Ernst's Corner

Clean CSS with Server-Side Browser Detection (1/2)

2011-05-11T00:34:00.000+02:00

Why?!
We all know that browser detection is bad, but let us look at some situations in which it may actually make sense; consider the following use cases:

A specific (old?) browser needs some special CSS styles to make things look/work acceptably.
For example, Firefox 3.0 needs a negative margin on an INPUT field, to correct a bug.
Certain content should be highlighted to give a visual clue that this content appears most appropriate for the visitor's context, like browser and OS.
For example, on a download page, you want to highlight a download for Mac OS X 10.6, because that is what the visitor appears to use.

Alternative Solutions
Typical solutions for these problems are:

Use CSS hacks.
Downsides: Unreliable, cumbersome and very hard to maintain.
Use conditional comments.
Downside: IE-only.
Use feature detection. Various client-side frameworks support this, e.g., Modernizr or jQuery's $.support.
Downsides: Only works when JavaScript is enabled, only on more recent, capable browsers and may impact performance negatively on less capable devices.

The Case for a Different Path
Excluding the first one, the mentioned solutions have their applications in modern web development. However, they certainly do not cover all ground.

An alternative solution for the specified use cases would be welcome if it would comply with all or most of the following requirements:

Reliable, e.g. should automatically pick up new browser versions.
Easy to apply.
Easy to maintain, i.e., no hacks like html>/**/body {}.
Generally applicable, i.e., not specific to IE.
Supports Progressive Enhancement, i.e., does not require JavaScript.
Supports older and less capable browsers as well as more recent and capable ones.
High performance, no time lost detecting features client-side on a limited CPU.

Server-Side Detection
An alternative solution is to have a server-side algorithm add some CSS classes to an element on the HTML document. For example, an iPad agent string could result in the following BODY tag being generated:

<BODY class="Device-Tablet Browser-Safari BrowserEngine-WebKit BrowserOS-iOS">

Let's look at what such an approach has to bring to the table in terms of requirements coverage:

Reliability: Fair/good. Newer browser versions will be picked up automatically or with an update of the detection algorithm.
Easy to apply: Yes, definitely: BODY.BrowserOS-MacOS .MacDownload {border: 1px solid green;}
Easy to maintain: Yes, you only deal with (readable!) CSS.
Generally applicable: Yes, only limited by what user agents offer (of course) and what the algorithm detects; but the algorithm can be extended.
Supports Progressive Enhancement: Yes, perfectly. Works without a single line of JavaScript.
Supports older and less capable browsers: Yes, the detection is done server-side, independent of the browser.
High performance: Yes, server-side algorithm should take less than 10 ms.

What's Next?
Does it sound like there is a valid use case for server-side browser detection? Let me know in the comments!

In a followup article, I will give some code samples.

TDD versus DDT

2010-12-27T21:27:00.001+01:00

Test-driven development (TDD) is commonly accepted as a practical approach for producing high quality production code and high quality unit tests at virtually the same time.

This short article is about an alternative approach, called Documentation-driven testing (DDT). While it does not apply in all situation (which approach does?) I have used it effectively, although until now I've never taken the effort to describe how we did it.

This is how TDD works:

Write a minimal test for the currently non-existent production code; no more than is needed to make the test fail; and not compiling is a form of failing.
Make sure the test fails.
Write the production code; program only what is needed to make the test succeed. And yes, take this literally, even if it appears stupid (e.g. returning a constant from a computation method).
Make sure the test succeeds.
Either go to step 1 or refactor the code and go to step 3.

Now, here is how DDT works:

Write Javadoc API documentation for the production code, with a just an no-op implementation. The code should compile and the Javadoc API documentation should be generated.
Write unit tests using only that documentation. This should be done by somebody other than the one that wrote the documentation.
Make sure the test fails.
Implement the production code.
Make sure the test succeeds and, if not, find the source of the error (documentation, production code or test code).
Go back to step 1 or refactor the code and go to step 5.

Now, what is the advantage of this approach? The main driver is the quality of the documentation, including the consistency with the production code. Note that you should already get a good review of the quality of that documentation in step 2, since a lack of understanding on the side of the unit test author should ring some bells.

It is clear this approach is not applicable everywhere, all the time. As is suggested in Uncle Bob's great book Clean Code, avoid comments except for public APIs. There it may be an approach that works for your team; if it works for you (or not) do let me know!

Bizarre: Site redirecting to about:blank

2010-10-19T21:54:00.000+02:00

The site www.vbtelecom.nl is redirecting to about:blank. How bizarre! And it works in both Firefox 3.6.10 and Safari 5.0.2:

$ telnet www.vbtelecom.nl 80
Trying 77.95.248.16...
Connected to redirect.server.eu.
Escape character is '^]'.
GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: www.vbtelecom.nl

HTTP/1.1 302 Found
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2010 19:49:19 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.9 (Debian) PHP/5.2.6-1+lenny6 with Suhosin-Patch
X-Powered-By: PHP/5.2.6-1+lenny6
Location: about:blank
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Content-Length: 0
Content-Type: text/html

Connection closed by foreign host.

XINS lacking IPv6 support

2010-04-30T13:43:00.000+02:00

If you get the following error while running a XINS-based application:

org.xins.common.text.ParseException: The string "0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1%0" is not a valid IP address.

then you found out the hard way that XINS lacks IPv6 support. This applies to all current versions of XINS: 2.2, 2.3-beta1 and 3.0-beta1.

To work around this, set the system property java.net.preferIPv4Stack to true.

XINS 3.0-beta1 released

2010-04-28T23:13:00.000+02:00

Just now I tagged 3.0-beta1 of my experimental XINS fork (which is not so experimental from the perspective that it has been running in production-sites since 2007).

Source and related stuff available from GitHub:

http://github.com/znerd/xins

For a complete download, get this ZIP package:

http://ernstdehaan.com/xins-3.0-beta1.zip

Recent changes include:

Ant 1.8.0 is now properly supported
Logdoc definitions are now validated using XSDs (Logdoc 0.3 included)
Default runtime config file reload interval is now 5 instead of 60 seconds.
Not initializing logging subsystem (Log4J) if system property "org.xins.server.logging.init" is set to "false".
Not setting context IDs (in Log4J terminology: NDC.push() calls) if property "org.xins.server.contextID.push" is set to false (system, bootstrap or runtime property).

The importance of contract-first development

2010-04-17T15:04:00.000+02:00

In enterprise IT projects, software services are typically consumed by other teams or even organisations than those who programmed those services. For example, a Billing system can be instructed by a User Profile system to allocate billing details for a new user profile. Or a Web Frontend system can ask a Session Management system for the data pertaining to a certain session ID.

This is typical service-orientation.

Expectation management
A challenge in such a service-oriented approach is making sure that all involved parties – and that can be or become a lot more than just 2 – have the same expectations from the service. In my experience this is the number one source of frustrations and issues.

Before a service is built or extended, the parties involved at that point in time typically reach agreement what the new functionality should do and how it should be accessed. It is then quite common to have those teams work in parallel, because time-to-market is key.

But even if the teams do not work in parallel, when the service provider delivers functionality for testing and integration, expectations from the other parties can be very hard to meet. For example, service consumers may have expected different formats or may have expected necessary transformations would be done by the service provider, while the service provider is pushing the requirement to the callers.

When this happens, project deadlines and stress levels are at stake.

And the more consumers and the more time it takes for the service provider to deliver a first version, the higher the risk.

Working with contracts
The common solution to this is to work with a contract that defines the agreements between the provider(s) and the consumer(s). Such contracts vary from informal (e.g. Word-documents lacking strict interface definitions) to formal (WSDL with very strict constraints).

Such contracts can be written at the start or they can be generated from existing code.

Generating a contract from existing code is generally a bad idea. The contract is then focused on the implementation, which is subject to change. Then if the implementation changes, what happens to the interface? If it should also change, this violates the common principle of Separation of Concerns. And it is clearly the wrong way around, the contract is the agreement, not the implementation chosen by the provider.

Another issue with contract generation is that the contract can be very much focused on the implementation, including specific data types tailored towards an implementation within a certain platform or programming language. This has an impact on the callers and, in the long term, also on the consumer, since the latter may be forced to stick with legacy implementation choices.

An implementation-independent contract
A first step towards a complete solution to this challenge is to author a contract that is implementation-independent. Such a contract can be agreed upon from the start by all involved parties. Real separation of concerns: the contract is the common agreement, while providers and consumers are free to make their own choices within the bounds of the contract.

This may appear a complete solution.

However, in practice, contracts change, possibly even during the initial implementation project. So what should be done in such a case? Is the contract still leading or will the contract by bypassed by reality?

Based on my experience in professional environments I dare say that if the contract can be violated, it will be. With impact on stability/reliability and on stress levels. In the battle between contract-orientation and project deadlines, the former is easily sacrificed.

Contract-first development
The only way to really guarantee that you can keep the promise of an independent contract is to integrate your contract-orientation in your development process, making the implementation(s) dependant on the contract, preferrably on both sides of the contract (providers as well as consumers).

One way to achiebe this is to make your code link to the contract somehow, for example by having a URL to your WSDL files in all implementations, making sure that failures to adhere to the contract result in errors.

Validation at runtime
To avoid the contract being bypassed, implementations should check all service invocations to make sure the contract is respected.

This can be achieved by generating server- and client-side code from the contract. Having access to the contract (in some form) the implementation then checks all aspects of the invocation. Not only the preconditions (consumer requests), but also postconditions (provider responses). If either a consumer or a provider violates to the contract, that must be treated as a fatal violation. Only then your contract will actually be leading.

Validation on the server versus on the client
So if you want to validate your contract, where should you do it: on the client (consumer) or on the server (provider)?

The best approach to this is to do it in both locations, for good reasons:

Separation of concerns: both ends should assume their responsibility, which is to adhere to the contract and consider violations fatal. Neither end can be sure the other end will validate the contract, so they should not assume that.
The provider and the consumer may have access to different versions of the contract. Validation on both ends will likely catch any incompatible differences in the contract versions.

Your contract is your treasure!
Now when you have accomplished a true contract-oriented development process, you will find the contract is your gold mine. The contract is typically orders of magnitude simpler than implementations, making it easy to read and change. But since it describes an extremely important integration point so well (concise) and so correctly, it is easy to reuse it for all sorts of of purposes. For example:

generation of documentation, e.g. Word-documents or web pages, etc.
generation of forms or programs for manual use (including human testing)
generation of unit-, performance- and load-tests
generation of IDE projects, such as Visual Studio, Eclipse, NetBeans, XCode, etc.

To enable certain possibilities, the formal part of the contract needs an additional informal part. The informal part can include examples and human-readable descriptions. They can also help humans understand the contract and its purpose faster and more easily.

Examples of contract-orientation
While WSDL is an example of a contract definition language for web services, it does not provides a full contract-orientation process, requiring the contract to be held.

The only fully contract-oriented projects I am aware of are those I initiated: XINS and Logdoc. The first (XINS) is an open-source web services framework (that generates server- and client-side Java code), while the latter (Logdoc) implements contracts for logging, again including a Java-implementation.

Do you have experience with contract-orientation? Do you know of other projects that put contract-orientation in the heart of their approach? Please let me know in the comments!

ATG 9.1 on Mac OS X 10.6

2010-03-30T11:44:00.002+02:00

Using the instructions from Ronald Pulleman (which focus on ATG 2007.1), I tried installing ATG 9.1 on Mac OS X 10.6.2. Below are the instructions for reproducing what worked for me.

Make sure you know what is officially supported by ATG, since Mac OS X is not. Also make sure you have the Installation Guide handy, part of the ATG 9.1 documentation set.

Below I refer to the .profile file for adjusting environment variables. Make sure you apply these environment variable changes each time. If you do not use bash, then replace .profile with whatever your shell reads on startup.

