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Useful







Brussels web design blog

The IBM glass engine

Try this amazingly clever interface to consult the music of Philip Glass: The IBM glass engine

The interface automatically centers itself to display only the relevant information. You just drag sliders depicting the available information as spectrums.

This allows for navigation according to sound, historical data, track genre, etc.

AMAZING

And now, a word from the president

 


 

Running multiple versions of Firefox together

As a web developer, it is important to test against upcoming versions of popular browsers. With Firefox 3 sitting in our door step, you may find this little how-to useful : a quick ‘n easy way of running Firefox 2 alongside Firefox 3 beta 2 in Five steps: the principle is two have 2 user profiles, one for each Firefox version.

1./ Download and Install Firefox 3.

It will install itself in a different folder (Default in C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox 3 Beta 2).

2./ Go to your Firefox 2 Folder

(normally: C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox).

3./ Create a new profile

right-click on firefox.exe, choose “create shortcut”, rename the created shortcut as “Profile Manager” (wonder why Mozilla don’t provide it already), then right-click on the created shortcut, and in the first field “Target” (Cible in French): append this to the existing value (after the double quote):

-profilemanager -no-remote

So that it reads:

"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -profilemanager -no-remote

Now, double-click on it and choose “create new profile”, call it “FF3″ (or anything you like, but make it simple).

4./ Got to your Firefox 2 folder:

Again, create a shortcut to the firefox.exe file sitting in this folder, right-click on the sortcut > properties. In the target field, add this to the current value:

-P FF3 -no-remote (replace FF3 with the name you put in step 3).

So that it reads:

"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox 3 Beta 2\firefox.exe" -P FF3 -no-remote


(Mac / Unix users: add a “&” at the end:   -P FF3 -no-remote & )

5./ Now copy that shortcut to FF3 wherever you want (desktop, menu bar…) And make sure you use it to launch Firefox 3!

Thanks codefront for the tip !

And now, a word from the president

 


 

Jaxter – serverside javascript

January 22, 2008 is a date to remember for the web development community, celebrating the release of a fine piece of serverside software: Jaxter , created by Aptana (the makers of the outer excellent free Aptana Studio IDE).

You’ve always been told and believed javascript is client side, right? From now on, think twice: Jaxter enables you to run javascript on the server, which is executed on page load or via ajax calls.

Obviously, this will not help for “animating that div up and down” javascript, but definitely for server-client communication, a typical ajax thing. There, Jaxter improves your application on such aspects as file I/O, network connectivity, database access, email access, etc… All related to client/server communication.

John Resig (jquery’s father and member of Aptana ’s Advisory Board) wrote a pretty convincing article on Jaxter, where he builds a quick app that saves a file on the server and feeds its content back in a textarea.

What’s nice is that Jaxter works alongside a web server to process content. For now, it can work with Apache 2.x using the mod_jaxer Apache module bundled with Jaxer. It can also already work with Java-based web server Jetty, using the jaxer filter servlet now packaged with Studio and soon to be available standalone. It also works with Tomcat (details coming soon) and will be compatible with other Java web and application servers.

Jaxter API seems quite straightforward and, since it is built on top of the Mozilla engine, can run any javascript that browsers like Firefox or Camino can.

Jaxter is available for both Windows and Mac, not yet for Linux unfortunately, though it should be available soon, with all those unix/linux-based servers outthere…

If you’re like me and you can’t wait to try it out without installing it yet, appjet provides free ajax applications hosting ! Code along…

And now, a word from the president

 


 

Eloquent JavaScript

Eloquent JavaScript
Eloquent JavaScript is a digital book providing a comprehensive introduction (tutorial) to the JavaScript programming language. Apart from a bookful of text, it contains plenty of example programs, and an environment to try them out and play with them.

The book is aimed at the beginning programmer ― people with prior programming experience might also get something out of it, but they should not read chapters 2 to 5 too closely, because most of the concepts discussed there will probably be nothing new to them. Do make sure you read the end of the first chapter, which has some essential information about the book itself.

The book is freely available, and may be used (as a whole or in parts) in any way you see fit, as long as Marijn Haverbeke is credited as the original author.

And now, a word from the president

 


 

i.Scribe and InScribe: free email client to replace outlook

Ok, let me wish you a happy 2008. Fine, out of the way now heal that headache and read along.

I’ve got a good news: after months of trying to find the right replacement for the overbloated outlook 2003, i’ve found the contender

Read the rest of this entry »

And now, a word from the president

 


 

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