July 1st, 2009 by brent

Time is an interesting creature of change…  The more things change the more they stay same??  To a certain degree I find that to be correct.  Internet Explorer always seems to be a few revs behind its competition i.e. Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera and Safari.  I find it interesting how Opera and Firefox are leveraging the Internet to enhance the browsing experience.  It makes a lot of sense.  This could also be attributed to the general nature of improvement – things evolve over time.

Opera’s Unite, the web server in a browser,  is a good example of a web browser that is much more than a web browser.  It is an application that uses Opera servers (or personal servers) to share content.  That is a very vague overview, but it makes a point; web browsers today are much different than web browsers of yesterday.

I think this is a trend started by Firefox.  Firefox plug-ins that integrate delicious, flickr, facebook, or any kind of social media that is web based – is a change from the norm.  Even Mozilla is graying the line between desktop and webapp.  The introduction of Weave lets users sync up their browsers across many PCs and mobile devices.  Allowing for a more constant web experience – such a great idea.

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June 24th, 2009 by brent

Google Public Policy Blog posted a response to a tremdonous exposé on Google HTTPS by a group of researchers (at least "signed" by a group of researchers).  It really wasn’t all that in-depth, but it was a good report none-the-less.  Could it have been a blog post?  Yes.  Would it have been as effective?  No and Yes.  I think getting Google to respond to something publicly is a step forward in their cause and doesn’t do any damage to Google.

It only helps everyone I believe.  The more people that know about web security – a better web will be had for all.

The overview from the research paper:

Google supports HTTPS encryption for the entire Gmail, Docs or Calendar session. However, this is disabled by default, and the configuration option controlling this security mechanism is not easy to discover. (1)

What they want done:

Rather than forcing users of Gmail, Docs and Calendar to “opt-in” to adequate security, Google should make security and privacy the default. (1)

I think Google is an unfair target in this situation.  I tried getting HTTPS on my Yahoo! mail – no going.  No options.  Appending https to mail.yahoo.com only encrypts your login and not your mail session.  How about getting them to change??

I don’t know about hotmail or live mail whatever it is called now, but I suspect that is also the same.  Google is far ahead of its competition, yet, they are singled out?  I don’t get it, but I do.

Google is an agent of change and represents the future; they are held to a higher standard.  They should be applauded for all the good they have done for the web and all of us. 

I’m not sure if Google should be forced into this situation of automatically enabling HTTPS for all users; do we need HTTPS at home?  How many of their users access from home or other secured network?  This is a question that Google alone can answer.  Sure, it would be nice to protect all the people who have no clue about security, but is that Google’s responsibilty?

I don’t know.  Should Google start a new PR campaign about the dangers of using unencrypted HTTP on a public network?  That sounds like something Microsoft or Yahoo! would do.

March 20th, 2009 by brent

JavaScript can pass some rudimentary tasks to the client so, as developers know, this can save processing cycles.  Sometimes it can actually add processing cycles, so it definitely depends.  Saving processing time allows application to run faster for the most part.  You don’t have to wait for a complete page cycle to do tasks ala 1998.  Basically, users are not patient nor should they be patient.  They are used to the Desktop world.  I feel JavaScript helps bridge that gap for users; sometime developers/designers go overboard.

Ease of Use

Love
Javascript is easy to use.  Compatible with any web programming language: Classic ASP, .NET, PHP, Ruby, JSP.  It integrates easily.  It is fairly lightweight and the syntax is not mind-blowing.

Hate
It is a little to easy to use and users can directly access things in your page.  It gives the user more control than what they know.  Look you can easily change the background of any page in the address bar.

javascript:document.bgColor = ‘#000000′;void(0);
^ Paste that into the address bar and press enter -> changes the background

This only touches the surface of what JavaScript can do.  It can get into your web app and change things around.  I use it for quick fixes on the fly or to try different things.  You can’t rely on JavaScript it will only cause you pain.  Can you trust the DOM?  No.

JavaScript is an interesting topic still it was once vogue, faded out, and then came back (with velocity).  I think at one point in JavaScript’s history it was somewhat confused for Java, but I don’t think that is currently valid.  There are so many great JavaScript libraries out there that enhance the UI and the total web experience.

• • JQuery
  • MooTools
  • Prototype

They are even available from the Google API with no API Key which is an added bonus; unlimited connections to boot.  I don’t think a lot of these effects/plug-ins would be as robust or available if not for JavaScript libraries and the good old Goog.

I really don’t hate JavaScript, but I think it can be overused or used incorrectly (say for validation).  Sure it can help in notifying the end-user of validation issues; it should also be validated on the server side.  Web development is a many layered burrito.

March 15th, 2009 by brent

Change is Hard

I don’t think we will ever know the true reason why people still use IE6.  If you do a quick search you find a ton of sites giving lots of reasons.  “They don’t know any better”, “they dislike change”, “because they have to”, “they have an old computer” (3) … all valid reasons why but that is not the point.  Change must occur.  There are so many better choices people must be informed.  This blog does not render correctly in IE6, its close but no cigar, and I think that is how people will ultimately change.  We must move forward and leave people behind so they will catch up.

The Future is Now

I stumbled across a nice little blog Lea Verou that is done totally in CSS3.  Very ambitous and is what a lot more sites should do.  We must move forward so others may follow.  We need more blogs pushing the newer standards.  I don’t think corporations can do this because they are afraid of losing sales or isolating customers; a valid point.  Is this a drawback of Corporations on the web?  That all forward progress must grind to a halt?  To a point.  Yes.

There are a lot of interesting things happening right now that I think correlate to aging technology.  The rise of netbooks hampers this forward progress.  Vista and Netbooks never going to happen.  Windows 7 and Netbooks sounds promising.  I feel we are stuck right now.  I think that is okay as things cannot be the same forever.  The one balantly obvious fact is Microsoft’s model of stitching the browser to the OS will never work.  It has to be independent to be effective.  The next iteration of Microsoft IE codenamed “Gazelle” finally sounds like they are becoming a modern browser (hopefully).  Looks like they are going to follow Google’s implementation of Google Chrome with a multi-process browser (each tab is a process).

The one certainty is that IE6 is dead and people need to be weaned off of it ASAP.

What browser do you use?

March 9th, 2009 by brent

The CheckBoxList control in Microsoft ASP .NET 2.0 can be quite limiting in features.  You can set a tooltip for the overall control; we can say “HEY THIS IS A CHECKBOXLIST”, which is great if that somehow helps you.  The true power would be in adding a tooltip to each individual item in the checkboxlist.  It would be nice to databind the field like other ASP .NET 2.0 Controls, but again no such luck.

To add a Tooltip to each individual item you are going to have to loop through the control.  By setting the title attribute to whatever you want will give you the individual control to name each checkbox in the checkboxlist.  This can done be done when pulling items in or on the case of a control firing.  Whatever works for you.

' Loop through CheckBoxList and set tooltip to checked if selected
For Each item As ListItem In CheckBoxList1.Items
If item.Selected Then
item.Attributes("title") = "CHECKED"
End If
Next

This is really just a quick and dirty way to add tooltips to checkboxlist items.  If you are already pulling in jQuery or some other library I would say use one of the many Tooltip plugins out there.  If you are not using any Javascript libraries this can be a quick way to help achieve a goal.  I’m not sure if this will work in Firefox, but if you are going for crossbrowser definitely check out a Javascript library.