Install and configure MySQL

Have MySQL installed; I picked MySQL 5.1.45 (64-bit), but 5.1.32 would have been supported.
Add this your .profile:
export MYSQL_HOME=/usr/local/mysql-5.1.45-osx10.6-x86_64 export PATH=$MYSQL_HOME/bin:$PATH
In your System Preferences application, start MySQL and make it start automatically at boot.
Change the password of the root user, for obvious reasons:
mysqladmin -p -u root PASSWORD newpass
Make MySQL use the InnoDB engine by default, this is required for ATG: Create the file /etc/mysql/my.cnf with the following contents:
[mysqld] default-storage-engine=innodb sql-mode=TRADITIONAL

Install and configure JBoss

Install JBoss; I used JBoss 4.2.3-GA (community edition), while the (paid) JBoss EAP 4.2.0 CP05 would be the ATG-supported version.
Add this to your .profile:
export JBOSS_HOME=$HOME/jboss-4.2.3.GA export PATH=$JBOSS_HOME/bin:$PATH
Modify the JVM arguments in the startup script, if you want to comply with the ATG recommendations for JVM parameters. Edit the bin/run.sh file and modify the JAVA_OPTS setting as follows:
JAVA_OPTS="-server -Xms2048m -Xmx3072m -XX:MaxPermSize=768m -XX:MaxNewSize=768m -Dsun.rmi.dgc.server.gcInterval=3600000 -Dsun.rmi.client.gcInterval=3600000"

Integrate MySQL with JBoss

Download the MySQL JDBC driver Connector/J, I got version 5.1.12.
Copy the Connector/J JAR file to the server/atg/lib directory under the JBoss home directory:
cp ~/Downloads/mysql-connector-java-5.1.12/mysql-connector-java-5.1.12-bin.jar $JBOSS_HOME/server/atg/lib/

Install and configure ATG

Download ATG 9.1 from the ATG support site, this is a JAR file.
Unpack it and then execute the contained .bin file:
unzip ATG9.1.jar sh ATG9.1.bin
Choose JBoss as the application server. I suggest you make sure there is no space in the name of the destination director (I chose ~/atg-9.1).
Put your license keys in the home/localconfig/ directory (below the ATG installation directory).
Create the file home/bin/dasEnv.sh with just one line in it:
export ATGJRE=/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/CurrentJDK/Commands/java
Create the file home/localconfig/atg/dynamo/service/jdbc/JTDataSource.properties with the following contents:
JNDIName=java:/MySqlDS $class=atg.nucleus.JNDIReference

Initialize the ATG database

Under the JBoss directory, create the file server/atg/deploy/mysql-ds.xml with the following contents:
<datasources> <local-tx-datasource> <jndi-name>MySqlDS</jndi-name> <connection-url>jdbc:mysql://127.0.0.1:3306/atg000</connection-url> <driver-class>com.mysql.jdbc.Driver</driver-class> <user-name>atg</user-name> <password>atgpass</password> <exception-sorter-class-name>org.jboss.resource.adapter.jdbc.vendor.MySQLExceptionSorter</exception-sorter-class-name> <valid-connection-checker-class-name>org.jboss.resource.adapter.jdbc.vendor.MySQLValidConnectionChecker</valid-connection-checker-class-name> <metadata> <type-mapping>mySQL</type-mapping> </metadata> </local-tx-datasource> </datasources>
Log in to the MySQL command line client mysql:
mysql -p -u root
Create a database user for ATG:
USE mysql INSERT INTO user (host, user, password) VALUES ('%', 'atg', PASSWORD('atgpass'));
Create a database for ATG:
CREATE DATABASE atg000;
Allow the atg user all access privileges on the atg000 database:
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON atg000.* TO atg; FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
Exit the mysql client (you can use Ctrl-D).
Create the ATG data structures in the database by executing the DDL scripts on MySQL (this typically takes less than a minute):
cat DAS/sql/install/mysql/das_ddl.sql DPS/sql/install/mysql/dps_ddl.sql DSS/sql/install/mysql/dss_ddl.sql DCS/sql/install/mysql/dcs_ddl.sql | mysql -D atg000 -u atg -patgpass

Run ATG

Deploy an ATG application to JBoss.
Start JBoss: Go to the JBoss directory and execute:
bin/run.sh -c atg
Using a browser visit http://127.0.0.1:8080/dyn/admin/ to see the DynAdmin tool.

Keep your (webmail?) session open

2010-02-17T10:04:00.000+01:00

If you have a website that keeps expiring your session after a while, and you want to work around that, then try out the SessionAlive extension for Firefox. I find it extremely useful, especially for webmail (such as Microsoft Outlook Web Access).

The extension works OK in Firefox 3.6.

Experimental XINS 3.0-alpha4 released

2010-02-16T19:55:00.000+01:00

Just now I've tagged 3.0-alpha4 on my experimental XINS-fork. Changes since 3.0-alpha3:

newer version of Logdoc, which no longer requires a DTD to be set
JMX port can be specified on the command line, e.g. "xins run-abc -Djmx.port=2090"
APIs using Logdoc actually have proper code (Log.java and TranslationBundle*.java files) generated
the 3 Library classes (in common, client and server) actually return the version of the library (instead of null) based on the meta information available from the JAR manifest
fixed client-side transaction logging, it actually works now
the _GetVersion meta-function now also returns the current Logdoc version
the _GetStatistics meta-function now supports a "targetFunction" parameter, to reduce the output to the statistics of one function only
the _GetStatistics meta-function now also returns the transaction ID for each call that information is provided for
_GetStatistics not only returns the average, but variance as well (compute the standard deviation from that by taking the square of it)
fixed and improved the unit tests

Go check it out at http://github.com/znerd/xins/tree/xins-3.0-alpha4.

XINS 2.x and my experimental XINS 3.0-fork

2010-02-11T20:47:00.000+01:00

After some investigations by myself and a constructive discussion with Anthony Goubard
(maintainer of the official XINS project) we have decided to backport features from my XINS 3-fork upstream instead of the other way around. Features will be discussed and ported one by one. This is the safest approach, leaving the baseline stable and only introducing changes gradually.

Expect some changes to go into the upcoming XINS 2.3 release, while most will come into the picture only after that.

Stay tuned for updates.

XINS 3.0-alpha3 and Logdoc 0.2

2010-01-23T15:04:00.000+01:00

I've just released the 3.0-alpha3 version of my XINS fork, which includes the also just released Logdoc 0.2. See:

Compared to version 0.1, Logdoc 0.2 is cleaned up: the internal logging output is now sent via Ant, meaning that the Ant options -verbose and -debug are needed to see all output. This improves usability.

XINS 3.0-alpha3 introduces lots of small changes, mostly cleanup and minor corrections. A functional change is the introduction of client-side transaction logging via the log messages 2300 and 2301. The former includes the input/output parameters, while the latter does not.

Note that my XINS 3.0 fork is based off XINS 2.2-alpha2. Porting the changes from the 2.x branch to my 3.0-fork is one of my next challenges. Help in this area would be much appreciated! If you are keen and precise and know a bit about Java coding, let me know via ernst [at] ernstdehaan com.

XINS 3.0-alpha2 and Logdoc 0.1

2010-01-11T23:43:00.001+01:00

Just now I've released the 3.0-alpha2 version of my XINS branch, at:

http://github.com/znerd/xins/

Main feature is that Logdoc has been factored out into its own project, of which I've released version 0.1:

http://github.com/znerd/logdoc/

Logdoc is used to specify log mesages separate from code, generating both Log4J code and web documentation.

Possibly Logdoc can be extended to support code generation to other environments, including Apache Commons Logging, Log4PHP, Log4C, etc.

Another change made to XINS is that all source code is now under src/java making it much easier to work on XINS from an IDE.

So most of the previously presented random ideas have been implemented already...

Random ideas for XINS and Logdoc

2009-12-30T23:18:00.001+01:00

Here's a random list of possible enhancements to XINS.

First, a couple of changes that would make it much easier to configure an IDE (such as Eclipse or NetBeans) to work with XINS:

Move all Java source code to src/java/; currently it is spread out over src/java-common, src/java-client-framework and src/java-server-framework. Still, the JAR files can remain the same.
Put the generated Java source files also under src/java/, such as the Log and TranslationBundle classes.
Put all generated class files under build/classes/.
Make the Library classes detect the XINS version at runtime, instead of using a text replacement technique to modify the source code before compiling it.

Then some ideas on Logdoc:

Split out Logdoc from XINS. It's not needed inside XINS, all it needs is a JAR file and some Ant tasks for generating some stuff (like the Java source files and the documentation).
Make it easy to plug in a different logging library. Currently, Logdoc generates Log4J code, but it should be fairly simple to make it generate code for other logging libraries. It doesn't mean Logdoc should actually implement this, but it would at least facilitate it.

To be continued.

XINS 3.0-alpha1 tagged (fork at Github)

2009-12-28T22:41:00.000+01:00

Just now I've created a tag for XINS 3.0-alpha1 in my XINS-fork at GitHub:

browse
download tgz | zip
view overview of changes (plain text)

From a runtime-stability point of view, I expect this release just works, even if it is tagged as an alpha-release. At least for me this branch has been running in production for a couple of years now.

However, do note that from a development perspective, a lot of things may change before this goes into (or becomes) an official XINS 3 release. This requires agreement with other involved parties, especially Anthony Goubard (official XINS maintainer) and Online (copyright owner of most of the code).

Some of the things still high on my TODO-list:

get rid of all deprecation warnings by either resolving or suppressing them, depending on what is more appropriate
further change the code to use type-safe collections where possible, using generics
merge with official XINS 2.x changes

Command line input in Java

2009-12-28T22:20:00.002+01:00

Today, someone introduced me to Spring Roo, which has quite some similarities with XINS at first glance. I really like the command line shell interface Roo has, featuring unbuffered text input, completion and fancy colors. I know it's not even close to a rich IDE like NetBeans or Eclipse, but I love command line tools for their productivity and simpicity.

Looking at some documentation, the text-based shell interface is implemented using these technologies:

JLine - Library for handling console from Java, unbuffered.
JAnsi - Library for using ANSI escape sequences to format console output.
JNA - Windows-specific library for displaying colored output on Windows-systems.

Both libraries work on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux/UNIX-systems. Definitely worth considering in case you want to implement a console application in Java.

PS. Upon further inspection, Roo is very different from XINS, though. Roo is an aspect-oriented build-time code generator/manager that generates JSPs, Spring code, Java plumbing code (such as toString() methods), while XINS is an RPC-oriented component technology framework that also has (optional) runtime components (both client- and server-side, if you wish).

XINS 3.0 fork at Github

2009-10-01T20:51:00.000+02:00

Just recently, I've made our internal XINS fork available via:

github.com/znerd/xins

The version is currently set at 3.0-alpha1-dev. This may become the official XINS 3.0 release at some point, or (some or all) changes may go into an official XINS release.

The most important changes in compared to mainstream XINS are:

Java 5-features, such as generics and foreach-loops (hence Java 5+ is required)
lots of utility functions are added, to simplify programming with XINS
various libraries are updated, such as Saxon (from 8 to 9) , JUnit (from 3 to 4), Xerces, etc.
a couple of previously deprecated members and classes are removed, most notably FastStringBuffer and FastStringWriter
deprecated various classes and members, such as the ElementBuilder class
upgraded from XSLT 1.0 to 2.0
the Element class now supports mixed content (PCDATA and child elements), an add(String) method has been added

This branch of XINS has been used in production for almost 3 years now, but you are not advised to use this code in production, as it has not gone through all the testing that is typically done for an official XINS release, across various platforms and Java versions.
Also note that not all of the changes in XINS 2.2/2.3 have been incorporated (yet).

The following things are still on my list of things to be done:

clean the code up further
get rid of all deprecation warnings by either resolving or suppressing them (whatever is more appropriate)
further changing the code to use type-safe collections where possible, using generics
possibly adding Commons Lang as a dependency, so that various utility methods, like TextUtils.isEmpty(String) can be deprecated (and later removed)
change HttpClient (which is deprecated) based code with HttpComponents HttpClient based code
get rid of Jakarta ORO, just use the J2SE regular expression-support that is available since J2SE 1.4

If you have any changes you would like to incorporate into (this branch of) XINS, fork the project at github. Using git, it is quite easy to merge different forks.

To be continued.

Weird error while executing LessCSS

2009-09-22T09:51:00.005+02:00

This is really odd: I got the following output while running lessc on some .less files from an Apache Ant task:

-lesscss:
[003:221] MagicCam 0: Current process: java, Flash is loaded: no
[003:221] Error(magiccammac.cc:276): MagicCam 0: MagicCamOpen: Not an allowed process!
[000:002] MagicCam 0: Current process: java, Flash is loaded: no
[000:002] Error(magiccammac.cc:276): MagicCam 0: MagicCamOpen: Not an allowed process!
[000:001] MagicCam 1: Current process: java, Flash is loaded: no
[000:001] Error(magiccammac.cc:276): MagicCam 1: MagicCamOpen: Not an allowed process!
[000:002] MagicCam 1: Current process: java, Flash is loaded: no
[000:002] Error(magiccammac.cc:276): MagicCam 1: MagicCamOpen: Not an allowed process!
[lesscss] 0 file(s) transformed in 4 ms; 7 unmodified file(s) skipped.

Now I had it at a different point in the build process:

do-generate-headings:
Warning: Reference saxon.classpath has not been set at runtime, but was found during
build file parsing, attempting to resolve. Future versions of Ant may support
referencing ids defined in non-executed targets.
    [xslt] Processing /Users/ernst/albizia/build/contentdb/pfizer/content/PreprocessedSite.xml to /Users/ernst/albizia/build/contentdb/pfizer/content/PageHeadings.ErigeronStrings.xml
    [xslt] Loading stylesheet /Users/ernst/albizia/src/build-xslt/GeneratePageHeadings.xslt
[xmlvalidate2] 1 file(s) have been successfully validated.
[000:224] MagicCam 0: Current process: java, Flash is loaded: no
[000:224] Error(magiccammac.cc:276): MagicCam 0: MagicCamOpen: Not an allowed process!
[000:003] MagicCam 0: Current process: java, Flash is loaded: no
[000:003] Error(magiccammac.cc:276): MagicCam 0: MagicCamOpen: Not an allowed process!
[000:000] MagicCam 1: Current process: java, Flash is loaded: no
[000:001] Error(magiccammac.cc:276): MagicCam 1: MagicCamOpen: Not an allowed process!
[000:002] MagicCam 1: Current process: java, Flash is loaded: no
[000:002] Error(magiccammac.cc:276): MagicCam 1: MagicCamOpen: Not an allowed process!

