Very quick one. I love linux and think the “power” it gives an ordinary user on the desktop is great. Most, if not all the applications available are brilliant and actually easy to use.
So why, oh why is getting Knode to show an X-Face so bl**dy hard!!!!!
I knew it wouldn’t last long before the first rant hit home 🙂
There is a worthwhile starter tutorial available – number 1 on the Google list – called Rasmus’ 30 Second AJAX tutorial. It is good. It is straight forward and easy to grasp.
However – 30 seconds…. Never.
And, critically for my point of view, it has given me NO inspiration as to coming up with a worthwhile web project which can be enhanced by AJAX.
(side notes – that site looks awful in FF on a linuxbox….)
If you have been reading the old articles here (especially this one) you will be more than aware of the current situation regarding my opinion of AJAX and all the modern buzz words zinging their way around the net
Despite this, there is no escape from the fact that if you want to maintain any ability to earn an income online – even just pin money from Google Adsense – then you need to keep up with the latest trends. As “industries” go, the web industry is by far the worst for destroying existing skill sets for no apparent reason.
Anyway, enough ranting. This is a normal technology post not a sixteen thousand word rant.
The current situation, is that despite my misgivings and opinion on the transitory nature of the current “buzzword tech” I have been put in the position where I have little choice but to catch up with AJAX and rapidly get to grips with what it can offer. The problem this created is that I truly have NO idea what applications are best suited to AJAX or how to actually add value to a website by using it. I honestly cant find a decent project to use as a learning curve.
Well, this is the internet so off to Google I go. A quick search on AJAX tutorials produces a LOT of hits (as you can see, there were over five and half million when I did it). It seems that there are lots of people not only well ahead of me in the understanding stakes but they also have a lot of spare time to make tutorials….
The good thing about this is that not only does it give me some starting points to learn about AJAX but hopefully it will give me at least a running chance of working out something useful to do with it… Sadly, based on the AJAX implementations I have seen to date, I am not holding my breath about this.
One, very good, thing I feel I need to mention on the subject of AJAX is the wonderfull script.aculo.us site. (Screenshot on the side here). This site provides some basic tutorials (not brilliant to be honest) but the real strong point is the excellent framework they have available for download. Although it is much to early in the days of my learning curve to be completely sure, I still think it is well worth getting to this site and downloading everything they have to offer.
Hopefully, in the very near future I will be able to update you on my learning curves and eventually be able to point to a fully working AJAX site.
Following on from Admin’s post on hammering firefox, I have been installing a mountain of extensions for Firefox. Unlike the guy who the original post was about, it wasnt the “top 100” I installed. I have spent most of the day trying out extensions to find good, useful ones which seem to have a decent purpose.
Now, needless to say, there has been a MASSIVE performance hit. At this time I only have 41 extensions installed but it is already taking a noticable amount of time for FF to actually start up. I have been ruthless with removing the toolbar’s some extensions like to install, but it has cost me about 1/5th of the screen real estate – and to be honest, for some extensions why would you have them if you turned the tool bar off…..
Anyway, on the positive side, it is pretty amazing that FF lets you bolt on so many different packages to generate the functionality you want. This really is a “good thing” from the open source movement. As it stands I cant see this level of customization being available for IE for quite some time.
For the terminally curious, the extensions I have are:
If you can think of any others worth getting, please let me know.
Sorry for the absence of pretty much every one last week but life is often too hectic to ever predict.
This post is just really a check out of a FireFox extension I have just installed – Deepest Sender. So far, I can say it is pretty good. For those of you enlightened enough to already use Firefox, visit http://deepestsender.mozdev.org/ and grab a copy for yourself.
It really is worth it.
For info – this is a photo uploaded to flickr showing a roman legionary in lorica segmentata of the type worn in the 1st century AD.
You can read more about this sort of thing on the Roman History website.
Enjoy 🙂
Why oh why are there no simple, straight forward tutorials on things like Ajax? (signed Disgusted, Tonbridge Wells). You would think, given the hype around this new “Web 2.0” (kill me if I ever use that phrase again) and it’s associated technology would have actually produced something of value. But no.
There are tons of articles going on about “how great” AJAX is and how it will revolutionise the web, but the reality is it is very much a niche product. Great for people who want an interface into GoogleMaps for instance – but for 95% of websites does it actually add ANY value what so ever?
I have yet to see an application of this where is has been anything other than eye candy and really, not worth the effort. The technology is not so far removed from the common usage so I assume for normal people it’s not that hard to learn (only dullards like myself struggle with the non-tutorials on the net), but there is still new things to learn. There are new methods of working to be put in place etc., and all these things cost money. What value does AJAX add to a website (or the web in general) that cant be achieved by an existing technology without the training burden and associated costs?
