Juice

Mozilla Prefetch

Thu, 31 Mar 2005 16:11:09 GMT

The browser looks for either an HTML <link> tag or an HTTP Link: header with a relation type of either next or prefetch. An example using the <link> tag follows:

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/netlib/Link_Prefetching_FAQ.html

Functional Requirements

Tue, 29 Mar 2005 23:01:17 GMT

I'm often challenged with explaining the difference between functional and non-functional requirements. My initial thought is to Google-It! or visit c2. Strangely enough, I don't really find definitions I find worthy. I grabbed a bit from here and a bit from there and here's something more to my liking.

The functional requirements of a system are those requirements that meet specific business needs of users. The non-functional requirements of a system are those requirements that are not specific business needs of users, but rather describe how the system is engineered and performs.

Pair Programming

Tue, 29 Mar 2005 21:42:52 GMT

Everytime I introduce extreme programming, the other end of the conversation usually says "you don't mean were gonna have to work two programmers per computer?" I'm starting to get the feel that pair programming is holding back adoption of eXtreme Programming. Myself, I'm not a fan of paired programming and I've had some bad experienced that make me doubt the pair programming paradigm is beneficial. I am a big fan of test driven development and small designs (baby steps). I always implement extreme programming minus the pair programming.

Improving Web Services Performance

Tue, 29 Mar 2005 15:44:06 GMT

MSDN: This chapter focuses on design guidelines and techniques, such as state management, asynchronous invocation, serialization, threading, to help you develop efficient Web services. This chapter also presents a formula for reducing thread contention and HTTP connections to increase the throughput for your Web services.

Randy: Great article on Web service performance. Applies equally to non-.NET Web services.

Avalon and Indigo Preview

Mon, 28 Mar 2005 04:48:06 GMT

Chris Anderson: The Avalon and Indigo March CTP is now available for anyone to download! Get it while it's hot!

Juice 1.2

Sat, 12 Mar 2005 04:42:11 GMT

I uploaded a temporary version of Juice 1.2. The current version is Juice 1.1. I hate to make that the current version while I'm on holidays, so I'll just point to it for those that want to see what's coming. It looks pretty solid. Feedback would be awesome.

Update: 1.2 is now the current version.

Grimes on .NET

Tue, 08 Mar 2005 16:42:05 GMT

Tim Anderson: Here's a hot potato. Long-time .NET author and expert Richard Grimes is giving up on the platform. He says the Framework is too big, too badly designed, and really just another Win32 wrapper.

Randy: Wow!

WeatherBug API

Tue, 08 Mar 2005 15:00:22 GMT

WeatherBug Blog: There are so many applications that can be developed with WeatherBug data, but there is no way that we have enough time and resources to develop them all on our own. So, why not give developers out there a chance to develop their own applications using our data?

http://blog.weatherbug.com/index.php?/corporate/yahoo_search_engine_api_and_weatherbug/

Randy: WeatherBug is considered an API into their database. Could be interesting.

Firefox and IE

Mon, 07 Mar 2005 22:17:50 GMT

About a year ago, I was focusing 99% of my development efforts on IE and 1% on all other browsers. IE had a commanding share of the market and it wasn't worth my time to debug my HTML on other browsers, most of which were lacking anyway. In the last year, Mozilla's Firefox has really made an amazing charge and now I spend near equal time on Firefox and IE; 39%, 60% and 1% on all others (these are estimates). Strangely, I've found other developers are now spending 100% of their time writing for Firefox. Loading there Websites in IE to get unreadable garbage.

Worse, whenever I load a new computer, I check that script debugging is enabled in my browser. This way, I can debug javascript exceptions on my Web. I'm absolutely amazed how many Websites still produce endless javascript exceptions. One here and there is not bad. But, on some sites, the javascript exceptions don't stop. I'm not talking about some poor mundanes mom and pop Websites. I'm talking about blogs where the authors are Web developers, who preach Web standards and often evangelize XHTML and CSS.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm certain I have flaws in my HTML and bugs in my javascript. But, I test my shit on both platforms regularly. Not all of it, but most of it. If you are not, then you are likely losing readers.

Test Driven Development

Sun, 06 Mar 2005 16:10:09 GMT

One of the elements of Test Driven Development is to write the test case first, then write the code. I've never done this, until today. I found that the Convert.ToDateTime method wasn't working in for some ISO 8601 date time, in particular, the dc:date in del.icio.us RSS feed (2005-03-06T15:22Z). Writing the test case was easy.

[Test]
public void TestMethod()
{
kb.ip.IsoDateTime.FromString("2005-03-06T15:22Z");
}

It was then really easy to write a fix for the bug.

/// <summary>
/// Convert an ISO DateTime string to System.DateTime object.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="date">ISO datetime string.</param>
/// <returns>Converted DateTime object.</returns>
static public System.DateTime FromString(string date)
{
   System.Exception e;
   try
   {
      return Convert.ToDateTime(date);
   }
   catch (System.Exception x)
   {
      System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine(x.Message);
      e = x;
   }
   // compensate for error in .NET DateTime parsing
   // 2005-03-06T15:22Z
   if (date.Length > 16)
   {
      return Convert.ToDateTime(
         string.Format("{0}:00{1}", date.Substring(0, 16), date.Substring(16)));
   }
   throw e;
}

Win32 to .NET Map

Sun, 06 Mar 2005 15:33:02 GMT

Map of Win32 API functions to .NET framework equivalent methods.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dndotnet/html/win32map.asp

Cool Javascript to track clicks!

Fri, 04 Mar 2005 14:44:34 GMT

MyBlogLog: MyBlogLog is all about tracking which of your blog's outgoing links are making readers click; in the simplest, most non-intrusive way possible.

Randy: This is very cool Javascript. They capture body.onclick and forward the click by creating a new Image() and setting the source on that Image.

if(document.body){ document.body.onclick = cs_det_oc; }
else if(document){ document.onclick = cs_det_oc; }

var x = new Image();
x.src = trackURL;

XForms Essentials

Wed, 02 Mar 2005 21:31:54 GMT

http://xformsinstitute.com/essentials/browse/book.php

Screencast of Juice

Wed, 02 Mar 2005 06:00:32 GMT

I just uploaded a screencast of downloading, installing and using Juice.

Yahoo! Search Web Services

Tue, 01 Mar 2005 19:36:49 GMT

Jeremy Zawodny: Developers often ask what it would take for us to offer a Web Service API to Yahoo! Search. [cut] Before today I always had to give vague non-committal answers. In reality we were already working on it.

Randy: Very cool!

http://developer.yahoo.net/