There is a tiny bit of information here:

OptiPNG Ant task

2009-09-08T11:05:00.004+02:00

OptiPNG is a tool for optimizing PNG images. And now, there's an Ant task for executing it from an Ant build file:

http://github.com/znerd/optipng-ant-task/

Mini-HOWTO for Linux/UNIX/Mac OS X systems, assuming you already have Apache Ant installed:

download OptiPNG source code from SourceForge (TAR GZ file)
execute: ./configure
execute: make
execute: sudo make install
(enter your password if required); the command optipng is now installed in /usr/local/bin/
download the optipng-ant-task source code from http://github.com/znerd/optipng-ant-task/downloads - take the latest version available (you can choose between a ZIP and a TAR GZ file)
unpack the download file, this will create a new directory with an odd name like: znerd-optipng-ant-task-604de975b4cc4a1a2766e385c91b749318af038e (you may want to rename it to optipng-ant-task or so)
in that directory, execute: ant
this will compile the classes, run the available unit test and build the JAR file

Then you can use the Ant task from your own build file, for example as follows:

<taskdef name="optipng" classname="com.pensioenpage.jynx.optipng.OptiPNGTask" classpath="lib/optipng-ant-task.jar" /> <optipng dir="src/htdocs" todir="build/htdocs" />

Java language: referencing current class from static context

2009-09-03T11:57:00.002+02:00

Currently, in Java SE 6, to reference the current class from a static context the name of the class is needed. For example:

public class Foo {
  public static final valueOf(String s) {
     if (s == null) {
        return null;
     } else if (s.startsWith(Foo.class.getName() + ':')) {
        ...
     } else {
        ...
     }
  }
}

However, if this code would be copied to another class, or if the class is renamed, then that code will cause issues, possibly even causing hard-to-find bugs.

Instead it would be nice if the enclosing class could be referenced without using the name. A possible syntax that does not introduce new language keywords could just be:

class

The previous example would then become:

public class Foo {
  public static final valueOf(String s) {
     if (s == null) {
        return null;
     } else if (s.startsWith(class.getName() + ':')) {
        ...
     } else {
        ...
     }
  }
}

Of course, this construct should also be allowed in non-static code.

One open question is how to deal with inner classes and referencing a certain outer class. I would not mind keeping that out of scope, so the feature only allows referencing the direct enclosing class.

Another issue is subclassing. Would the class statement reference the current class (in case of a non-static context) or the one the method is defined in?

Improving Ant output

2009-09-03T11:04:00.005+02:00

Ant is a very popular build tool in Java environments. Numerous tasks have been developed for it that allow integration with various services and products quite easy.

One area Ant could improve in is output. Running a typical build file produces a lot of output that is not really relevant to the user. Also, when an error occurs, it would be nice to have a stack trace giving more information, but then you need to rerun Ant with the -verbose option, which enables verbose output for all tasks, not just the failing one.

And note that there may be situations in which rerunning the task is suboptimal:

the error does not occur again (but it may come back to hunt you later on)
executing the build takes a lot of time

Here are some guidelines I propose for improving Ant output:

keep output to stdout very limited;
after completion of the build run, provide access to more output, including the stacktrace, without rerunning the task

Here's an example of some Ant output:

-init-properties:

-init-site-properties:

check-questions:

transform-questions-xml:
[xmlvalidate2] 10 file(s) have been successfully validated.
[xslt] Transforming into /Users/ernst/albizia/build/contentdbsrc/xsite/content
[xslt] Processing /Users/ernst/albizia/build/contentdbsrc/xsite/content/AOW.QuestionsCategory.xml to /Users/ernst/albizia/build/contentdbsrc/xsite/content/Vragen_AOW.SourcePage.xml
[xslt] Loading stylesheet /Users/ernst/albizia/src/build-xslt/PreprocessQuestions.xslt
[xslt] Processing /Users/ernst/albizia/build/contentdbsrc/xsite/content/Berekenen.QuestionsCategory.xml to /Users/ernst/albizia/build/contentdbsrc/xsite/content/Vragen_Berekenen.SourcePage.xml

The output from the xmlvalidate2 task is very brief. That's nice. In fact the question is whether the output should be shown at all. The output from the xslt task, however, is quite verbose. Instead of listing all files being processed, it could just give a summary of what it did. When -verbose is passed, it could output what is currently output.

Here are some possible options for achieving the goals I stated above:

When a certain Ant option is enabled (which could at some point be enabled by default), send all verbose output to a file on the file system, for example build.log or .build.log. This file can be examined by the user after the build is finished (or cancelled).
When using the default output mode for stdout, do not output the names of tasks that are not actually run (depending on the if and unless attributes).
By default make all tasks just output a single line with a summary of what it did.
Do not put an empty line between each executed task.

When using this mode, use fixed-width output for the target names, and put the task output behind that. Target and task names may have to be cropped for that. For example:

-init-prope.:
-init-site-.:
check-quest.:
transform-q.:xmlvali.: 10 file(s) validated.
                 xslt: 15 file(s) processed, 0 unmodified file(s) skipped.

Note that the output Ant 1.7.1 currently produces when running Ant with the -verbose option is always available after the build run, so the reduction of initial output is not limiting the investigation options for the user, but is in fact extending those.

What do you think of this? Do you consider the current Ant output too verbose or just fine? Have you every had issues examining why an Ant build failed and you wish you would have passed -verbose in the first place? And what do you think of the suggested changes?

Converting ODS to CSV

2009-09-03T10:13:00.005+02:00

Recently I've released an ODS (OpenDocument Spreadsheet) to CSV (Comma-Separated Values) converter. It's available from GitHub:

http://github.com/znerd/ods2csv

The current version (0.1) is not perfect, I've documented some issues, mainly related to empty fields/records being output. After releasing version 0.1 I created some unit tests; once they pass, these issues should be resolved.

During development, it turned out it's really easy to parse an ODS file, since it's just a ZIP file with the contents contained in simple XML file inside it.

The converter uses SAX to parse the XML inside it, to minimize memory usage. It comes with a Java library, a command line program and an Apache Ant task. And there are no external dependencies other than a Java runtime environment (version 1.5 or up).

Weirdest user agent string (updated)

2009-08-24T16:41:00.008+02:00

Investigating a reported bug with one of our PensioenPage websites (IE 8 being detected as IE6) I found out the cause of the issue: An IE8 instance returning the following user agent string:

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; SIMBAR={B81922DF-CABA-4976-8A80-B27BE01CAC7C}; Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1) ; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; Creative ZENcast v2.01.01)

Note that there's both MSIE 8.0 and MSIE 6.0 in the string! This is the weirdest user agent string I've ever seen.

Update (August 25, 2009): And I'm not the only one seeing this kind of agent strings, I just noticed a FancyBox mailing list posting with a similar one:

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1) ; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; InfoPath.2)

And if you search for "Trident/4.0; Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0;" on Google, you can find a lot of similar ones. It's a strange world.

Vim syntax highlighting for lesscss

2009-08-20T16:46:00.003+02:00

Here's a quick HOWTO for enabling vim syntax highlighting for .less (lesscss) files:

Create the directory ~/.vim/syntax/ if it does not exist yet.
Download the vim syntax file less.vim into that directory, e.g. with the command:
```
wget http://leafo.net/lessphp/vim/less.vim
```

Make sure the following statements are in your ~/.vimrc:

syntax on
au BufNewFile,BufRead *.less set filetype=less

That's all.

Update (Sept. 25, 2009): Here's a screenshot:

Ant task for invoking lesscss (updated)

2009-08-20T16:06:00.008+02:00

Update (August 26, 2009): I've polished the Ant task for LessCSS files quite a bit and implemented support for both lessc and plessc (the LessPHP alternative).

Features:

converts .less files to .css
supports both lessc and plessc (at least one is required)
supports time-outs
only processes changed files
supports separate source/target directories, with include/exclude patterns

It's available under de BSD-license for download from github: http://github.com/znerd/lesscss-ant-task/.

Notes:

for lessc (tested lessc v1.1.13) to work to fail properly when lesscs fails, a minor change to one of the lessc files is required, this may be resolved in an upcoming version of the task and/or an upcoming version of lessc
plessc v0.1.6 works well with the task, but has a rather annoying bug related to negative background positions.

Below is the original blog post.

Here's some sample code for implementating an Apache Ant task for invoking lesscss:

import java.io.File;
import org.apache.tools.ant.BuildException;
import org.apache.tools.ant.DirectoryScanner;
import org.apache.tools.ant.taskdefs.Execute;
import org.apache.tools.ant.taskdefs.MatchingTask;

public final class LesscssTask extends MatchingTask {
 public LesscssTask() {
    setIncludes("*.less");
 }

 private File _sourceDir;
 private File _destDir;

 public void setDir(File dir) {
    _sourceDir = dir;
 }

 public void setToDir(File dir) {
    _destDir = dir;
 }

 @Override
 protected void execute() throws BuildException {
    for (String inFileName : getDirectoryScanner(_sourceDir).getIncludedFiles()) {
       File        inFile = new File(_sourceDir, inFileName);
       String outFileName = inFile.getName().replaceFirst("\\.less$", ".css");
       String outFilePath = new File(_destDir, outFileName).getPath();
       String  inFilePath = inFile.getPath();

       log("lesscss: From \"" + inFilePath + "\" to \"" + outFilePath + "\".");

       Execute.runCommand(this, new String[] { "lessc", inFilePath, outFilePath });
    }
 }
}

After defining the lesscss task in your build file (using a taskdef) invoking it is as simple as:

<lesscss dir="src/htdocs" todir="build/htdocs" />

Installing lesscss on Gentoo Linux

2009-08-20T14:53:00.002+02:00

Here's a short HOWTO on installing lesscss on Gentoo. As root, execute:

emerge --sync (or skip this if you know you are relatively up-to-date)
emerge rubygems
gem install less

That's all.

Prefetching files using jQuery

2009-08-14T12:26:00.004+02:00

Since years, Gecko-based browsers have supported link prefetching, while other browsers (notably Internet Explorer) are lacking this function.

Here's a simple JavaScript-based work-around based on jQuery:

$(document).ready(function() {

     // Prefetch all files referenced in [LINK rel="prefetch" href="xyz"] tags...
     var $prefetchTags = $('HEAD LINK[rel=prefetch][href]');

     // ...starting with the ones that can be done asynchronously via AJAX...
     $prefetchTags.filter('[href$=.txt],[href$=.js],[href$=.html]')
     .each(function() {
             $.ajax({url: this.href, dataType: 'text'});
     });

     // ...followed by all referenced images,
     $prefetchTags.filter('[href$=.png],[href$=.jpg],[href$=.jpeg],[href$=.gif]')
     .each(function() {
             new Image().src = this.href;
     });

It looks for all LINK tags in the HEAD section of the HTML document that have rel="prefetch" set.

Then it processes all HREF attributes, but treating text files and images differently, since text files can easily be downloaded using asynchronous HTTP requests (a.k.a. XMLHttpRequest or AJAX), while this method is not well-suited for fetching binary files.

This approach may be a bit rough on the edges, since I've only done limited testing, on Fireefox 3.0/Mac and MSIE 8.0/WinXP.

Reducing IE 6 support

2009-07-15T11:57:00.002+02:00

It's well known that IE 6 is causing a lot of grief for Web Developers. Recently, Digg announced they will reduce support for IE 6.

Now, Youtube is also announcing they are reducing IE 6 support. They are actively advising IE 6 users to upgrade to either IE 8, Google Chrome (of course) or Firefox 3.5.

See this image:

screenshot showing banner warning an IE 6 user on the Youtube site

In my opinion, this is an excellent development. End users as well as system admins should be pushed to migrate to more standards-compliant browsers. I realize this will have a significant impact on some companies, especially with IE6-specific intranet sites.

Advanced testing for equality in Java unit tests

2009-07-01T15:11:00.006+02:00

Testing the equals method
When testing Java classes, a common requirement is that the equals(Object) method works properly. When using JUnit, this can be as simple as:

import static org.junit.Assert.*;
:
assertEquals(a, b);

However, you may want to test that not only a considers itself equal to b but also vice versa. With a single assertEquals call this won't work, so you add:

assertEquals(b, a);

Perfect, right?

Possibly. What if the test fails? How do you determine what the equals method actually considers a difference? The comparison algorithm can be quite complex, involving several instance fields, including collections, maps and XML snippets.

Differences for humans
It would help if the class would describe the differences in a human-readable manner. Here's how: Declare an interface VerboseDiff (or whatever better name you can come up with) with just one method that describes the differences between this object and the specified argument. It returns null if there are no differences:

public interface VerboseDiff {
  String describeDifferences(Object obj);
}

Then change your implementation classes to implement this interface and implement the equals method as follows:

@Override
public boolean equals(Object obj) {
  return describeDifferences(obj) == null;
}

Your describeDifferences method could be implemented as follows:

public String describeDifferences(Object obj) {
if (obj == null)) {
  return "obj == null";
} else if (! (obj instanceof ThisClass)) {
  return "obj is not an instance of ThisClass, but an instance of class " + obj;
}

ThisClass that = (ThisClass) obj;

if (that._baseValue != _baseValue) {
  return "baseValue of this object (" + _baseValue + ") is different from base value of argument (" + baseValue + ')';
}

return null;
}

Now your unit tests can look like this:

assertEquals(null, a.describeDifferences(b));
assertEquals(null, b.describeDifferences(a));

Further reading
A final tip: Implementing a good comparison algorithm that is in line with the contract of the equals method is typically not straight-forward, especially if you need to deal with subclasses. The article How to Write an Equality Method in Java (at artima.com) covers the topic excellently.

