ThinkLemon

Category: Development

Development related stuff

  • Atom 1.0 specs official

    The Internet Engineering Taskforce has decided: It’s official, Atom 1.0 is here.

    http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-atompub-format-11.txt

  • Enough with the RSS, just call it webfeeds!

    I’ve been following the ‘discussion’ a.k.a. mud-slinging for some time now. And sorry for mister Winer, but it’s everything against the name. Acronyms are fine, just as long as there’s something simple to back it up. A CD is a shiny silver disc that holds (expensive) music. A DVD is a shiny silver disc that holds video. ABS makes your braking safer, supposedly. A PC is something to run Windows on.

    The problem with acronyms is that it can mean several things. PC can also means Politically Correct. See what else ABS, CD or AVI can be.

    But let’s focus on RSS. Now, you tell me: Is it ‘Really Simple Syndication’, ‘Rich Site Summary’ or ‘RDF Site Summary’? This confussion has been going on for some years now. Although I might say the winning hand is on Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0 that is). But what does Syndication mean (to the general public)? So I can syndicate in a simple fashion … what? I can’t explain this to my father (60+).

    I do however can explain to my father: “Hey, click on that orange button. See? It’s in your bookmarks. Now you can see what’s new over there, everytime you look. Neat? You are now ‘fed over the web’ with the latest news, weather forecasts, sea-levels, bingo-results, whatever. And you’ll have to do exactly nothing. Just look.”

    And this is exactly why I think this is a non-discussion. RSS, RDF, Feeds, Webfeeds, Web Feeds, I personally don’t care what it’s called. I care what it does. There still isn’t a single way or application that makes it easy for John Doe to use feeds. I’ve always said that RSS/webfeeds will only break through if Microsoft will deliver a feedreader with the next Office installment. Or as it seems, that they will bake it in the OS. Untill then it will be geek-stuff only. (Did anyone see the reports?)

    And I’m sorry mister Winer, Scoble and Dotzler, why don’t you agree on a single simple way to subscribe to feeds. Let’s call it Really Simple Subscription. And use, let’s say feed://subscribe.my.feed/. Just like everyone is used to http: and mailto:

  • Google Earth: Impact Structures

    I’ve spent the better part of my sunday examining the network link feature of Google Earth. For those who don’t know. You can share your placemarks. And you can do it in a way, in case of an update, that everyone ‘subscribed’ will be automatically updated.

    Google Earth Beta

    Network links give you the power to serve content from a remote location. Network Links are commonly used to distribute data to large numbers of users. In this way, if the data needs to be amended, it has to be changed only at the source location, and all users receive the updated data automatically.

    (more…)

  • Macromedia Studio 8

    If you were camping out in Siberia for the past year you may have missed the Adobe & Macromedia merger. Well, it boils down to a 3.5 BILLION dollar transaction in which Adobe takes over Macromedia. That is, IF the stockholders agree on August 24 and the DOJ does not intervene.

    Macromedia Studio 8 Anyway, it did not keep both companies from releasing their new updated application suites this year. CS2 was released somewhere around the news of the merger. And this week Macromedia happily announced its long due update to Studio MX 2004, dubbed Studio 8 (!!!!!! What the f@#$ happened to their much louded MX extension: “It sounds so fresh compared to a number-bump.”??? Right!)

    So as a daily user of Dreamweaver, ever since version 1, I’m pretty keen on seeing what improvements have been made. But let’s take a look what we get with the new studio:

    (more…)

  • RSS Statistical facts

    While we’re on the subject of RSS. It appears that “only 2% of online adults and 5% of online teens in North America use RSS, according to Forrester.” They are also mainly male, spend more time online than non-RSS readers, technically interested, surf broadband and/or wireless, mainly read news, research products and publish/maintain blogs. (In summary… don’t you love aggregation? ;-))

    The Pew Internet & American Life Project has some more interesting data (July 2005). When asked: “Please tell me if you have a good idea what the term means, or if you aren’t really sure what it means.“, and supplying the terms: “Spam, Internet cookies, Adware, Internet Phishing, Podcasting, Spyware, RSS feeds and Firewall”, the result was that RSS Feeds came in last with only 9% having a good idea, 65% not really sure and 26% never heard of it. What strikes me is that podcasting (13% has a good idea) is so much more familiar. See the report (PDF).

    More info: Feeding on RSS at eMarketer, via Marketingfacts (Dutch)

  • RSS Ping

    Here’s something interesting:

    RSS Ping logoRSS Ping combines RSS item metadata with site update information. It enhances the current ping specification, adding information about exactly what has been updated or published, with the notification that something has been updated. RSS Ping reduces the need to revisit or work done by aggregators and search engines when revisiting the publisher site after being pinged, to provide truly real-time updates for information on the Web.

    For what I can make of it, it’s meant to extend the current ping standard by letting the ping server collect a so-called ‘payload’. The payload is nothing more than a feed with a single item. Therefore eliminating the need to collect the originating page or complete feed.

    Read more:

  • IE7 UserAgent string

    Is it (Apart from being spoofed) ?:

    Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0b; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.0.3705; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)

    Except for the .NET stuff… IS IE7 dependant on the .NET Framework?

    Just some thoughts… Anyhow, anyone building around a useragent-string isn’t doing the right thing. 🙂

  • Calibri, Cambria, Candara, Consolas, Constantia and Corbel

    These are the new ‘web’ fonts as described earlier. Looking at my stats I’ve seen an interest for downloading these fonts. No I don’t have them (for download).

    But, earlier this week the beta of Windows Vista was released… and so did the new fonts… look around. 😉

    This is probably totally crossing the EULA.

    Just a note for webdesigners. Although you might get hold of them, it’ll be well into 2008 that there’s a crowd that can view these fonts.

  • Firefox: Europe beats North America

    According to French market analysis company XiTi the market share of Firefox in Europe is 14.11%. Market share in North America is only 11.78%. But Australia takes the lead with 14.41%. 😉

    Zooming in on Europe, the leading country is Finland with a staggering 31.03% followed by Germany with a 24,5% market share.

    All in all, these numbers are totally different from the 8.69% (worldwide) as reported by Onestat.com in April.

    More info in English on Spreadfirefox.

  • Migrate apps from Internet Explorer to Mozilla

    IBM has published a lengthy article explaining how you can make your IE only site work in e.g. Firefox, Opera or Safari.
    The article handles browser, DOM, JavaScript, CSS, Event and XML differences. It even touches Quirks vs. Standards mode and Rich Text Editing.

    Ever have trouble getting your Internet Explorer-specific Web applications to work with Mozilla? This article covers common issues associated with migrating applications to the open source Mozilla-based browser. You’ll first learn basic cross-browser development techniques, and then develop strategies for overcoming the differences between Mozilla and Internet Explorer.

    Read the full article.