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Posts Tagged ‘Web development’

The risky aspect of HTML5

In quotable on 17 February 2010 tagged HTML, standards, Web development with no comments

The theory is that if all the User-Agent providers implement all these algorithms exactly as specified, complete interoperability will be achieved and people who build Web applications need no longer concern themselves with the differences between User Agents. Which would of course be wonderful.

Will it work? Nobody knows; it’s a science experiment. Just because nobody has ever succeeded in specifying a workable networked object model doesn’t mean this project will likewise fail. But it does mean that when considering the future of HTML5, we should recognize that this is a very hard problem, and there’s no guarantee that that part of it will come off.

From a blog post on HTML5 by Tim Bray.

Assessing Apple’s revamped checkout process

In Commentary on 16 December 2009 tagged design, Web development with no comments

Form expert Luke Wroblewski compares Apple’s revamped checkout process to their old checkout process. If you do any work designing HTML forms at all, you’ll want to check this case study out. I’m particularly interested in the pros and cons of requiring users to enter their city, state, and zip versus entering just the zip and looking up the city and state. Luke has looked at this issue before.

Storing data for Google Maps

In Commentary on 26 August 2009 tagged Google Maps, JavaScript, PHP, Web development with 7 comments

I hinted at this in my link post, but I thought I’d write up the whole thing in hopes of discussing it. I have a page that will include a Google Map with markers for a number of locations (potentially a large number of markers). For an explanation of how to add markers to a Google Map, check out this page.

So the question is: how do you get the address data from my database to Google Maps?

The process is to geocode the address and then apply the marker to the map. There’s a simple example at that link.

Here are some possible approaches:

1. Write some code (PHP in this case) that emits the JavaScript used to geocode the addresses and put the markers on the map. Unfortunately then you have a mixture of JavaScript and PHP code that looks a lot like JavaScript on your page.
2. Print out a JavaScript data structure that contains all the information for the markers and then iterate over that data structure in JavaScript.
3. Put the map data in hidden elements on the page where it can be extracted using JavaScript. The downside is you have hidden elements on your page. The upside is that your PHP is completely separated from your JavaScript.
4. Create a service that returns a JSON data structure of the marker information that can be called using XmlHttpRequest and call that from the page. That offers a clean separation of the JavaScript from the PHP but unfortunately could add latency to the page.

I’ve done some searching to find out how people handle this problem, but haven’t seen any good answers yet. Any ideas?

HTML 5/XHTML 2 link roundup

In Commentary on 12 July 2009 tagged browsers, HTML, HTML 5, Web development with no comments

This is a special link roundup related to the W3C killing off XHTML 2 and putting all its eggs in the HTML 5 basket. I’ve posted about this myself here.

• John Resig: HTML 5 Parsing. The HTML 5 parser in Firefox is C++ code automatically converted from the Java parser used by the HTML 5 validator.
• hacks.mozilla.org: video – more than just a tag. On the use of the video tag, which is designed to replace Flash video (mostly).
• Shelley Powers: On XHTML2 and HTML5. Another roundup of HTML 5/XHTML 2 links.
• Henri Sivonen: An Unofficial Q&A about the Discontinuation of the XHTML2 WG. Sivonen represents Mozilla in the HTML 5 working group.

Links from July 9th

In Commentary on 12 July 2009 tagged browsers, civil rights, health care, JavaScript, learning, links, science, torture, Web development with no comments

• Discover Magazine: The Brain: Stop Paying Attention: Zoning Out Is a Crucial Mental State. Neuroscientists explain my usual state of mind.
• FireQuery. jQuery-specific enhancements for Firebug.
• The Zinn-Segaran Experiential Greatness Scale. You never know when this is going to come in handy.
• Bruce Schneier: The Pros and Cons of Password Masking. I think it all depends on the environment in which the password will be entered.
• Threat Level: Judge Acquits Lori Drew in Cyberbullying Case, Overrules Jury. This lady is a hateful loser, but making it a crime to violate a site's terms of service is awfully bad law.
• Shared Equity Mortgages. An interesting idea for people who don’t have enough money to make a down payment on their house.
• Vanity Fair: Todd S. Purdum on Sarah Palin. An awesome article that ran on Sarah Palin just before she resigned.
• Glenn Greenwald: The suppressed fact: Deaths by U.S. torture. In the discussions of torture, the number of people who were waterboarded is discussed frequently, the number of people in US custody who have died almost never is.
• O’Reilly Radar: Radical Transparency: The New Federal IT Dashboard. Pretty amazing application of Drupal.
• O’Reilly Radar: Want A Job? Learn SharePoint, Says Gary Blatt. There’s a whole other world out there I barely know exists.
• Firefox 3.5 for developers. The stuff you need to know.
• Scott Rosenberg: Salon.com IPO: It was ten years ago today. I thought it was a bad idea back then.
• Robert Reich: Why the Critics of a Public Option for Health Care Are Wrong. I’m not giving up on real health care reform.
• FiveThirtyEight: George F. Will Admits Public Option Will Cut Costs. At least half the stuff people are saying about health insurance isn’t true.
• Slate: Why do Iranian police uniforms say "police" in English? I was wondering.

Determining whether to hide a report filter

In Commentary on 20 June 2009 tagged JavaScript, Web development with 1 comment

Let’s say you have a report that has some filter controls on top that let you narrow the scope of the report. When the report loads, the filter is collapsed. The user opens the filter, changes some of the settings, and submits the form. What is the preferred method for determining whether the filter should be displayed? A related question is whether you should detect the filter’s visibility status in JavaScript or you should check on the server side and use the style attribute to control visibility.