More CSS with Less

2009-06-30T20:43:00.004+02:00

The people at Sitepoint send me a 'Tech Times' newsletter every now and then. I tend to ignore newsletters from most other companies, but this one is different, it is surprisingly interesting, most of the times.

Today's Tech Times (issue 246) informed me about Less, an improvement over regular CSS that adds variables, mixins, operations and nested rules to regular CSS. It's backwards compatible and compiles to regular CSS before you serve it to your favorite user agent. Wow.

This is definitely something I intend to integrate into the work flow for the PensioenPage technology, right before optimizing the (normal) CSS using the YUI Compressor.

Firefox 3.5 released

2009-06-30T20:38:00.002+02:00

If you didn't know already, Firefox 3.5 was released today (June 30, 2009).

Of course, the PensioenPage technology is ready for it, even detecting the version properly, check out the source code:

www.pensioenpage.com/?_indent=true

Note that the _indent=true enables indentation in the source code.

Combining CSS and user agent sniffing

2009-06-23T08:54:00.003+02:00

Avoid sniffing if you can
User agent sniffing is bad and that's known. So avoid it if you can.

However, in some cases a browser is just acting weird and you cannot ignore that, it needs some specific CSS instructions. Internet Explorer 6 and 7 are prime examples here.

The old days: CSS hacks
In the past, this was resolved with odd CSS filters (better known as hacks), constructs that were known to work in some browsers and be ignored in some other browsers. To do this well, you need to know about the quirks of all browsers. This is not scalable, with new browsers coming out all the time.

Alternative: Sniffing and CSS classes
Here's an alternative: Use server-side agent sniffing and put the results in a class attribute in the HTML. This allows you to write CSS rules like:

.Browser-Opera ul.ModList li {display:block}

or even:

.BrowserOS-MacOS-10.Browser-Firefox-3-5 li.FooBar {margin-left:2px}

To see this in action, have a look at the source code of the PensioenPage site:

www.pensioenpage.com

or, with indentation enabled in the source code:

www.pensioenpage.com/?_indent=true

Note that the user agent sniffing we implemented has more than 160 unit tests, detecting (Mobile) Internet Explorer, Opera Desktop/Mobile/Mini, Firefox, the old Netscape browsers, Chrome, Safari, Maxthon, etc.

Operating systems detected include Mac OS X, various Windows versions, BSD variants, Solaris, Linux, the iPhone OS, etc.

Finally, the browser engine is also detected, allowing rules like this one:

.BrowserEngine-Trident div.Tip {padding:0}

The new OS challenge: data integration and synchronization

2009-06-03T10:58:00.004+02:00

Today's OS challenge
In the past, operating systems had a limited function, synchronizing access to internal and external hardware, file systems, memory, processes, etc.

Nowadays, user's demands far exceed these 'simple' requirements, expecting data integration and synchronization. People use different (portable) machines, applications and different (online) storage realms, and these all need to integrate in a customer-focused manner.

Examples: image manipulation, bookmarks, data exchange
For example, on Mac OS X images can be manipulated with all sorts of relatively cheap programs these days (e.g. Skitch, LittleSnapper, Acorn, Pixelmator, Picturesque, etc.) All these programs have a different focus and provide different functions, with some overlap. However, when you try combining the functions of these programs, you are facing a real challenge. What format do you use for data exchange? PNG is a good choice for one-way image manipulation, but then don't try changing something in the middle of your process.

This challenge becomes even larger when you try exchanging vector images between multiple applications, like Keynote, Pages, NeoOffice, Novamind, Microsoft Office, etc. Both SVG and OpenDocument are formally standards, but they are currently far from practical for inter-application data exchange. On the Mac platform, EPS and PDF are typically the best bets. An established practical standard is lacking.

Another example is your bookmarks. How do you synchronize your bookmarks between Firefox, Safari, Opera and Internet Explorer? Each vendor starts to deploy his own web-based synchronization service (MobileMe, Opera Link, etc.) and there are some that go a bit further already (XMarks, Delicious) but we need one solution for all browsers that integrates with different operating systems.

Finally, notice how online data exchange services have started to emerge. For example Quicksnapper, Skitch.com, MobileMe, Flickr, YouTube, etc. These services make it easy to share data over the internet, but they are typically focused on one type of data (images or video, for example) and fail to integrate with different sorts of applications. Their focus is typically limited.

Dropbox is a positive exception here, providing a generic data exchange experience that is seamless across Mac OS X and Windows platforms, transparently working with all sorts of applications and providing limited history/backup/versioning support. However, optimally, applications should be adjusted so they recognize and support this platform.

And what if you want to view and edit your files on the fly from your mobile device, like an iPhone?

Network computer?
In the past, companies like Sun MicroSystems attempted to resolve these issues with a largely closed environment: the network computer, sporting a central server for sharing all applications and data. Although there are still (business) environments where this is an excellent solution, the majority of the customers requires more choice and an open system.

Operating system support
This is where an operating system like Mac OS X can make a big difference. OS X is already much appreciated for the system-wide services it provides, like spell checking, hyphenation, speech, etc. But these don't go far enough.

For application interoperability, Apple should extend their vision, provide a platform and produce some guidelines. These should enable application developers to write interoperable programs that support tomorrow's applications, collaboration and synchronization tools and data exchange methods, including versioning support.

This may require a strategic shift, as Apple is currently trying to make money off MobileMe, which is a closed and proprietary platform that has limited features and is based on an expensive yearly subscription model. Such a model is hardly suitable for large groups of customers that will look elsewhere for their data exchange requirements.

Failed to install Parallels Tools 4.0 in Kubuntu Linux 9.0.4 (updated)

2009-04-27T15:26:00.005+02:00

I tried to install Parallels Tools 4.0 inside a fresh Kubuntu Linux 9.04 installation, but it failed. The log tail is:

make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.28-11-generic'
Installation of kernel modules was finished successfully
Start installation of user space modules
X server: xorg, v1.6.0
Install X modules from directory: .1.6
System X modules are placed in /usr/lib/xorg/modules
Error: there is no X modules for this version of X server
Error: failed to install user space applications and drivers

Any suggestions?

Update (April 28, 2009): This is a known issue, see these posts at the Parallels forum:

Favourite Mac OS X feature requests (updated)

2009-04-27T10:11:00.006+02:00

Here are some of my favourite Mac OS X feature requests, just aimed at improving my efficiency when using the Mac:

when replying to a sent email from Mail, make sure the To:/CC: addresses are the same as the original (currently, in Mac OS X 10.5.6, the To: address is set to my own address);
make the Finder allow me to show folders first;
allow me to put mount points in the Locations bar in the Finder (currently only folders below the mount points can be put in there);
make Cmd-` work while dragging from a Finder window, inside the Finder (perhaps this is even a bug on my system?);
allow me to configure Dashboard widgets are pre-started before I activate the Dashboard, this saves me quite some time;
resize windows from any corner - at least make this an option;
in the Finder, have a Go-back keyboard shortcut for going back to the previous location (like Cmd-LeftArrow in Safari and Firefox).

Idea: Phasing out Office documents per e-mail

2009-04-22T21:25:00.004+02:00

Currently, Microsoft Office files, in various incarnations, are still the dominant format for mailing documents. Although everybody (including Microsoft) agrees these formats are not standards-based en hence (at least in theory) not future-proof, this is a situation that is not easy to change.

Try sending an ODT* file to a colleague. Chances are she will have no idea what to do with it. But since everybody knows Word, Excel and Powerpoint, the situation will remain for a while.

Here's a wild idea for improving the situation: when sending an email, most mail clients support a standard for sending both text and HTML email as alternative formats in the same mail. Perhaps a similar approach could also be applied to DOC/XLS/PPT attachments: For example: every time a user sends an ODT file, a corresponding DOC file is automatically attached as well, and vice versa.

* ODT = OpenDocument Text, an ISO standard format for text documents.

Decrypting multiple files with GnuPG

2009-04-22T16:23:00.004+02:00

Here's a simple UNIX/Linux script that asks for a password and then decrypts a batch of files using that password, using GnuPG:

#!/bin/bash

echo -n "Enter password: "
stty -echo
read password
stty echo

for encrypted in *.gpg; do
     decrypted=`echo ${encrypted} | sed s/.gpg\$//`
     echo -n ${decrypted}
     echo "${password}" | gpg --passphrase-fd 0 -o "${decrypted}" -d "${encrypted}" > /dev/null 2> /dev/null
     if [ "$?" = "0" ]; then
             chmod 600 "${decrypted}"
             echo " [ DONE ]"
     else
             echo " [ FAILED ]"
     fi
done

Favourite browser features

2009-04-21T11:04:00.024+02:00

Here's an overview of what I appreciate in a browser. This table only considers browsers available on Mac OS X, since that's my desktop environment. Note that most of this is very subjective, it's just my personal preferences.

In Firefox, I've installed the following add-ons:

Web Developer
Firebug
Google Page Speed

The bold items are my favourites.

	Firefox 3.0	Safari 4.0	Opera 10 (beta)
Startup time	Pretty bad	Very good	Very good
Ability to immediately edit the address in the address bar after startup	OK	Bad: there is a delay	OK
Shows plain XML in a nice tree	Yes	No	Yes
Recognizes a port number, even when no protocol (e.g. "http") is specified	Yes	Yes	Yes
OS X look-and-feel	Nice	Nice	Not very nice
New tab page	Fast, but empty	Top sites: useful and very attractive	Speed dial, quite nice
Search Google from address bar	Yes	No	Yes
Find in page	Toolbar at bottom is OK, but far from optimal	Result highlighting: very nice and polished	Bad: separate dialog window
Progress of downloads visible in OS (e.g. in Stacks)	No	Yes	No
Web development tools	Combination of Firebug, Web Developer and Google Page Speed works like a charm	"Inspect Element" is very nice and integrated	Developer tool is not very intuitive
Login form autocompletion	Excellent, supporting multiple accounts	OK	OK
Browser can be configured to have just one window with tabs, even when a link is pressed in an external application	Yes	Yes	Yes
Link targets can show in a tooltip (e.g. at the window bottom, like Google Chrome) and do not require a status bar to display	No	No	No
Activity monitor	No	Yes	No
Number of clicks in the address bar needed to select all text	One	Three	One
Prompt to store login details	Unobtrusive and non-blocking bar at the top	Blocking dialog window (very bad)	Obtrusive dialog window, but non-blocking
Supported by XMarks	Yes	Officially only Safari 3 is supported, but in practice it works with version 4	No

Updated on June 9, 2009, for Safari 4 final release and Opera 10.00 beta. Updated and added criteria.

Espresso - first impressions (updated x2)

2009-04-08T11:37:00.030+02:00

As part of the MacHeist 3 bundle, I purchased Espresso, a neat little code editor for Mac OS X. It looks simple and intuitive and works well overall. For a code editor, the functionality is fairly limited, though.

It supports plugins, which Espresso calls sugars.

After using Espresso for just a couple of hours, here are some of the things I would suggest as improvements:

show that a line is wrapped by placing a special line wrap symbol at the end of the line that's being wrapped;
support find in files instead of only supporting find in file names (which only works inside the current project);
when a search operation wraps (inside the current file) around, then have a clear visual signal indicating this, I currently have to take care that I watch the line numbers on the left;
allow opening new files in tabs by default, now I have to drag the tab to the main window every time;
allow tabs/spaces configuration per file type: I'd like to use tabs in XML files while using spaces in programming code (such as Java code);
include more themes in the distribution, instead of just a single one, for example one that looks like vim on a black background with syntax highlighting enabled;
on the theme website, show visual theme examples;
support theme import/translation from existing themes from other programs (e.g. Eclipse, NetBeans, vim, etc.) to Espresso;
make the file modified indicator stand out more (inside the tab header);
use common keyboard shortcuts for switching tabs, e.g. Alt-Shift-arrows (like Safari) or Cmd-Alt-arrows (like Firefox);
have keyboard shortcuts for moving tabs to the left or the right;
add Java support, including syntax highlighting and navigator-support;
support localization and provide support for the Dutch locale;
integrate visual CSS editing;
double-clicking on a folder in the project should open that folder;
workspace folders: it would be nice if a folder could be added in the workspace, for quick access;
MobileMe-support for publish servers would be nice to have;
have an option to remove trailing whitespace when saving files; in my opinion this could even be a global option for any file type, since I'd enable it for all; currently Espresso automatically inserts whitespace (to keep the indentation level) but it does not remove it;
when deleting an element/comment from the navigator, also delete the newline at the end - hence, if a comment occupies a line and there is nothing else on it, then the whole line should be removed;

These are things I consider bugs:

while searching, when I add or delete some text, the occurrence counter is not updated;
there are no small icon version of the "Action" and "Tools" icons, hence using the "Small icons" variant of the toolbar hardly increases the available screen estate;
while hovering over the icons in the toolbar, no icon title/description is shown, even if only icons are shown in the toolbar (without text below them);
when I click on Help -> Get Espresso Sugars the Coffee House website I'm sent to displays all sorts of errors (this is fixed as of April 9, 2009);
when the Settings button is clicked in the toolbar, the caption of the button changes to "Hide Settings", moving the icon, instead the button should -in my opinion- just be visualized as depressed.

