TextMate: new HTML editor for Mac

When a major web developer shares that he has switched from BBEdit to another editor, I take notice – and try out a demo of the product. Roger Johnassen switched to TextMate, and I have too found it to have too many efficient features to continue using BBEdit. It takes some getting used to, but it definitely is a much stronger editor. Rather that repeating all of the features, just visit the site and download a free 30 day version to try it out.

JavaScript 2.0/ECMAScript Edition 4

If you have not read about JavaScript 2.0 (ECMAScript Edition 4) you may want to Google it and get in touch with the major changes that will be forthcoming. It will become a much more robust language it seems, and should give web developers more options. One good article is from Waldemar Horwat: JavaScript 2.0: Evolving a Language for Evolving Systems. A pdf version is available at: http://www.mozilla.org/js/language/evolvingJS.pdf
Another article is located at the Lambda Programmers site: http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/782

More on this developing information at a later date.

Interesting new browser

Flock, is a new browser that is an attempt at a social networking browser, with connections to del.icio.us, Flickr, and RSS subscriptions among other things. I don't usually bother with new browsers, especially when they are admittedly still very rough and in beta, but this one was interesting enough to check out. I was impressed with the direction they are taking it, and it truly seems to be a social networking tool. It is worth suggesting that you check it out to see the type of things that can and will be happening to browsers.


Through its pages, I found an "AJAX Desktop" application called "Pageflakes" that was also very interesting. It is designed to offer a personal start-up page with multiple tabs for different types of resources. You could build you own, but its interesting to see how it works and the types of resources that are available. Give it a look at http://pageflakes.com

Ajax: A good introduction

If you have not yet heard of AJAX (combination of HTML, JavaScript, DHTML, and DOM) or if you have but have not gotten started working with it, this is an excellent series to get you in the know, as well as begin to get started with it if you are ready for the next big thing in interactive development. This is the most important new direction in developing web applications and it has already proven to be very positive for the industry. Even if you are not attracted to the scripting side of development, you need to read about AJAX and understand the possibilities it offers the developer. Thanks to Stephen Downes for referencing the articles!

Mastering Ajax, Part 1: Introduction to Ajax
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/wa-ajaxintro1.html

Mastering Ajax, Part 2: Make asynchronous requests with JavaScript and Ajax
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/wa-ajaxintro2/

Mastering Ajax, Part 3: Advanced requests and responses in Ajax
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/wa-ajaxintro3/?ca=dgr-lnxw01MasterAJAX3

Understanding The CSS Difference

My good friend Esther commented today that it is helpful for our students to see something really different and unusual that they can do with CSS and other web technologies. Molly Holzschlag has provided a piece of that picture with her article "Thinking Outside the Grid" published recently at Jeffrey Zeldman's A List Apart.

She describes one of the most significant capabilities of CSS based design and its ability to go beyond the basic tables-based grid design. She uses interesting examples of aerial views of two cities, Tucson and London, as an example of a rigid rectangle based grid system of design (Tucson) and a contrasting grid in London's spirals, tangents, and circles. CSS allows us to design beyond the rigid structures and create all types of layouts to suit our needs. Holzschlag also provides a link to Mark Boulton's "grid-system articles" as another place to get some ideas about altering the basic grid. The illustrations in Holzschlag's article are great for providing the perspective she is referring to. I highly recommend this article for designers wanting to figure out what CSS adds to the design process.

FireFox 1.5 Update Required for Web Classes

If you have not upgraded to FireFox 1.5, please do so for all AID web scripting classes. This is a significant upgrade and a number of new CSS features have been added including: css3 multi-column layout, only-child pseudo-class, overflow-x and overflow-y, the cursor property, JavaScript 1.6 new features and ECMAScript EX4, xml-events, and svi (scalable vector graphics). These are not browser specific enhancements but simply Firefox adding to the Web Standards that already exist and beginning to move toward the full compliment of CSS 3 specification. To try out these new features we have only read about, you will need to be using FireFox 1.5.

A word of caution. I had problems installing the new version of Web Developers Tools which is a must for any web designer/developer. It is necessary to uninstall the current version after you update to 1.5, and then install the new version of developers tools. Hopefully, this has been modified and works better now, but it was a problem when the 1.5 version first appeared a few weeks ago.

New Weblog for Students

I have been getting a good bit of spam from this blogger site and have been wanting to move my classes over to WordPress but there was not a free web-based server providing it, until now! James Farmer, an Educational Technologist from Australia has complimented edublogs.org for educators with learnerblogs.org for students. To open a free, hosted WordPress weblog, just log in at http://learnerblogs.org and get started.

Web Based Applications

I do a lot of research on web-based applications that help people accomplish things and there is a new site that lists about 200 such applications that I think is worth a look for students, instructors, and anyone trying to get more accomplished.
"I Want To:" is the name of the site, as it is set up to tell what you want to do and then it gives you a group of links that are suggestions for applications that can accomplish that
http://www.philb.com/iwantto.htm
If you find something you like and use, add a comment here and tell others!

Data transfer record

Could we please have about 1/100th of this for our network????

A Japanese company has developed technology to transmit a 2 hour movie in 1/2 second, which is the world's fastest speed to be achieved with fibre-optic cables.

Kansai Electric used fibre-optic cables on power-transmitting steel towers to achieve the speed of one terabit per second, which is more than 100 times faster than inter-city data transmissions currently in use, a spokesman says.

The company, Japan's second-largest power supplier, has not decided when to put the technology into practical use but says it is possible that it would come in 2010 or later.

from ABC NewsOnline: http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200510/s1492314.htm

Search Engine Ranking Factors

Roger Johansson of 456 Berea St. recommended Sean Fraser's excellent resource about search engine ranking of web sites. This important aspect of web design, especially when you are doing a commercial site, has changed dramatically in the past few years and will continue to change as the major search engines alter their techniques. I found the article very well organized and valuable for understanding the current issues involved and how to design the search engine ranking information. Most designers are not aware that a lot of the rankings have to do with content, and not special metatags. A good read.

www.seomoz.org/articles/search-ranking-factors.php