News.com is reporting on an upcoming toolkit to assist in the creation of Ajax applications.
It sounds from the description that it’ll be a Javascript wrapper around the existing XMLHTTPRequest functions; I doubt it will be more useful than Ajax.NET but it’s interesting nonetheless.
This bit’s funny though:
“People who do (AJAX development) are rocket scientists,” Fitzgerald said. “In some ways, this papers over the mess that is JavaScript development. It’s easy-to-build ’spaghetti’ code.”
That’s Charles Fitzgerald, Microsoft’s Manager of Platform Technologies (?). Does he seriously believe that Javascript lends itself to messy development? Prototype, Mozilla (who use JS extensively in their apps and extension system), and Jeremy seem to disagree.
But the irony is that Microsoft’s current big web technology, ASP.NET, can lead to spaghetti code of the highest order. With templated controls and the absurd event model, ASP.NET can be a minefield in the wrong hands… just like Javascript.
So I think Charles has chosen his words wrongly in this circumstance. It will be interesting to see who picks up on this.
Gotdotnet Workspaces appear to be a sort of Sourceforge for .NET. I just found a post about Retina.NET so I thought I’d check it out.
Unfortunately, there’s no real detail on the homepage, there’s not quick FAQ or About section, and the fucking documentation section asks you to login!
Great stuff chaps. I’m sure your product is very clever, but if it’s this hard to find out about and you’re that poor at presenting it, I’m not interested.
Thank you Google. Your lovely little library lets us do client side XSLT transforms independent of the core browser tech.
Why? Because XML is a great way of transmitting small datasets, and if you’re using AJAX tech…. oohh… Send XML back to the client and let them worry about the UI stuff.
I was asking the other day why the BBC was still using the Real format for their content. It seems now that their long-talked about Dirac format is finally coming to fruition, and it looks like it will be a real competitor to WMV, Quicktime, and indeed Real.
I’ve made some changes to the password generator based on some recommendations by Gerv. The generator now uses a list of more memorable words. It also throws up ten passwords per request to let you choose your favourite.
Now this is a workstation. I’ve worked with two monitors before, and it’s an interesting experience. You can never really have enough screen real estate. Visual Studio in one, a browser in the other?
Windows XP supports nine monitors you know…
SVN talk about the programming zone. Everyone’s had it – getting an idea at 10pm and working on it till 2am; hitting a sweet spot and coding till your eyes bleed; managing to block everything else out and go on a blitz….
The office environment is not conducive to this. It would be interesting to see exactly how 37 Signals work – they’re clearly not a typical company. How do they have company meetings? How do they collaberate with such a loose environment?