 'preconcieved' way - through so many years of surfing the web we've become comfortable with certain conventions. AJAX apps go against it. Plus who the hell wants to use a windows type app through a browser? Adam Bosworth - a big shot at Google - the 'father' of AJAX apps - even posted problems he see a while back.

I'm not saying AJAX sucks. I think it's superb. Really. I feel it should be used to enhance the web experience and accepted paradigms. Not just try to rehash Windows type apps.

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

What Is Web 2.0?

A really good writeup on - What Is Web 2.0? at Oreilly.

The conclusions included the following points....

* Services, not packaged software, with cost-effective scalability
* Control over unique, hard-to-recreate data sources that get richer as more people use them
* Trusting users as co-developers
* Harnessing collective intelligence
* Leveraging the long tail through customer self-service
* Software above the level of a single device
* Lightweight user interfaces, development models, AND business models

What I felt is the most important is Control over "unique, hard-to-recreate data sources". If you can generate/own such data; you can expose an API and thus take care of the other points mentioned.

Another point mentioned is rich UI using AJAX.