...more recent posts
I've been playing around with the Ext library this week. This is the furthest I've dug into any javascript library. It is really powerful stuff. Pretty mind boggling. Ext lets you create very nice user interfaces out of javascript, and it takes care of all the heavy lifting, most notably ironing out all the cross browser wrinkles. You can see a bunch of examples and demos on this page (click in the left hand column to see dialogs, toolbars, menus, forms, etc...)
So I'm really impressed, and thinking about using this for projects in the future. But there is still something that bugs me about this new world (which I guess people would call Web 2.0, although that doesn't really have a strict definition.) I still think every atomic unit of information (every blog post, every inventory item, every single whatever-it-is you are building a website about) should have it's own page (that is, should be addressable by it's own unique URI.) That's the whole point of the web isn't it? I like all the fancy tabbed interfaces with pop up dialogs and whatnot, but if you can't even deep link to a specific item then it's all useless.
But that's not to say you can't build things the right way with Ext. Maybe it's more like Ext just gives you a lot more power with which to go wrong. So you have to be careful. To be very general, I'm thinking that a lot of these fancy UI features will be useful on control pages (i.e., administrative pages; the backend of the website, like [editpage] here) which don't need to be crawled by google or shared by users, and less useful on public facing content pages.
...[A] story about software security, and the kinds of stunts you can play with software if you're clever and subtle. It's the story of the Unix C compiler, and the virtually invisible back-door security hole inserted into it by Ken Thompson - a story he told in his Turing award lecture.
Outside my area of expertise, but maybe Mark will comment with some actual knowledge. Apple announced ProRes 422 at NAB:
Enter Apple ProRes 422, a new format designed for pristine HD quality, economical hardware configurations, yet high-performance, multistream Final Cut Pro real-time editing - for both high-defi nition (HD) and standard-definition (SD) formats. Apple ProRes 422 features:Here's Apple's ProRes 422 white paper.
- The quality of uncompressed HD at data and storage rates lower than uncompressed SD.
- Performance comparable to or better than the existing HD codecs in Final Cut Pro.
- The ability to work with HD on slower drives, and with more users on shared storage.
Arrrgh. Somehow I managed to lose all of my RSS subscriptions. D'oh. I didn't realize how dependent I had become. I mean I knew, but now that I have to think about recreating that huge list I really know.
Proposal for the W3C HTML Working Group to adopt the WHAT Working Group's HTML5 as the starting point for further HTML development. This would be a good thing. HTML development has been stalled for too long. Looks like IP won't be an issue either: "If the group is agreeable to these proposals, Apple, Mozilla and Opera will agree to arrange a non-exclusive copyright assignment to the W3 Consortium for HTML5 specifications."
Daring Fireball attempts to correct the story with some facts about the AAC audio format. I recently drove a thread over at Tom's a bit off topic with similar concerns, although I didn't have all the numbers that John Gruber has put together.
How to write a spelling corrector:
I figured that in less than a plane flight, and in less than a page of code, I could write a spelling corrector that achieves 80 or 90% accuracy at a rate of at least 10 words per second. And in fact, here, in 20 lines of Python 2.5 code, is the complete spelling corrector....(via HTP)
Scraped enough together for a new hard drive. Man, prices are insane. 400 GB Seagates (no enclosure) just hit $100! This is a 500 w/ USB 2.0 enclosure for $150. 750 GB drives still command a premium though.
Blogs turn 10 years old (sort of, by some people's reckoning.) CNet looks at who is the father? The article has the expected Winer vs. Barger angle, which is pretty boring, but at least gets the unix .plan file backstory pretty much right. Or, in other words, this is an evolving world and it's been going on for a long long time - much longer than those who want to take credit for it.
U.S. Department of Homeland Security wants master key to DNS. OMG it's the end of the worldz!!!1!1!! Getting back to reality, I'll quote Wes Felter on this one: "This would be dangerous if anyone was planning to actually use DNSSec."
There are lots of things to be worried about, but this isn't one of them.