Here are some options:

• Always leave the filter collapsed initially. I hate this option, though, because it hides important information from the user. If the report is in some non-default state, the user should be able see when it loads what that state is.
• Check to see whether any form parameters were submitted. If there were, add the appropriate style attribute to the form on the server side.
• Assuming the GET method was used, check for a query string in JavaScript and hide the form using JavaScript if no query string is present. (Indicating that the filter is in its default state.)
• Using JavaScript, check the values of all of the fields on the form to see whether they are in their default state. If not, display the form.
• Use a hidden form field set on the server side to indicate that the filter should be displayed. In JavaScript, check that field to determine whether or not the filter should be displayed.

There are probably other options as well, and all of them will work. Choosing from among them is a matter of ease of maintenance, mostly. Ideas?

Links from June 3rd

In Commentary on 3 June 2009 tagged Apple, business, cars, css, Google, iPhone, links, politics, religion, The Media, Web development, wine with 5 comments

• Edmunds.com: “Confessions of a Car Salesman” Updated for 2009. The original series was a classic on the shady business practices of car dealerships. Turns out the same basic practices are still being applied.
• Bloomberg: Ballmer Says Tax Would Move Microsoft Jobs Offshore. Microsoft exec threatens to move more jobs offshore if the government closes some unrelated tax loopholes that the company takes advantage of.
• Dan Froomkin: Celebrity Journalism at the White House. A strong critique of NBC’s silly news special this week on the Obama White House.
• slacktivist: Killing in the name of. An important blog post on the history of the anti-abortion movement.
• Carrer Blog: 1 line CSS Grid Framework. Everything good and bad about CSS in a single line.
• Daring Fireball: Why Palm’s WebOS ‘Media Sync’ iTunes Integration Can’t Be Legit. Don’t miss the followup on the legality of the Palm Pre impersonating an iPod.
• Hivelogic: Deploying ExpressionEngine from GitHub with Capistrano. This approach should work for any PHP app.
• Andrew Leonard: GM: Into bankruptcy, out of the Dow. Companies that file for bankruptcy are automatically delisted.
• Joe Gregorio: Wave Protocol Thoughts. On the plumbing.
• Trader Joe’s Wine Compendium. A blog that reviews only wines sold at Trader Joe’s.
• The Atlantic: Do CEOs Matter? What do chief executives add? One thing’s for sure, a bad CEO can certainly be a disaster for a company.

Links from May 28th

In Commentary on 28 May 2009 tagged email, fonts, Google, government, healthcare, HTML, links, Web development with no comments

• O’Reilly Radar: Google Bets Big on HTML 5. The big takeaway from this is that current browsers already support a big chunk of HTML 5.
• Webmonkey: Google Throws Its Weight Behind HTML 5. More coverage.
• O’Reilly Radar: Google Wave: What Might Email Look Like If It Were Invented Today? Really interesting new project from Google.
• Introducing Typekit. Third party hosting for embeddable fonts. This could be huge.
• The New Yorker: Annals of Medicine: The Cost Conundrum. Convincing argument that capitalism is driving rising medical costs, delivering inferior care to patients and lining the pockets of doctors and the health care industry. This is a must-read for anyone who cares about health insurance.

Quotable: Simon Willison

In Commentary on 20 May 2009 tagged quotable, Web development with no comments

This is a great definition of a microframework:

Microframeworks let you build an entire web application in a single file, usually with only one import statement.

Links from March 30th

In Commentary on 30 March 2009 tagged browsers, cars, database, design, food, links, scalability, security, Web development with no comments

• Jason Santa Maria: Reflections on Layer Tennis. Really, really great post on participating in Layer Tennis. I loved this.
• SF Gate: Food, service uneven at Absinthe. A review of Top Chef participant Jamie “Top Scallop” Lauren’s San Francisco restaurant by Michael Bauer. Brutal.
• John Resig: Determining Browser Market Share. Deep thoughts on measuring browser market share.
• New York Times: Vast Spy System Loots Computers in 103 Countries. Uncovered by researchers at the University of Toronto. Also read this followup from James Fallows.
• Goodnight, Raleigh: Memorializing a Magnificent Oak and “The Great Pacificator”. A little local knowledge about Raleigh.
• The Economist: Germany’s racy auto banks.
• Tim Bray: On Rack. A nice, short introduction to Rack, the glue that provides an interface from Ruby applications to Web servers.
• MySQL Performance Blog: PROCEDURE ANALYSE. Very useful for optimizing your MySQL schema.
• Vanessa Fox: Transforming the Relationship Between Citizens and Government: Making Content Findable Online. Advice on making data more searchable, pertinent to anyone publishing online.
• Last.fm: Last.fm Radio Announcement. Users not in the US, UK, or Germany have to pay up to listen. Music licensing sucks.
• LastFM Firefox Extension. Scrobbles Pandora tracks to Last.fm, for people like me who feel weird anytime they listen to a song and the data isn’t transmitted to Last.fm.
• intranation: Development virtual machines on OS X using VMWare and Ubuntu. A clever alternative to MacPorts or Fink.
• Trustico: Buy GeoTrust, VeriSign SSL Certificates At Cheaper Prices – Strategic Partner United States. I hate paying for certificates. These guys are cheap.