These features make Espresso stand out:

excellent Mac citizen: it's fast, stable and integrates nicely in the Mac OS X environment;
the find/replace feature (inside a single file) works like the search feature in Safari, highlighting occurrences, while dimming the rest of the text: awesome;
dragging tabs between windows looks and works very nicely;
you can create a rectangular text selection using Cmd-Alt-mouseclick/-movement, which is very practical in some situations;
automatic XML ending tag completion - when you want to close an open XML element, just press the smaller-than-sign and the slash and Espresso will append the rest;
easy element/comment deletion: just select the tag or comment in the navigator and select Backspace - gone.

Note: Updated on April 9 and April 10, 2009, to add more details.

Browser news updates

2009-03-13T12:15:00.034+01:00

Some recent browser news updates:

the Safari 4 beta has been released by Apple
Microsoft has posted some Internet Explorer 8 performance statistics, which (surprisingly) render IE 8 as better performant than other major browsers, see the Arstechnica article
the Internet Explorer team has written a quite extensive compatibility checklist for IE 8
Opera Labs has released Opera Turbo, see the Opera Desktop team blog. - stability may not be as desired, though
Camino 2.0 beta 2 has been released
OmniWeb is now free, the current version is 5.9.1, see the announcement on their weblog
the next Firefox release will be named 3.5 (instead of 3.1)

Another thing worth noting: Peter-Paul Koch is currently testing mobile browser compatiblity, paid by Vodafone.

iTerm suggested improvements

2009-02-11T11:09:00.009+01:00

iTerm is the best terminal emulator on the Mac, IMHO. It's more customizable than the Leopard Terminal application and supports transparency, tabs, select-to-copy, middle-button-paste, a full-screen mode (with Cmd-Enter), etc.

Here are some suggestions for bringing iTerm closer to perfection, in order of (subjective) importance:

bug: scrolling a view while more output is added (for example when monitoring an active log file) does not work reliably, the view constantly jumps to the end of the output;
feature: have an option to briefly show tab titles while switching tabs; this is especially useful in full-screen mode, since the tabs are then not visible;
feature: have a keyboard shortcut for moving tabs to the left or to the right;
bug: when changing monitors (e.g. disconnect an external monitor), while iTerm is in full-screen mode, iTerm does seem to notice the resolution change, causing iTerm to show as an odd borderless window;
bug: if iTerm is active and you switch from the current Space to another and back, then iTerm is no longer on the foreground, but the Finder is;
bug: when switching to full-screen mode and a tab other than the first is active, then the contents of the first tab are briefly (~1 second) shown before the contents of the active tab are shown again.

Browser news updates

2009-02-06T08:39:00.002+01:00

Here are some browser news updates:

Internet Explorer 8 RC1 is now available (announced in a blog post on the IE blog). See the upgrade guide.
WebKit (the engine inside Safari and Chrome) introduces CSS-based animations, which is different from transitions. Animations are explicitly triggered.
In line with V8 an Squirrelfish Extreme, Opera has announced it is also working on a new JavaScript engine: Carakan.
Firebug 1.3.1b4 has been released.
SitePoint announced it has released FireScope, an extension for Firebug that provides an in-place reference for HTML, JavaScript and CSS.

Who cares about murdering babies?

2008-12-10T10:26:00.005+01:00

In a way I'm surprised to see that if a baby is killed after being born in the Netherlands, my home country, people appear shocked and the police sets up a big investigation to find out who did it so this person can be prosecuted. The same applies to a lot of other Western countries.

Why am I surprised? Because if the baby was killed just a few weeks before, while still inside the mother, it's not called murder. Then the baby is called a "fetus" and the murder is called "abortion" and it's claimed a "civil right." How can we be so blind?!

Look at the image. This is a photo of a so-called "aborted fetus", 22-weeks after conception. Is this not a baby? If it was born at 21 weeks, doctors managed to keep it alive, and then at 22 weeks the mother decided: "oh wait, no, I've got a holiday coming up and I feel really bad and I don't have the money, to raise this child," is it OK to still get rid of it?

Here are some of the facts:

the heart of a baby works as of 4 weeks since the conception
at 10 weeks, the baby is small, but complete, all it needs to do is grow
medical science is advancing, and babies born 21 weeks after conception may soon be able to survive already (if that's not already possible)
in the Netherlands abortions are allowed until 24 weeks after conception
abortions in Israel are allowed until the 9th month (!)
in 2005, there were about 33.000 registered induced abortions in the Netherlands only
reasons for abortions include: interference with holiday planning, financial challenges, unknown father, etc.

I'm wondering: Do we really care about any murder at all, or have we become too wealthy and egocentric to care about anything other than our own "freedom", comfort and wealth?

If you are thinking about having an abortion, think twice, ask for information from both sides. There is help available from prolife-organisations, even after having had an abortion.

Opera 10 alpha looks promising

2008-12-05T17:20:00.005+01:00

Opera have released the first alpha of the new version 10 of their flagship product, Opera (for the desktop). Major changes include:

Presto 2.2 engine
30% improved performance (at least this is what Opera claim)
support for web fonts
increased CSS 3 compliance (including RGBA and HSLA)
developer tool Dragonfly has been improved
Acid 3 compliance
support for the W3C Selectors API
improved HTML5 support

Other things, less important to web developers, include inline spell checking and automatic updates.

For more information, check out the detailed change logs for Windows, Linux/UNIX and Mac OS X. Note that big parts of those documents overlap eachother.

A more useful 404 (Not Found) page

2008-11-18T21:37:00.002+01:00

There's an interesting article over at the A List Apart site:

A More Useful 404

Definitely worth a read for web developers. It discusses some techniques to guess why somebody got to a 404 page and then takes action and displays info to the visitor based on that knowledge.

Firefox usage up to 20%

2008-11-04T14:55:00.004+01:00

NetApps has provided some statistics regarding browser usage. According to their report:

Market share for browsers, operating systems and search engines (November 2008)

Firefox usage is still climbing and now almost at 20%, while Internet Explorer usage is still decreasing and now down to just above 71%.

Of course, your mileage may vary, depending on the kind of site, your geographical location, etc.

But it is becoming more and more obvious that web developers programming Internet sites to Internet Explorer only are irresponsible and are causing issues for their employers and for the visitors of the sites.

An approach that works very well:

program to web standards, avoid JavaScript and Flash initially;
add JavaScript support to make things look better or work nicer (without disrupting the functionality for user agents without JavaScript);
add some Flash if you must, but have replacement content in case Flash is unavailable;

Benefits:

standards compliance;
accessibility for visually impaired is likely to be easy to achieve;
the same applies to Search Engine Optimization.

Ellipsis in all modern browsers (updated x4)

2008-10-16T12:34:00.012+02:00

When you want to avoid that text in a web page wraps, you can use:

   overflow:hidden

However, it's nice to show to users that some content is actually missing. This is typically done with an ellipsis character, that is displayed as three dots:

...

Getting this working across all modern browsers has always been a pain in the neck, but there is ~~an easy solution~~ a hack that works around the issue, to a certain extent.

First, make sure you have a small ellipsis-xbl.xml file on your web server that is served with the content type text/xml, with the following contents:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<bindings xmlns="http://www.mozilla.org/xbl" xmlns:xbl="http://www.mozilla.org/xbl" xmlns:xul="http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul">
<binding id="ellipsis">
   <content>
      <xul:window>
         <xul:description crop="end" xbl:inherits="value=xbl:text"><children/></xul:description>
      </xul:window>
   </content>
</binding>
</bindings>

Then mark all HTML elements you would like to show the ellipsis character on overflow with the class Ellipsis, e.g.:

   <div id="BreadCrumbs" class="ShyText Ellipsis">

Then add the following to your CSS:

   .Ellipsis {
text-overflow:ellipsis;
-o-text-overflow:ellipsis;
-ms-text-overflow:ellipsis;
-moz-binding:url(/ellipsis-xbl.xml#ellipsis)
}

Elaboration:

text-overflow: for WebKit-based browsers (Safari, Chrome, etc.) and for Internet Explorer 7 and before;
-o-text-overflow: for Opera;
-ms-text-overflow: for Internet Explorer 8;
-moz-binding: for Gecko-based browsers (Firefox, Camino, etc.)

Note that the text-overflow will be standardized as of the CSS 3 standard, which is currently still in draft.

Credit for the Gecko solution go to Rikkert Koppes and William Khoe, see the article text-overflow: ellipsis for firefox.

Update (Oct. 22, 2008): The solution for Gecko-based browsers (Firefox, etc.) is far from perfect. The solution has at least the following issues:

applying the .Ellipsis class to an inline element causes the element to disappear;
in Firefox 3.0 (not in Firefox 2.0), soft hyphens inside .Ellipsis elements always show as dashes;
text inside a .Ellipsis element can no longer be selected.

Update (August 11, 2009): Mozilla (in the person of Simon Montagu) is working on a solution, which may or may not go into Firefox 3.6/Gecko 1.9.2. Vote for bug 312156 if you think it's important.

Update (August 13, 2009): Don't expect the solution to go into Firefox 3.6/Gecko 1.9.2 (scheduled for release fall 2009), the bug has been tagged as "-wanted1.9.2" (starting with a minus-sign) meaning it's not planned for the upcoming release. It may still go into Firefox 3.7, which is tentatively scheduled for release in 2010, see the Mozilla Project Meeting Minutes of July 20, 2009.

Update (August 24, 2009): Devon Govett provides a nice jQuery-based solution that at least allows you to resolve the issue when JavaScript is enabled. It works like a charm, at least on Firefox 3.5.2.

Mac OS X, fonts and headless Java

2008-10-10T14:57:00.006+02:00

If on Mac OS X your custom font is not available in headless Java, try installing it in /System/Library/Fonts/ instead of /Library/Fonts/.

Don't ask me why, but this solved the issue I'd been struggling with for days. Below is the background.

Font installed
I purchased a font called "standard 07_55" from the miniml.com site and installed it via the font catalog program, which copied the .otf (OpenType) file to /Library/Fonts/:

  $ ls -lae /Library/Fonts/standard*otf
  -rw-r--r--@ 1 ernst  admin  11996 Oct  8 15:39 /Library/Fonts/standard 07_55.otf

It was accessible from the user account on the Mac, which is confirmed by running a text editor program.

Java program to list all available fonts
The following Java program lists all available fonts:

  public class ListFonts {
     public static void main(String[] args) {
        String[] fonts = java.awt.GraphicsEnvironment.getLocalGraphicsEnvironment().getAvailableFontFamilyNames();
        for(int i=0; i<fonts.length; i++) System.out.println(fonts[i]);
     }
  }

Running the program from the graphical environment
When I ran this program is from Aqua, it worked well and displayed all fonts, including the installed "standard 07_55" font:

  $ java -version
  java version "1.5.0_13"
  Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.5.0_13-b05-237)
  Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.5.0_13-119, mixed mode, sharing)
  $ javac ListFonts.java
  $ java -cp . ListFonts | grep tand
  KufiStandardGK
  standard 07_55

Even when I added -Djava.awt.headless=true it still worked fine:

  $ java -Djava.awt.headless=true -cp . ListFonts | grep tand
  KufiStandardGK
  standard 07_55

Running the program via a remote connection
However, when that same program was run via a remote connection (SSH), then the program would not start up like this:

  $ java -cp . ListFonts | grep tand
  Exception in thread "main" java.lang.InternalError: Can't connect to window server - not enough permissions.
          at java.lang.ClassLoader$NativeLibrary.load(Native Method)
          at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadLibrary0(ClassLoader.java:1822)
          at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadLibrary(ClassLoader.java:1723)
          at java.lang.Runtime.loadLibrary0(Runtime.java:822)
          at java.lang.System.loadLibrary(System.java:993)
          at sun.security.action.LoadLibraryAction.run(LoadLibraryAction.java:50)
          at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
          at apple.awt.CGraphicsEnvironment.(CGraphicsEnvironment.java:23)
          at java.lang.Class.forName0(Native Method)
          at java.lang.Class.forName(Class.java:164)
          at java.awt.GraphicsEnvironment.getLocalGraphicsEnvironment(GraphicsEnvironment.java:68)
          at ListFonts.main(ListFonts.java:3)

This is understandable, since this is a remote connection, it cannot access the window server. So I started the Java program in headless AWT mode, and then it did run. However, now it does not show the font anymore:

  $ java -Djava.awt.headless=true -cp . ListFonts | grep tand
  KufiStandardGK

Solving the issue
The fix? Simple: as root, move the font file to /System:

  # sudo mv /Library/Fonts/standard*otf /System/Library/Fonts/

I hope this helps someone else with a similar issue.

Use HTML 4 instead of XHTML

2008-10-07T22:10:00.003+02:00

Here are some simple reasons for using HTML 4.01 with a strict doctype instead of using XHTML:

Internet Explorer 7 and before do not support it
Mozilla advices against it
the Safari team advices against it – see the section Best Practices
in general, HTML has better support from search engines and mobile devices
in general, HTML support is better tested than XHTML support

Another look at Pixelmator

2008-09-10T12:25:00.005+02:00

After posting a quick review of Pixelmator version 1.2.3, I got some comments that basically said two things:

crop to selection is available in the context menu;
paste as a new image is easy to accomplish.