Hopefully someone will prove me wrong here and point to the BESTâ„¢ website on the net…. but I wont hold my breath.
Now, if you really want to see a rant, ask me about web 2.0……….
Tags: AJAX, AJAX Tutorials, Web 2.0, JavaScript, Technology,Web Design
(quote from Digg.com)
Astronomers have witnessed a never-seen-before event in observations by ESA’s XMM-Newton spacecraft – a collision between a pulsar and a ring of gas around a neighbouring star.
The rare passage, which took the pulsar plunging into and through this ring, illuminated the sky in gamma- and X-rays.
Not a lot I can add except to say this is very interesting – even if space stuff bores you!
(quote from Digg.com)
Virtual Earth’s New feature allows you to take a rid on the seat of a car and drive around town….google watch it!
Well, hyperbole aside this is an interesting development, but I am not convinced it is going to be a major threat to Google Earth.
In a nutshell, you get the choice driving a car or walking around one of two street plans (I assume more are to follow soon) using the arrows on your keyboard to move. Now, it is interesting but it is a FAR CRY from virtual reality. I am on a fast-ish broadband connection and the lag between moves is shocking.
The other problem with this, and it is the same with Google Earth, is that the photos are immediately dated. It makes this like playing Grand Theft Auto (or similar) on a 286 with a mod to make it boring.
Google Earth and its clones were (and are) an interesting way to pass time idly looking at remote parts of the world. This is good for about 10 seconds.
When (if) the mapping and response times improve this could be brilliant. It would be great to have a driving sim as good as current flight sims – but we arent there yet.
(from digg.com article)
Sun has master the art of meaningless marketing. That Solaris (whatever version) is NOT Linux, hence, the phrase Solaris is better than Linux at being Linux does not even rise to the level of an oxymoron. Want some facts? Then read on.
This is an interesting and somewhat thought provoking article that examines some of the “issues” that revolve around Sun’s marketting machine. While it does highlight some interesting points, I can’t say it is really as clear cut as made out.
Sadly, Sun appear to have targetted Linux as their opposition – which has caused a natural backswell of linux devotees now slashing and burning Solaris.
Sadly, both are excellent OS and should be capable of standing on their own. They serve different functions and meet different needs.
Why dont they all just attack MS Windows like sensible people 🙂
Now this is funny. There are numerous people (mainly on USENET) who are obsessed with Albert Einstein and almost deify him (or demonise him – either way they obsess about him) and it is something I have always found odd.
This is old news, but I missed it previously.
Dell are offering workstations with linux pre-loaded. However, in some fit of corporate madness they are seriously overpriced. You can see the details of the workstations at Dell. The cheapest starts at US$759 but I assume that price will rapidly rise as you get the components you need.
One positive point though – the high end one can come with up to 16Gb of RAM – more than enough for most home users….
Now, as mentioned in the past, we are big linux fans and actually like the idea that linux is now being sold “pre-packaged.” However, this risks pricing it out of the market. It is cheaper to buy a windows PC and install linux (a free version) yourself and as long as this is the case, things like this from Dell are just martketting ploys.
This is a digg entry leading to a blog page about tweaking .htaccess to achieve your ends.
It is very good. Like most things (this blog included) it is not perfect and you may well discover better / alternative ways to do things but for 80% of the population who need to mess about with .htaccess this will help.
It is quite serendipitous that I came accross this today as I was in the process of fighting with the .htaccess on a site I am looking after. While this tutorial hasnt been the perfect answer, it did help me notice a common mistake I had made which was causing the problem (embarassingly it was a case of me forgetting about inheritance!).
All in all – well worth checking this out.
Ok, now we all know how some people dont mind making themselves look like the biggest Ãœber geeks on the net but here is some guy going further to acheive this than most. (see pic on right! :-)) 
Ignore the cheesy, geeky theme of this tutorial and you get an excellent bit of advice on how to do some great effects with photoshop.
Well worth looking at – it is just a shame about the guy thinking styles from 1956 are still acceptable (not to mention his toy lightsaber). He could have at least dressed up for the occasion. 🙂
Digg.com is a fantastic resource, easily one of the best places to find tech info and see what sites other people find interesting.
However, as with all things it is wide open to abuse.
For example this page – along with its spam-like title – is one of the most dugg items on the programming strand at digg.com. (see http://digg.com/programming for more info).
However, this page is FAR from the best regex site ever. It is little but a blatant attempt to advertise the commercial software. Despite this, it has LOTS of comments and hundreds of diggs.
As previously mentioned (on this blog), the problem with sites like this is that it is very easy (and quick) for the sites it represents (the ones people post) to become very polarised. If you posted a new link to a programming site for example, only the die-hard diggers would find it – most casual users would be left looking at the “most popular” ones on the front page.
That said, it may not be ideal but Digg.com is good….
