Links published in June 2006
Fjax: Just say no
I’m not normally given to debunking crazy technology ideas - mainly because there are so many out there that it would be a full-time job - but this thing is so obviously broken I thought it best to try and nip it in the bud.
My new favorite phrase: “rectal approximation”.
Jacksonville’s Year-Old Blogging Community (Est. 1998)
This is the kind of thing that happens when newspapers get out of touch with their local communities.
Add Label Click Support to Safari
This could be pretty handy until the WebKit team gets around to fixing this properly (this is WebKit bug 3244 for those who want to follow its progress).
(Via Simon Willison)
Prettier Accessible Forms
Despite what you’ll sometimes hear from less-informed people, forms can be accessible, easy to use and look good.
API Keys for Direct Competitors
This is a really cool idea.
(Via jeremy Zawodny)
window.onload (again)
Nice solution to a common problem.
xdDojo 0.3.1 on AOL’s CDN
In case you hadn’t seen it already, this is what we call a “game changer”.
Celebrating one-way “relationships”
Key quote:
Normally, that introduction wouldn’t matter, but in this case it does, because this research isn’t at all about internet users — it’s about the best way to SELL to internet users, which makes it a little odd coming from people who purport to represent the best interests of users.
(Via David Weinberger)
Custom SQL in Django
Malcolm has been building up to this for a couple of days, and it’s really worth reading the entire progression:
- First he posed a puzzle: find the best way to perform a certain operation in SQL.
- Then he offered a couple of solutions, one that’s quick and dirty and one that’s more elegant and efficient.
- Finally he explains how to use a custom manager to make this easy as pie in Django.
Custom managers are another of those great relatively-untapped features of Django that really make life a whole lot easier — I use a couple of them on this site to help save keystrokes on certain common database operations, for example. There’s a little bit of official documentation on them, but they’re a relatively new concept (having recently been merged in from a long-running development branch) and it’s great to see a concrete example of what they can do.
How to Sing the Blues
Teenagers can’t sing the Blues. They ain’t fixin’ to die yet. Adults sing the Blues. In Blues, ” adulthood” means being old enough to get the electric chair if you shoot a man in Memphis.
Wonderful.
(Via Phil)
django - signals
Ian posts another great entry documenting lesser-known bits of Django
A few thoughts on journalism
Jeff distills a lot of great data he’s collected and presents it effectively.
The News Comma
Hans, myself in agreement on vital grammatical issue.
Ruler
Neat little trick. I don’t often do intensive CSS debugging anymore, but if the need arises I’ll almost certainly be reaching for this.
javascript loop test
I seem to recall reading this elsewhere a long time ago, but it’s nice to have numbers to establish that while is faster than for. The fact that a decrementing while loop is faster than an incrementing one was news to me, though.
(Via Jonathan Snook)
Is asynchronous communication really being used?
PPK asks for examples of applications which genuinely take advantage of the ‘A’ in AJAX.
Develop for the Web with Python Django Framework
An article at IBM DeveloperWorks is flirting with being the top link on Digg right now, and there’s some surprisingly good discussion going on there. My favorite quote comes from this comment, which explains one of the biggest advantages of a good framework:
Rails (and Django) just makes life easier by combining all the stuff you *should* have been doing but never really got around to (unit tests, MVC separation, humane URLs, etc.). You still have to make a web application, you just don’t need to write an ORM, a templating system, a URL mapper, etc. etc. before you can get to that. It’s the difference between having to build a kitchen before making a cake and just showing up with some flour, sugar, and eggs.
World Company - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I know what I’m dressing up as for Halloween this year…
Narrative JavaScript
I find your ideas intriguing, and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
(Via Dean Edwards)
That uncertain feeling
We’re really going to miss Wilson.
Oh, and this:
What is it that I’m passionate about? Where do I see myself in five, ten years? What is it that I want to do? I want to stay in the middle. I’m most intrigued and excited and inspired by the intersections: design and engineering, imagination and logic, pixels and code.
Amen, brother.
If you’re in the SF area and you don’t hire this guy, you’re going to be kicking yourself in a few years. And whoever does hire him is going to be kicking your ass.
Hay Net Entry Page
The US government helps bring together people who have hay and people who need hay.
(Via Drew McLellan)
Baseball Team Creates World’s Unhealthiest Burger
Pardon me while I drool.
Wheee!
Have I mentioned how much I love this video?
Markdown Support
Ever wonder why the size of my entry excerpts changes every so often? It’s to deal with this whitespace-stripping problem.
django - contenttype
Ian explains the usefulness of Django’s bundled contenttype system. As he says, there are lots of little jewels like this that aren’t (yet) well-documented; expect to hear more about them in the not-too-distant future.
When the bough breaks
For a while here, the first thing I did when I got into work in the morning was boot up the Mac. The second thing I’d do was SSH into a Linux box at home where I actually kept everything I was working on.
Also, looking at comment #3, why does Gruber keep getting piece of shit readers?
Levels of Accessibility Knowledge
I’d like to take a few from each column, please.
In Praise of the Hyperlink
This is the most important thing you’ll read today. Probably this week. Probably this month, too. Oh, heck, just go read the dang thing already.
Book: ppk on JavaScript
Going to have to buy this.
Jakob Nielsen’s Usability Fighting Styles
“Dragon Steals the Beard” is my favorite, I think.
(Via Jason Kottke)
Your HTML level
“Just” use HTML.
June 6th Is JavaScript ‘Array’ and ‘Object.prototype’ Awareness Day
James McParlane has a dream:
I want my children to grow up in a world when coding in JavaScript does not result in a fistfight.