These issues are indeed resolved, see below. So I continued my quest and tried to find the following features in Pixelmator:

autocrop
show the image size
view the name of the assigned color profile
remove the assigned color profile
show the size of the current selection while selecting
edit the selection
quantization, convert to indexed color

Crop to selection
Indeed crop to selection is available in the context menu, which is activated by Ctrl-LeftClick or RightClick (if your mouse has a second button).

Paste as new image
Doing a bit of searching I found (on the Pixelmator forum) that pasting as a new image is indeed easy, just follow these steps:

copy whatever you want to paste in Pixelmator to the clipboard;
activate File -> New Image in Pixelmator (Cmd-N); the new image will automatically take the dimensions of the image in the clipboard;
activate Edit -> Paste (Cmd-V) in Pixelmator.

That's it. Indeed very simple, although not intuitive IMHO.

Autocrop
Autocrop is not available directly in Pixelmator, it seems. However, this is fairly easily worked around:

select the Magic Wand tool (keyboard shortcut: W);
click on the outer region of the image;
invert the selection (Shift-Cmd-I);
show the context menu (Ctrl-LeftClick or RightClick);
select Crop;
press Enter to confirm.

However, since I use this feature a lot, I still prefer to have a single menu option so I can assign a keyboard shortcut to it.

Show the image size
The size of the current image can be viewed using the command File -> File Info... or by pressing the keyboard shortcut Alt-Shift-Cmd-I. Easy enough.

Personally I would prefer to have the option to show the image size in the title bar. This option is unavailable in the Preferences. But this is a minor nuisance.

View the name of the assigned color profile
The assigned color profile can also be viewed using the File Info... command (Alt-Shift-Cmd-I). Excellent.

Remove the assigned color profile
There is no direct menu option for removing the color profile. However, it's easy to do:

select all of the image (Cmd-A);
copy it (Cmd-C);
create a new image (Cmd-N) – it will automatically get the right dimensions;
paste (Cmd-V).

That's it.

Show the size of the current selection while selecting
With the Rectangular Marquee Tool (shortcut: M) you can select a rectangular region. While selecting, I'd like to be able to see the size of the selection, because often the selection needs to fit a certain predefined size or maximum size.

In Pixelmator it seems impossible, however, to view the width and height of the selection while selecting it.

Edit the selection
When a (rectangular) region is selected, the selection cannot easily be adjusted. There is a Refine Selection tool available for changing the selection, but this tool does not allow manually editing the selection, for example to add a few pixels on the right.

GIMP 2.4.7 has a simple but powerful feature that allows the selection to be edited with the mouse on 6 axes (top, top-right, right, etc.) This would be a welcome improvement for Pixelmator as well.

Although this (fairly basic) functionality is missing, the power of the Refine Selection tool should not go unnoticed. It allows advanced selection editing, for example to change a rectangular selection area to a rounded rectangular area. Very nice indeed.

Quantization, convert to indexed color
Finally another feature I'm using all the time in GIMP is changing an RGB image to indexed color, to optimize it for display on the Web. This uses a technique known as image quantization, which uses one of a few algorithms to create an optimum palette for the resulting image.

This feature seems to be missing in Pixelmator.

Conclusion
Pixelmator is a powerful image manipulation program that looks very very good. It has various very powerful functions, such as filters, layers, advanced selections, etc. Also it support a large number of bitmap formats for export.

However, for me, Pixelmator is currently not able to replace GIMP for day-to-day image manipulation. It seems to be missing some features that I need to have at my fingertips all the time.

If some of the features I think are missing are hidden somewhere under the surface, please drop me a note in the comments.

Quick review of Pixelmator

2008-09-08T12:38:00.004+02:00

While still looking for a real Mac OS X image manipulation program to replace GIMP, I did a quick review of Pixelmator.

After starting Pixelmator, it's obvious the developers have put a lot of time and effort into making this application look and feel like a charm. Although the black transparent look is not conform the standard Aqua look and feel on Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard", this does not reduce the usability of the application.

Pixelmator has more features than Acorn or Seashore combined together, but not as many as Photoshop or GIMP. But although there are a lot of features, for me just a few are important, since I need them on a day-to-day basis.

My findings based on a quick review:

There seems to be no way to remove a color profile, although color profiles can be assigned. This can be worked around by copying all and pasting from clipboard.
There is no Paste as New Image option.
An Autocrop feature seems to be unavailable.
A Crop to Selection features seem to be missing; and since a Paste as New Image option is also missing, this cannot be easily worked around. There is a Crop tool, but this is in my workflow not productive, since in the absence of an autocrop feature I typically (a) use the magic wand to select an outer part of an image, (b) invert the selection (c) crop to the selection.

Quick review of Seashore

2008-09-08T12:12:00.007+02:00

Seashore is a promising application, aiming to deliver a Mac OS X-version of the popular GIMP image manipulation program. I did a quick review of 0.1.9 and found the following:

This build is dated April 2007, which seems to indicate development has stalled - which is too bad...
The Open with... option in the Finder did not work for me when I selected Seashore.
Full quantization support has not been ported yet, so there is no option to reduce the number of colors.
There is a Select menu, but some of the selection actions are under the Edit menu (Select All, Alpha, Inverse, None). This seems counter-intuitive.
Zoom in and zoom out are under the keyboard shortcuts Cmd-Up and Cmd-Down respectively. Typically these are under Cmd-Plus and Cmd-Minus.
There is no autocrop feature.
Overall, the application looks very nice. It feels like a decent Mac OS X-citizen.

My conclusion is that it's a very promising application, that may be able to beat Photoshop Elements and Acorn one day. But not today.

Features missing in Acorn

2008-09-08T11:51:00.005+02:00

I really like the looks of Acorn, a powerful little image manipulation program for Mac OS X. However, there are some hurdles for me adopting it to replace GIMP:

It's not easy to remove all tranparency from an image. It requires creating a new background layer, filling it with white color and then flattening the image. In GIMP, it's one command.
There is no support for viewing or removing color profiles. It seems a color profile can be removed by selecting all of the image, copying the selection to the clipboard and then creating a new image from the clipboard.
There is no support for quantization, to reduce the number of colors to produce an indexed color image.

Still, Acorn looks very promising. It looks and feels like an excellent Mac OS X-citizen. It seems strong in filters and automation, but that's not what I am looking for...

Favourite Mac apps (updated x5)

2008-09-08T11:01:00.011+02:00

Here's the list of my favourite Mac OS X applications:

Parallels Desktop — For running Windows and Linux in virtual machines. With Windows XP inside it, for testing web pages in Internet Explorer (6, 7 and 8 all have their own dedicated VM). (€80)
Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional — Version 9 probably runs better on my Intel Mac with Snow Leopard. I didn't need all the extra stuff in the Professional edition, but there was no Standard edition for Mac. (version 9 is $450)
Cheap Impostor — For creating A3 and A4 booklets. Cheap, effective and fast. ($35)
NovaMind Express — For mind mapping, use it for interaction designs for web sites. ($50)
Firefox with the Firebug, Web Developer, Weave, CyberSearch, AdBlock Plus and SessionAlive extensions — Nothing beats the fox. (all free)
Acorn — Fairly simple image manipulation.
Skitch — Easy and simple image editing and sharing for everyone. (free)
GIMP — Advanced image manipulation, includingremoval of color profiles. Requires X11. (free)
NeoOffice — Complete office suite, based on OpenOffice.org code. No need to purchase Microsoft Office anymore, it even supports the new .docx and .xlsx file types. (free, donations welcome)
Skype — For video conferencing, also with non-Mac people; iChat video quality is much higher though. (free)
iWork — Nothing beats Keynote presentations! ($79)
Flip4Mac — Be able to watch Windows Media videos (WMV). (free version available)
iShowU — Screen video capture. ($20)
iTerm — Best terminal program for the Mac - beats Apple's built-in Terminal application in terms of productivity and usability (free, donations welcome.)
iPartition — For dynamically changing hard drive partitions, includes resizing functionality. ($50)

And I'm considering adding the following to my toolset:

Pixelmator — For real Mac-style image manipulation. Question is whether it can do what I do with GIMP, including the removal of color profiles and such ($59).
Opacity — For creating very nice-looking icons, fast ($90).

Updates:

Sept. 11, 2008: Considering Pixelmator instead of Acorn, the latter just does not have enough features. And added iPartition as a favourite app.
Sept. 17, 2008: Added Chicken of the VNC and Chax and listed the price of iPartition.
March 9, 2010: Updated information on Parallels. Using a different set of Firefox extensions. Removed SuperDocker.
March 13, 2010: Added the SessionAlive extension for Firefox and Skitch.
March 31, 2010: Removed OmniPlan, Leap, Chax. Changed the link to GIMP on OS X. Added Acorn and added Web Developer extension for Firefox. Updated some descriptions.

Leopard annoyances

2008-08-25T13:00:00.015+02:00

I finally made the switch from Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" to 10.5 "Leopard". Here are some things I ran into while upgrading:

iChat:

iChat still has separate windows for Jabber-, AIM- and Bonjour contact lists. Chax can fix this, though;
one of my 'buddies' has both a GMail account (via Jabber) and a MobileMe account (via AIM) - these get mixed up in the contacts lists;

Migration:

When migrating the programs from my Tiger backup, I also migrated some issues, so I decides to reinstall all programs.

Spaces:

Spaces does not support labels for spaces; numbers are quite meaningless.
NetBeans 6.1 does not work well with Spaces. If you press Cmd-Tab to switch to NetBeans, the correct Space is not activated. Very annoying. It has been noticed by others as well.
I assigned F6 to Spaces, to show the overview. It's not possible to start dragging an application and then press F6 to drop it in a different space.
Software Update does not seem to work with Spaces, when I Cmd-Tab to it after it completed (and starts jumping in the Dock), nothing happens.

Mail:

When I tell Mail to permanently accept an SSL certificate it considers unsafe, then it still keeps asking for it when I restart Mail.
When replying to a mail I sent to somebody else, my address is in the To: field and the original recipient is in the CC: field. I would hope this was fixed since Tiger.

Finder:

I tried to customize the icon for a folder by dropping a JPEG on top of the icon in the "Info" window. Instead of showing the image, it shows a generic JPEG icon. D'oh! The Iconic tool provides a partial resolution. It 'carves' an image into a Leopard folder image and makes that the icon for a specific folder, if you want. I'd prefer to have just the original image as the folder icon, but I'm not sure how to do that.
It is not possible to add a mount point to the Locations-section in the Finder sidebar.

Spotlight:

When searching with Spotlight, the results window has no option to show more columns, like the number of attachments or the size of the image. And it's not possible to hide the Relevance column (which I never use). Leap is a powerful alternative, though.

AddressBook:

Sometimes when I start editing a card, all details disappear. This is resolved by pressing Cmd-Z.

Dock:

If I put the Dock on the right side of my screen then it turns into a 2D-style Dock; so far so good. But then when I move the mouse pointer over the stripes (between the applications and the stacks) that allow me to change the size of the Dock (without clicking), then the mouse pointer keeps its resize-appearance.

Other:

X11 does not work for me. XQuartz 2.3.0 seems to work like a charm though.
Software Update still says there's new software available for my computer (in bold) even after it finished installing all available updates. Confusing, especially for less tech-savvy people.

XINS 2.2 alpha 2 released

2008-07-10T22:47:00.003+02:00

Today (July 10th, 2008) XINS 2.2 alpha 2 has been released, featuring several improvements:

a new _xml type for sending XML values (e.g. in input or output parameters);
there is now an option that makes the client framework follow HTTP redirect responses;
compatibility of the SOAP calling convention (in the server framework) with .NET has been improved
some log messages have been improved;
bug fixes and small RFEs.

Although this is an alpha release, the quality is high. In this case alpha moslty means that new features can be added, removed or refined.

PensioenPage supports Firefox 3.0

2008-06-19T00:51:00.004+02:00

As one of the first companies, we at PensioenPage are proud to announce we have confirmed compatibility with Firefox 3.0, mere hours after it's release. Since we adhere to a standards-based approach, compatiblity is mostly out-of-the-box.

Firefox 3.0 released - and other browser news

2008-06-18T09:23:00.004+02:00

Today (June 18), Mozilla Firefox 3.0 has officially been released. YSlow (a web page performance analysis extension for Firefox, by Yahoo) has been updated to 0.9.5 beta 2, just in time to support Firefox 3.

Some other browser news:

Opera 9.5 has been released;
the Firefox 3.1 features have been defined, see the MozillaWiki and the article on MozillaLink; a first alpha release is target for mid July;
Microsoft announced that the 2nd beta of IE 8 is scheduled for August 2008;
Apple has provided an early build of Safari 4 on the Apple Developer Connection, apparently with their new JavaScript engine SquirrelFish integrated;
the GrApple theme (that makes Firefox look like a native Mac app) has been updated for Firefox 3.

Mac OS X 10.6 'Snow Leopard' (updated)

2008-06-04T21:33:00.006+02:00

Several sites (including MacRumors and Arstechnica) are spreading the rumor that Mac OS X 10.6 will be announced at Apple's WWDC, this coming week. The new release will supposedly be called "Snow Leopard" and the release focus will be on stability and performance.

