Shay's Blog » web development

Firebug 1.01 Out

shay — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 20:01:55 +0000

The guys at firebug released 1.0.1. Here are the release notes:
1. Support escaping the % sign in console.log() calls using %%
2. Support “Find Next” in the CSS tab
3. Fixed problem causing inconsistent breakpoint triggering
4. Deleting a disabled CSS property will work properly
5. Fixed bug that prevented editing of DOM properties with numeric values
6. Inserted warning about incompatibility with Sothink SWF Catcher extension
7. Fixed incompatibility with HTML Validator extension

The incompatibility with HTML Validator fix is much welcomed.

Cool AJAX and DHTML

shay — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 04:03:12 +0000

I did some interesting AJAX work last week. I changed one of the pages in my application that displays dynamically created images to use AJAX. AJAX allowed the page not to be redrawn as the user selects the different images. The AJAX part was fairly trivial once I ascertained what was the server-side was doing. The AJAX changes required some refactoring on the server side which was to be expected. The browser would display the missing image symbol since the image had to be generated and then downloaded. I found a way to keep that from happening. What I did was load the image into a variable, and then attach a function to the onLoad event of that image. The function swaps out the image in memory with the one on the page. It is pretty cool if I do say so myself. The onLoad function also does stuff like hides the progress indicator and enables the controls which were turned off when the AJAX call was made. The code looks something like this:

var myImage = new Image();
myImage.onload = function{
var previewImage = document.getElementById(”previewImage”);
previewImage.src = myImage.src;
}

I used the ContentLoader library which comes with Ajax in Action for the plumbing. The server sent JSON back to the browser. This was my first time using JSON which turned to be pretty easy to understand and use. I was considering using the DOJO toolkit, but I did not want to the number of javascript libraries that had to be loaded by the browser.

Firebug Extension out of beta!

shay — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 21:21:58 +0000

Firebug has released its non-beta 1.0 release. I wrote about the beta release of 1.0 here. It is nice to see this great web development tool get some more features. It works directly in firefox or with ie through using an external j/s file. Thanks for the firebug development team.

Web Developer Extension Version 1.1 Released!!!

shay — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 05:52:52 +0000

One of my favorite firefox extensions has been updated. Update and enjoy. I use the webdeveloper and firebug almost daily for my web development work.

Book Updates

shay — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 04:19:49 +0000

I have been reading two very good books. They are both along similar topics. I have been reading Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML and The Zen of CSS Design: Visual Enlightenment for the Web. I am enjoying both of them quite a bit. The Head First is a series from O’Reily that uses an interesting writing style. The writing style utilizes narratives, illustrations, and lots of exercises to present the topics. I really enjoy this approach. I am going to read the Head First Patterns next. The Zen of CSS is a companion book to the great CSS Zen Garden site. It takes several different example sites and breaks their elements of style. I highly recommend both of these books.

Musings While Learning AOP Today

shay — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 01:14:37 +0000

I finished an AJAX class today at work. A lot of it was basic that I already knew, it was nice to see the toolkits and javascript techniques. The class was scheduled to run for four days, but we finished a day earlier. I had suggested that we cover in detail the Google Web Kit (GWT) and the dojo toolkit, but the class consensus came to covering the Spring Framework which was fine with me.

For those that are unfamiliar with Spring, it is an open-source framework. It has many components to it. The core functionality it offers is Dependency Injection (DI) or Inversion of Control (IOC). I have used Spring’s IOC and bean wiring before so a lot of this was a refresher. Then we covered Spring’s Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP) component.

This really got me thinking. You as a developer, have to keep learning new things all the time. If you are not improving your skillset, then you are loosing ground. Modern software development is a rapidly changing industry. It is up to you as an individual to keep learning. I recently went to a No Fluff Just Stuff which is a great place to learn a lot. Ted Neward, one of the speakers, repeated a suggestion that Dave Thomas gives. The suggestion was to learn a new programming language every year. I thought this was a very good idea. It forces you to think outside the box. A lot of times when you have used one language for several years, you approach problems and solutions the same way. This approach can make you stagnant in your skills. If you are a java developer, then you have no excuse for doing this. The open-source projects are pulling java into many new areas. It is truly remarkable. If you learn a new language, then you are learning new concepts and syntax. It forces you to think differently which can make your primary language skills so much better.

The AOP lesson today really made me think outside the box. It is an interesting approach to programming. It is a cool and powerful approach, but dangerous to an extent. I am going to learn more on the subject. For my new language, I am going to cheat a little. I am going to take my intermediate knowledge of javascript, CSS, and HTML to a mastery level, and I am going to learn AOP.

Firebug 1.0 Beta is out! Great Day for Web Developers!

shay — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 01:03:02 +0000

There is a new version of firebug out. If you are not familiar with firebug, it is an essential firefox extension if you are a web developer Firebug gives you some very good javascript development tools. The new version gives you css tools and access to the dom. Download and enjoy. There is also a cross-browser javascript download that you add to any webpage.
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Ajax Toolkit Update

shay — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 22:45:56 +0000

I went through the article. The Ajax Toolkit Framework (ATF) is nice. It supports dojo, rico, and zimbra. The code snippets are a nice feature. I built the tree view example which uses dojo in the example. I am going to try it ATF more.

The installation was a bit tedious. I installed using these steps, but ensure you have the eclipse and web project toolkit (WTP) plug-in installed. If you do not you can download it here.

Download and extract XULRunner into its own directory.
Open dos window

Change to the directory you put XULRunner in
Run xulrunner –register-global
Run xulrunner –register-user

Download and extract Tomcat 5.5 into its own directory
Download Sysdeo 3.2 beta 3 plug-in
Extract it to the your eclipse plug-in directory
Start eclipse
Then open window, preferences, tomcat
Select tomcat 5.5
Put the tomcat directory in the tomcat home field
Hit apply and okay
Download ATF
In eclipse Select Help, Software Updates, Find and Install…
Select Search for new features to install
Select Next
Select New Archived Site
Select the directory that you downloaded ATF into
Select Finish
Ensure all ATF features are selected
Follow the remaining prompts to install ATF
Stop eclipse
Then follow the final steps here
Start eclipse using the –clean option

Congrats you are now good to go using ATF.