Published January 24, 2007
Sometime pretty soon (in fact, in the very next thing I write), I’m going to need some consistent way to refer to different periods in the history of the Web. I don’t know of any widely-accepted chronology for this, and I especially don’t know of any which really fits with the sort of references I’m going to need to make, so, with apologies to J.R.R. Tolkien, I present my own chronicle, derived from one too many nights of having re-read The Lord of the ...
Published January 22, 2007
Previously we looked at some objections to JavaScript libraries and some possible responses. Now it’s time to ask a bigger question: do you need a JavaScript library, and if so how should you go about choosing one? I’m not going to recommend any particular library, because I don’t think there’s such a thing as one-size-fits-all in web development, but I can list a few things which are useful to keep in mind when making these decisions. So let’s dive in.
Published January 15, 2007
JavaScript’s got a bad rap; it’s the language everybody loves to hate, and the one language which, more than any other in the modern web developer’s toolbox, people will go to insane lengths to avoid writing directly (witness Google Web Toolkit, JavaScript “helpers” in server-side frameworks, etc.). Which isn’t fair, really, because (as I’ve said many a time) most people don’t actually hate JavaScript the language; they hate the buggy and inconsistent implementations of JavaScript in major web browsers and, to a larger extent ...
Published January 12, 2007
Ever since I started using Joe Gregorio’s mimeparse module to help with my OpenID delegation, I’ve been treated to a first-hand tour of the various things people have thought it would be good to stuff into the HTTP Accept headers their applications send. So, naturally, I’m going to start a gallery of some of my favorites.
So far the winner in the “is that really what you meant” category is what appears to be the default header sent by Java’s HTTP connection classes:
text/html, image ...
Published January 8, 2007
There’s been lots and lots and lots of buzz around OpenID in the last couple weeks, which makes me happy because OpenID is a pretty darned cool system. Simon is doing all sorts of cool things, and Sam Ruby wrote up wonderful step-by-step instructions for OpenID delegation, which lets you use your own domain name to sign in with OpenID even if your OpenID is hosted somewhere else.
I sat down tonight and worked out how to set it up here, because that’s a nifty and useful trick ...