If this is true, then that is in my opinion a Good Thing. After using FreeBSD and Linux on my primary desktop for years, I switched to Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) in Q4 2006. Although I've not had major problems, OS X has been pestering me now and then:

crashing background processes (sometimes several times an hour)
spontaneous reboots (1 or 2 per year)
failures to come back to life after being suspended (closed lid on MacBook Pro)

Rock solid stability is definitely very much welcomed, as well as improved security, especially for professional/business users like myself.

For me, a desktop computer should allow it's users to work efficient. For this, you need sufficient speed, proper functionality, an effective keyboard/mouse/touch interface, stability and security.

In my experience, the OS X 10.4 operating system works nicely, but has it's stability issues. It's probably more stable than Windows, but definitely less than Linux and FreeBSD.

Update (June 10): Indeed this has been announced by Apple as anticipated, see the Apple site for more information.

Firebug 1.2 beta 2 for Firefox 3.0

2008-06-04T11:38:00.003+02:00

On the Firebug blog, an announcement is posted about the release of Firebug 1.2 beta 2. It's compatible with Firefox 3.0 RC, but not with Firefox 2.0.

For the uninitiated, Firebug is a Firefox extension that provides a host of web development tools, such as various inspectors, a JavaScript debugger, etc.

WebKit (Safari) gets a new JavaScript engine: SquirrelFish

2008-06-03T10:16:00.004+02:00

On "Surfin' Safari", the WebKit blog (WebKit being the engine for Apple's Safari browser) an new JavaScript engine has been announced. It's called SquirrelFish.

While the current JavaScript engine (in Safari 3.1) is an interpreter, the new one is based on bytecode execution, increasing the possibilities for performance improvements. Already the WebKit developers are claiming a 50% improvement over the production release of Safari, version 3.1.

Although the fish logo is funny, I find it hard to associate it with speed in any way...

Finding files on Mac OS X: Leap

2008-06-02T11:50:00.002+02:00

Today I came across Leap, a search utility for Mac OS X. It seems to be much better than Spotlight. Have a look at the introduction videos. Leap works on Mac OS X 10.4.10 and up and is available as a Universal Binary.

A fully functional 21-day trial can be downloaded from their site.

NeoOffice 2.2.3 patch 5 available

2008-06-02T11:09:00.003+02:00

NeoOffice 2.2.3 patch 5 has been released. Nothing exciting, just some bug fixes:

Opening Office 2003 XML files produced a General I/O error
Poor selection of Polish and Cyrillic replacement fonts
Landscape documents could be cropped when printing

Download from the patch download page. For more information, see the NeoOffice 2.2.3 release notes.

NeoOffice is an OpenOffice.org-cousin that nicely integrates with Mac OS X, unlike the regular OpenOffice.org 2 for Mac OS X, which requires X11 to function.

Video intro to Mac OS X Cocoa

2008-05-26T10:00:00.003+02:00

There's a lengthy video introduction to Cocoa available from Theocacao. Although I haven't watched it (yet), it appears to be received very positively. An unofficial BitTorrent is also available. You need QuickTime for this.

Crash your Mac with a stick

2008-05-21T15:56:00.003+02:00

If you want to crash your Mac, or perhaps any kind of computer, put a little piece of aluminum foil paper inside the USB connection of an external device and then plug the device in, while your computer is running.

In my case, it worked: the Mac spontaneously rebooted. After 2 reboots I realized that my Mac experienced a real physical problem and found the culprit inside the connector of my USB stick. It was the result of keeping the USB stick in my pocket, along with some random other stuff, aparently including some aluminum foil paper.

So: be warned :-)

Changing Leopard's look and feel

2008-05-21T14:25:00.002+02:00

Ryan Faas has written another excellent article, this time about changing the look and feel of Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard):

Leopard tamers: 9 terrific interface tweaks

del.icio.us extension for Firefox 3.0

2008-05-20T14:49:00.002+02:00

Just recently, Firefox 3.0 RC was released.

I use a fair amount of Firefox extensions, including Firebug, YSlow for Firebug and the del.icio.us extension. The latter was not available for Firefox 3.0, until recently:

Firefox 3, del.icio.us, and you (posting on the delicious blog)

download the latest (beta) version of the extension (currently 2.0.48)

NeoOffice integration with Mac OS X improves

2008-05-13T23:10:00.003+02:00

Even though a beta of OpenOffice.org 3, with a native Aqua version, has been made available, NeoOffice is still standing strong as a stable OpenOffice.org cousin that provides slick Mac OS X integration. Standing isn't the right word, though, because it's constantly improving.

Since 2.2.3 Patch 3, NeoOffice now improves on the Mac OS X integration by adding these features:

media browser support: have a media browser floating window, similar to what iLife applications (iPhoto, iMovie, etc.) offer;
native floating tool windows: they are no longer standard Mac windows, but look and act like native floating windows;
magnify and swipe trackpad gestures: or at least on hardware that supports it (MacBook Air and recent MacBook Pro models).

Previously, NeoOffice 2.2.3 Patch 2 added horizontal scrollwheel support.

Information on Unicode characters

2008-05-13T23:01:00.002+02:00

The site fileformat.info claims to provide extensive information on various file formats. I haven't checked that claim myself, but I have found their information on Unicode characters is extremely useful. For example, see this page on the Unicode symbol 'EURO SIGN':

http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/20ac/index.htm

It shows a picture of the symbol, as well various descriptions and links. Then it shows how the character is encoded in, for example, HTML, UTF-8 and UTF-16 and how to use it in source code (C/C#/C++/Java/Python).

A great resource for information on Unicode characters!

Smooth web image zooming with FancyZoom

2008-05-13T22:56:00.001+02:00

FancyZoom is a JavaScript library for zooming into images on a web page. It looks really well, zooming images smoothly when you click on them. And then when they show, they get a shadow effect applied.

The library works with most modern browsers: (Mobile) Safari, Firefox, IE6/7 and Opera are reportedly supported, but no word of Konqueror (KHTML). See it in action on here:

http://www.cabel.name/2008/02/fancyzoom-10.html

FancyZoom is free for non-commercial use. To use it commercially, the author asks $39 per site.

FancyZoom 1.1 comes with for 2 JavaScript files (34 KB) and 15 PNG image files (100 KB), which sums up to 134 KB. With current broadband connections it should not be a problem in itself, but it may add up to the total download size for a web page, especially for first-time visitors. Note that a compression tool like YUI Compressor may tighten the file sizes a bit.

Opacity 1.1 released

2008-05-07T23:40:00.001+02:00

If you're creating iconic graphics, either for desktop applications, mobile apps or the web, and you're lucky to be using Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard), then Opacity is definitely a contender for creating those nifty looking images.

Opacity is simple, intuitive but still very powerful when it comes to creating small graphics. It supports layers, different kinds of shapes, all sorts of effects and integrates with a couple of FTP programs.

The user interface works mostly consistent with the rest of Leopard.

Have a look at the screencast on their site.

OpenOffice 3.0 beta available

2008-05-07T10:09:00.001+02:00

The OpenOffice.org 3.0 beta is now available from download.openoffice.org. One of the most compelling changes is Mac OS X support. Localized builds are also available, but not directly linked from that page. Instead, check out one of the mirrors.

Currently, most Mac users prefer NeoOffice over OpenOffice 3. OpenOffice 2 does not work under Aqua (only under X11) and NeoOffice has a history of stable OpenOffice-functionality for the Aqua/Mac OS X platform. This may change once OpenOffice 3 becomes (more) stable.

Finally: Java 6 for Mac OS X

2008-04-30T00:15:00.003+02:00

Apple has finally delivered Java 6 for Mac OS X as part of an update called Java for Mac OS X 10.5 Release 1. There was a Java 6 pre-release for Tiger, ages ago, but finally the real thing seems to have arrived. Let's hope it fixes most of the bugs in the pre-release.

It's well-known that this release comes really late. Java 6 was released (for Windows and Linux) in December 2006 and Java 5 has already entered it's Technology End of Life (EOL) transition period.

Too bad the update is only for Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) and requires a 64-bit Intel processor (such as the Core 2 Duo).

Compiling zlib, libpng and pngquant on Mac OS X (updated)

2008-04-29T19:47:00.003+02:00

Here are some instructions for compiling pngquant on Mac OS X. Included are instructions for compiling libpng (which is a dependency for pngquant) and zlib (which is a dependency for libpng).

Step 1. First, download pngquant from SourceForge:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=32355

as well as libpng and zlib:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=5624

Step 2. Unpack them all in the same directory and then generate symbolic links called libpng and zlib that point to the actual directories. E.g.:

total 16
lrwxr-xr-x     1 ernst  ernst    13 Apr 29 19:27 libpng -> libpng-1.2.27
drwxr-xr-x   103 ernst  ernst  3502 Apr 29 19:28 libpng-1.2.27
drwxr-xr-x    10 ernst  ernst   340 Apr 29 19:18 pngquant-1.0
lrwxr-xr-x     1 ernst  ernst    10 Apr 29 19:27 zlib -> zlib-1.2.3
drwxr-xr-x    64 ernst  ernst  2176 Apr 29 19:22 zlib-1.2.3

Step 3. Now go to the zlib directory and execute ./configure followed by make.

Step 4. Go to the libpng directory and execute make -f scripts/makefile.darwin.

Step 5. Go to the directory that contains the pngquant source code and execute make -f Makefile.unx.

That's it. You should now have a pngquant executable.

Updated (April 30, 2008): On request, here's a link to the resulting executable: pngquant (for Mac OS X). MD5 checksum is 20820366a7fffc6305ada6b727656b7b.

Microsoft wants to break up HTML 5

2008-04-25T14:59:00.005+02:00

In an interview with SDTimes, Chris Wilson, MSIE platform architect Chris Wilson proposed that HTML 5 be split into several substandards.

Sounds like a reasonable and interesting proposal, but even better is to see that Microsoft appears to join the HTML 5 bandwagon. Although reviews on MSIE 8 beta 1 have not been very positive, the overall impression is that web standards support from Redmond is improving.

Decorations 1.0 released

2008-04-25T14:49:00.003+02:00

Anthony Goubard (of Ant Commander fame) has released Decoration 1.0. It's an interesting Java-based application for graphical designers that makes it easy to apply all sorts of effects (100+) to graphics and text, including gradients, drop shadows, glow, etc.

What makes it attractive for professional use is that it supports a batch mode, for processing hundreds (or more?) of images sequentially.

For more information check out the screenshots section or the gallery.

Firefox 2.0.0.14

2008-04-21T21:07:00.001+02:00

Firefox 2.0.0.14 was released. Nothing much, 'just' a single security issue was fixed, a crash in the JavaScript garbage collector.

Camino 1.6 released

2008-04-19T15:47:00.004+02:00

Camino 1.6 has been released. Camino is a Mozilla Gecko-based browser for Mac OS X.
Among other things, it now supports multi-touch gestures (if you have the right hardware).
This version requires Mac OS X 10.3.9 or higher and comes in different language-flavours, including Dutch.

Fluid, site-specific browsers integrated in Mac OS X

2008-04-12T17:26:00.003+02:00

If you have certain sites you use like an application, you may want your OS to treat these as applications as well, with a specific application that has it's own application title and icon, can be switched to using Cmd-Tab, etc.

This is called site specific browsers. The freeware application Fluid makes them integrate with Mac OS X seamlessly. For a walk-through, have a look at the intro:

Fluid introduction video

Invalid XHTML / CSS

2008-04-12T10:12:00.004+02:00

Today, for the first time, I came across a site that explicitly (proudly?) announces it does not validate the XHTML/CSS standards:

The Art of Adam Betts

Very nice looking site, though. A real piece of art.

Is this going to be a new trend?

Quirksmode.org getting updated for latest browsers

2008-04-11T15:59:00.003+02:00

It seems that after a long time of relative quiteness, PPK is updating his site quirksmode.org again, to describe the features and quirks of the current browser incarnations IE 5.5–8b1, Opera 9.5b, Safari 3.1, Konqueror 3.5 and Firefox 2/3b5. Keep up the good work, Peter Paul!

Have a look at his blog:

QuirksBlog

HTML and DOM Standards Compliance in IE8 Beta 1

2008-04-11T10:55:00.003+02:00

The Internet Explorer blog added a new and interesting article on the standards compliance improvements in MSIE 8 beta 1:

HTML and DOM Standards Compliance in IE8 Beta 1

It not only elaborates on the changes in beta 1, but also notes what is planned for beta 2 and -more importantly- what is and what is not planned to be fixed in the IE 8 final release.

Note that there's a reference to our very own (Dutch) PPK, of quirksmode.org and fronteers.nl fame.

Epiphany browser switching to WebKit engine

2008-04-02T10:56:00.002+02:00

The Epiphany browser (for GNOME) is announcing a switch to the WebKit engine. See the announcement:

The Future of Epiphany (April 1, 2008)

Eclipse: Changing an existing project to a Java project

2008-04-02T09:41:00.003+02:00

Do you have an existing project in Eclipse, but want to convert it to a Java project? From the UI, you cannot do it (at least in Eclipse 3.2). Instead, follow the instructions given here:

Change a default general Eclipse project to a Eclipse Java project

OOXML approved

2008-04-02T08:25:00.005+02:00

According to Intellectual Property Watch, OOXML has been approved. No official announcement from ISO yet, though.

Introduction to XML technologies

2008-03-29T11:57:00.003+01:00

There's a guy from the U.S. that calls himself Gerald that wrote a blog entry aiming to introduce XML technologies (from a Java point-of-view):

Java XML related concepts and implementations

Quite interesting, especially for beginners or to those wanting to take a step back and getting another overview.

