Thoughts on application development and web development en-uk CC This is more of a note to self than anything else and I do not intend to steal credit for this tip on how to get a custom PHP 5 working on Leopard with the GD library installed. Credit is due to Sheldon who posted this gold nugget of information as a comment at http://macoshelp.blogspot.com . http://www.khaitu.com/articles/view/69 Mapache was released last week to the general public as an alpha version. While development is still ongoing, it is possible to try out the functionality that Mapache will provide though without bells and whistles. From the Mapache page: http://www.khaitu.com/articles/view/68 Microsoft has announced support for a new idea called WebSlices in the new version of its Internet Explorer web browser. From its site: WebSlices are a new feature in Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Developers for Web sites to connect with users by allowing users to subscribe to content directly within a Web page. WebSlices behave just as feeds do, where clients can subscribe to get updates and notification of changes. http://www.khaitu.com/articles/view/67 Just 12 hours after enjoying some drinks in a boat on a sunny afternoon on the Thames, here I am, injected into the Summer heat that engulfs Gurgaon, the hi-tech satellite city outside Delhi wondering just how much of an insanity trip this 6 day stay will be. For it is, like so many other things over here, that work is generally taken to the extreme. http://www.khaitu.com/articles/view/66 With the advent of Safari 3.1 and the proclaimed support for new DOM methods (among which is getElementsByTagName ) comes of course the let-down. http://www.khaitu.com/articles/view/65 Apple have just released the latest version of their web browser, Safari in their latest update to OS X Tiger. Having used the beta for some time now, I didn't think this would be a big deal. Happily, there is more than meets the eye in 3.0.4. Apple has updated the somewhat toned down DOM Inspector available in previous versions to a really nice and polished tool more like Firebug, the web developer's ultimate extension to Firefox. http://www.khaitu.com/articles/view/64 With the latest beta of Safari 3 - Apple's latest incarnation of their browser - Apple has made out that the world should be ready to receive a brand new cross-platform browser with superior capabilities, ready to take on the Internet Explorers and Firefoxes out there already. And from the hype on the website you might believe that Safari was indeed "the World's best browser" but judging from the past offerings, you would probably think differently. Safari has been around for a while now, and has attracted quite a bit of criticism for its quirkiness both in rendering HTML and executing Javascript. In fact, Safari 1.3 is really quite a pain to support, though it has to be said that the browser has come quite far since those early days. In fact, Safari deserves credit for having pioneered/invented some technologies which are only now becoming widely known and used by the site development community, such as the CANVAS object. In fact, it was the first browser to meet the Acid2 browser test for Standards Compliance. Apple it seems has focussed on bringing its browser up to the standards we have come to expect from mature browsers such as Firefox for this release, bringing its reliability up on a par at least with Opera and close to Firefox. http://www.khaitu.com/articles/view/63 I deployed a new khaitu today. It follows a few months of design and coding in my spare time but I'm glad it has made it to fruition. For the backend I went with Ruby on Rails because I feel that I have outgrown PHP - not that its a bad language, its just that it feels like its all over the place. In contrast Ruby on Rails makes development intuitive and I have to say that it is great for agile development - just as it says on the tin! After trying it out, I don't think I can go back. Having said this though, there are aspects of RoR http://www.khaitu.com/articles/view/62 It appears that two Spanish blogs have posted articles on Ubikuo in the past two days. The sites are: Applesfera http://www.khaitu.com/articles/view/55 Ubikuo w2.0 was released this week at last. It has gone through a complete redesign and now includes web 2.0 features such as RSS and a concept known as Message Boards. Ubikuo is still free and is now based on a new API which ultimately means that third party developers can write applications that plug into Ubikuo much the same as the Mac OS X Tiger Dashboard Widget does. http://www.khaitu.com/articles/view/54 It seems that despite all their best efforts, Microsoft is about to release a browser that doesn't meet the level of quality Microsoft purports to deliver. Surprising? Not really, but nevertheless painful and very disppointing. It looks like the days of IE hacks will not be banished. An example - the Italic Float Bug:Try floating an element whose parent has its font-style set to italic. IE7 will mysteriously apply a right-margin equal to the width of the parent element. Great. http://www.khaitu.com/articles/view/52 Ok. So I'm in a bad mood. But I can't help feeling a sense of despair at the news that the release of the newest Gnome (2.16) contains an 'improved icon theme' which is only marginally less rubbish than the previous one. I mean really - is it so hard for the open source community to get some designers in there and do a good job bringing the somewhat infantile/cartoonish icons up to a professional style. If Ubuntu can, then why can't Gnome? Or KDE for that matter. http://www.khaitu.com/articles/view/48