Note that he also mentions XINS as a web services framework.

Firefox 2.0.0.13 released

2008-03-28T09:26:00.004+01:00

Firefox 2.0.0.13 was released. No features added, just some security vulnerabilities fixed.

Opera also claims 100/100 on Acid3

2008-03-27T12:01:00.002+01:00

Although they don't provide a publicly downloadable build yet (unlike WebKit), Opera also claims they have a score of 100/100 on Acid3. Coming soon to a download location near you...

WebKit passes Acid3 test

2008-03-27T08:59:00.004+01:00

Wow, they did it! While my Firefox 3 beta 4 (on Mac OS X 10.4) gets no more than 68 points (out of 100), the WebKit team managed to make their browser engine pass the Acid3 test:

WebKit achieves Acid3 100/100 in public build

Now they 'just' need to do some profiling to make sure the test is passed quickly and the animation is smooth...

They sure deserve some credit for this!

CSS improvements planned for MSIE 8.0 (final)

2008-03-27T08:41:00.004+01:00

On the Microsoft Internet Explorer blog, a new article appeared today, titled "Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Developers – Standards Highlights Part 2". This article points to a document about the various IE versions and CSS compatibility:

CSS Compatibility and Internet Explorer

From the document, it becomes clear that while IE 8 beta 1 already improves CSS compatibility compared to IE 7, there are still some improvements planned before the IE 8 final release:

support for the CSS 2.1 pseudo-classes :focus and :hover and full support for :active;
full support for the CSS 2.1 font-weight property;
support for the CSS 2.1 property word-spacing;
support for the CSS 3 properties ruby-align, ruby-overhang and ruby-position – support for these properties was available in IE 6, but not in IE 7;
full support for CSS 2.1 generated content (properties content, counter-increment, counter-reset and quotes);
support for the CSS 2.1 empty-cells property;
completed support for the CSS 2.1 positioning-related properties bottom, display, left, right, top and z-index;
support for the CSS 3 positioning-related properties orphans, page-break-after, page-break-before, page-break-inside and widows
support for the CSS 2.1 cursor property.

So there's still something to look forward to...

I wonder how much of this will affect the IE 8 score on the Acid 3 test, but I don't expect them to beat WebKit anytime soon (who just achieved 100/100).

Ajax Performance

2008-03-24T21:16:00.003+01:00

Here's a great blog about client-side JavaScript and CSS: Ajax Performance. Some articles of interest:

Interesting stuff!

Browser-specific CSS

2008-03-24T15:15:00.003+01:00

The main browser engines support some CSS properties (or property values) that are not (yet) standardized. These get a browser engine-specific prefix, to maintain future compatibility, as the property (value) may make it into a standard, but possibly with slightly different characteristics.

The prefixes used are:

-moz- for Mozilla-based browsers (such as Firefox and Camino);
-o- for Opera;
-webkit- for WebKit-based browsers (such as Safari, OmniWeb and iCab);
-khtml- for KHTML-based browsers (such as Konqueror).

Microsoft is not that careful with CSS compatibility, their Internet Explorer does not use a prefix, except for one property: -ms-interpolation-mode.

Here are lists of CSS properties/property values specific to these browsers:

Browser blogs

2008-03-24T12:43:00.003+01:00

Here are links to some blogs dedicated to the main browser engines:

Microsoft Internet Explorer – since the release of the IE 8 beta, there are is one new post every day, mainly focusing on functionalities and technologies;
Mozilla Developer News – Covers not only browsers, but other products as well.
Camino – a blog dedicated to Mozilla Camino (for Mac OS X).
WebKit – the engine of -primarily- Safari.
Opera – Blog by Håkon Wium Lie, CTO of Opera.

For Konqueror, I could not find a decent blog...

The truth about abortion

2008-03-22T22:27:00.004+01:00

This picture speaks for itself. If you believe abortion is principally different from killing a baby, think again.

Color spaces in Safari and Firefox 3

2008-03-22T10:27:00.007+01:00

Since long, Safari 3 has supported support for color profiles (see the WebKit blog entry Color Spaces). Now the Firefox 3 betas also come with support for it, although it's disabled by default.

To enable support for color spaces in Firefox 3 beta 4, do the following:

Go to about:config
Confirm you want to edit settings
Set the option "gfx.color_management.enabled" to "true"
Restart Firefox

Now check out some sites. Like with Safari 3, colors in sites may look quite different, since an extra step is applied to convert the colors from the original color space to the color space for your screen.

For web developers this smart behavior introduces some challenges, since sites now look different on different browsers on the same platform. Of note, Safari and Firefox implement color space support differently: Safari only adjusts images (such as PNGs), while Firefox also adjusts CSS colors.

So even between Safari and Firefox 3 with color space support enabled, there are differences, as reported in Firefox bug report #424356 (see the attached screenshot) Firefox seems to do a better job here than Safari, because with the latter the colors of different elements on a web page may mismatch, as can be seen (with Safari 3.1) on a website like http://www.route65.eu/.

For web developers, here's a pragmatic approach:

make sure your images do not include a color profile (saves ~4KB)
do not specify colors in CSS if there is an image that needs to match the color, instead use a dot image with the exact same color

Still your site will look different on browsers with or without color space support, but at least you work around the problem in Safari 3.1.

Apple Keynote 4 does not support soft hyphens

2008-03-10T15:29:00.003+01:00

Currently, Apple's Keynote (v4.0.2) does not support soft hyphens. When a soft hyphen is inserted, it is treated as a normal (breaking) hyphen: even if the word is no split over 2 lines, the hyphen is still shown.

Steps to reproduce:

create a new Keynote document
create a text field
add a long word in it
move the cursos to the middle of the word
go to Edit > Special characters...
in the dialog that appears, enter "SOFT HYPHEN" in the search box
double-click on "SOFT HYPHEN" in the list that appears
click on button labeled "Insert"
resize the text field so it is large enough to show the word without breaking

Expected behaviour:

the soft hyphen does not show

Actual behaviour:

the soft hyphen shows, in the middle of the word

MSIE 8 default is standards compliance

2008-03-04T08:50:00.004+01:00

This is great news! Microsoft is announcing they changed their standards compliance policy for Internet Explorer 8. It will now default to the new IE8 rendering engine, offering the best standards compliance so far.

This is great news to the Web, to both users and developers.

Work around slow DNS

2008-02-02T20:54:00.001+01:00

If you have a slow DNS server that is causing you delays, for example while browsing the web, then try switching to a faster DNS server.

If that does not work, then here's a trick you may want to try: make your computer perform DNS lookups for the hostnames you use most often (such as www.google.com) on a regular basis.

On Mac OS X, Linux and UNIX systems this can be accomplished using a simple cron job, just execute a command like:

nslookup www.google.com

or:

host www.google.com

This will perform the DNS lookup, and -as a side-effect- add the result to the local DNS cache.

iGTD

2008-01-18T13:07:00.000+01:00

Today I started using iGTD, a Mac OS X application for todo-management. This application helps you to get yourself organized, registering all things you need to do in a single database on your own machine.

Overall iGTD v1.4.5.6 seems to be a well-designed application that is very usable for it's core functionality. It works very stable on Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger). I have not tried running it on 10.5 (Leopard).

Wish list
While working with iGTD for a couple of hours, here's a list of things I'd recommend for improvement:

Search everything – when searching, you currently have to choose from "Search by task name or note" and few other options, but "Search everything" is not an option. I'd like a single operation to search project names, task names, tags, etc.
Dates – Although iGTD displays dates in a friendly format such as "Today" or "Tuesday", it's not possible to enter dates that way. It would be nice to just type "tue" and get iGTD to recognize that as "this coming Tuesday".
Resize window – When increasing the size of the main iGTD application window, the last column in the task list becomes wider. By default, that's the "Due date" column, which doesn't need that much space, normally. Instead, the "Name" column should be widened, which contains both the task name (left-aligned) and the tag names (right-aligned).
Effort colors – The effort column in the task list allows 4 values, ranging from low to high (see the image). The values are represented by a bar that is shorter (for low effort) or longer. Each bar length has it's own color, these are (from low effort to high): dark grey, green, brown and red. It would be nice if the colors would be more intuitive, such as: green, orange, red and black.
Defaults – It would be nice if the configuration would allow that tasks entered without details (e.g. via "Quick type", hotkey F8) are explicitly be assigned some defaults, such as a default project.
Dock icon – iGTD offers the option of putting the number of open tasks in your Inbox in the dock icon. That's very nice indeed. It would, however, by even nicer if it could show the combined number of open tasks from all contexts, or even show multiple numbers, for different contexts, similar to what DockStar (see image) does for the Apple Mail application.
Resize panes – The main application window is divided in 3 main panes: the list of contexts or projects, the list of tasks and task details. It would be nice if these panes could be resized, for example to allow more room for the task list.
Task dependencies – It seems there is no way to make tasks dependent on eachother. I tried looking at the various task properties, I tried right-clicking a task and I tried dragging a task onto another using various modifier keys (Cmd, Cmd-Alt, Shift, etc.) If iGTD offers this functionality, it seems well-hidden...
Multi-client – I am one of the (probably many) people that do work in multiple locations, from different computers, but want to have the same personal information in all these places. To accomplish this, you can use a combination of .Mac (for your address book, certificates, etc.), del.ico.us (for your bookmarks).
What I could not find out yet, is whether iGTD also supports working from different computers in an easy-to-setup manner.

In my opinion, iGTD is a great application that is very usable. And the iGTD 2 alpha looks very promising!

XINS: Splitting out Logdoc?

2008-01-08T09:52:00.000+01:00

Talking to Anthony Goubard yesterday (of JLearnIt and AntCommander fame), I realized that adding features like SMTP- and SMS-support to a Web Services framework like XINS can hardly be considered good separation of concerns. So I definitely need to revise my XINS 3.0 wishlist.

Instead, it may be a much better idea to make XINS focus more on the Web Services functionality and split some technologies out. The main candidates seem to be Logdoc and the ServiceCaller framework:
In the picture the arrows indicate dependencies. So XINS would depend on Logdoc and the ServiceCaller framework and the latter would also depend on Logdoc.

Logdoc: What is it?
In this post I will focus on Logdoc.

So what is Logdoc and why would we want to separate that out from XINS? Is it useful for other projects as well?

IMHO the answer is "yes". Logdoc is a logging system based on the infamous Apache Log4J library that offers some features over Log4J:

registered logging categories: there is an explicit list of all logging categories, with documentation;
unique log messages: each log message is in a specific category and gets a specific number; this allows system administrators to enable or disable individual messages;
multi-locale: it is straight-forward to add a new language for log messages;
separation of concerns: the code does not bother with log levels, translations and categories, instead it just deals with a single log message (identified by ID) and it's parameters.

Logdoc code example
Here is an example of a piece of Java code that uses Logdoc, from the HTTPServiceCaller class (javadoc/source):

// Unknown host
if (exception instanceof UnknownHostException) {
 Log.log_1102(url, params, duration);

Notice that there is no category, no creation of objects and no language-specific stuff.

Logdoc definitions
The key to the Logdoc system is the definition of categories and entries in XML. Every entry is within a single category. Translations can be specified in separate files, one per language/locale. So for example, for the XINS/Java Server Framework, the following files define all logdoc entries and their translations:

src/logdoc/server/log.xml - defines all categories and contained entries; each entry has a unique number, it specified a log level and optionally some parameters;
src/logdoc/server/translation-bundle-en_US.xml - defines all U.S. English translations for the log messages defined in the log.xml file;
src/logdoc/server/translation-bundle-fr_FR.xml - defines all French (France) translations;

Adding a new set of translations is as easy as adding one line to the log.xml and one translation-bundle-xx_XX.xml file, where xx is the ISO language code and XX is the ISO country code.

Now from these specifications, both code and documentation is automatically generated, XINS-style. Here is an example of generated Logdoc documentation:

Logdoc documentation for the XINS/Java Server Framework

Notice that there are 2 ways to find log entries: by category and by ID (see the Logdoc entry list link at the top).

More information
For more information on Logdoc, check out the section titled "Managing logs" in the XINS User Guide.

XINS 3.0 (updated x3)

2007-11-28T09:55:00.000+01:00

Note (added Jan 8, 2008): This article is outdated, please read "XINS: Splitting out Logdoc?"

XINS is a powerful technology for writing web applications and web services. While the current 2.1 version already sports a lot of functionality and flexibility, here's my wishlist for a 3.0 version:

Support for Java 5 generics. If this will make the framework Java 5+ only, so be it.
Support for XML-type parameters, both in and out.
A XINS service caller engine; a separation between the XINSServiceCaller and the actual protocol used, possibly with a (static, non-final) inner class Engine.
Provide an alternative front-end calling convention that sports clear URLs, path-based instead of parameter-based.
Combine multiple function invocations in one call, avoiding the network overhead of multiple calls.
Multi-implementations: Allow a single API implementation to implement multiple API interfaces.
Allow API inheritance, so that one API can inherit the functions defined in another.
After some thorough analysis, apply some secure defaults. E.g. only allow metafunctions to be called from localhost.
An SMTP caller that supports load-balancing and fail-over (see RFE 1859843).
A similar SMS caller (see RFE 1864472) that allows the sending of SMSes via different gateways.