Thursday, May 1st, 2008
Ajaxian Roundup for April, 2008: CSS goodness, Ext licenses, and the Cloud
March has flown by for me, and we had some great announcements, and some busy threads of discussion to show for it. The Webkit folk have had the great insight to realize that although SVG and canvas are still thought of as more advanced technology and are not mainstream in anyway, the problems that they can solve are very useful. In fact, you can take those tools and give specific solutions to use cases. For example, round some corners! The CSS animations and CSS masks work are killer good and exciting.
March was a coming out party for the Cloud, with the technical preview of Google App Engine and the news of the upcoming Aptana Cloud. I have a feeling that 2008 will be the “when we get to hit the DEPLOY button” year for developers, and I am very excited about it!
Finally, the ugly parts. Ext JS 2.1 was released, and with it came a license change. This brought up the undercurrent of some in the community that thought that the old license wasn’t valid, and with the GPL change we saw OpenEXT, the fork.
The Ext JS team is responding with open source exceptions, and is asking for community input.
Here is the full roundup:
JavaScript
- Google offers Search, Feed, and Translation APIs to Non Ajax Usage
- Talking about JavaScript 1.7, 1.8 and 1.9 before we get to 2.0
- ECMAScript 4 Update: New Grammar, and No Tail Calls
- JavaScript, C#, and ExtSharp
- ASP.Net Ajax Site and Silverlight
- JavaScript SAX Based Parser
- window.crypto: want crypto primitives in the browser? You may already have it
- JavaScript has staying power; Used in Stargate
- JS Time Machine
- Pi.Debugger: Cross browser debugging
- A wishlist for Ajax APIs
- Java Plugin: The Kernel is back
- Dromaeo: JavaScript Engine Testing
- using.js: manage JavaScript dependencies
- Server-side jQuery, E4X, and more with Jaxer
- Joose expands with new ORM
- Event Delegation for blur and focus
- Three Helpful JavaScript Libraries
- Conform your JSON to ECMAScript 4 with JCON
- JavaScript: The Good Parts
- DOH, let me test my code!
- Coherent: Cocoa Databinding for Ajax
- Java in JavaScript
- 100 Line Ajax Wrapper
- OraoWeb: Quicktime + JavaScript
- JavaScriptMVC Test Plugin
- Reminded of speaking your YAHOO.lang
- FancyUpload: Swiff meets Ajax
- Making application modules communicate with each other using Decoupling
- Ajax Accessibility and ARIA
jQuery
Prototype
- Timeframe: Prototype date range component
- qGallery: Prototype gallery application
- jQuery and Prototype Benchmarks
Dojo
- Usable Directory Listings with Dojo
- Dojo-Mini and the Feature Explorer
- Chandler Server Upgrades to Dojo 1.0.2
- Dojo 1.1 Nice Features
- Dojo XHR Plugins; How do you want your XHR today?
Ext
- Ext JS and the fun with Open Source licenses
- OpenEXT: The fork
- Ext JS responds with Open Source FLOSS Exceptions
- Ext JS 2.1 Released
- To GWT Ext or to Ext GWT?
Moo
Browsers / Standards
- Gears and Web Standards
- What does the “Open Web” actually mean?
- The performance of your Acid 3
- IE 8 strict mode doesn’t allow for CSS opacity?
- OpenAjax Call-to-Action for Browser Wishlist
- Browser Update: Firefox 3b5 and Opera Mini 4.1 beta
- IE 8 Security Updates
- Getting feedback to the IE 8 team
- Yahoo! BrowserPlus: The rumour is true
- Yahoo! BrowserPlus: Why wait for the news when you have strings?
- Last call for W3C XMLHttpRequest comments
- Embed your data- in HTML 5
- Taking Web Applications Offline, to the Desktop, and beyond
- Events Compatibility Tables; Powering the Dutch Royals
- Are you sure your unload handler is firing in IE?
CSS / UI
- Fun with SVG and CSS Animations
- GChart 2.0: Give me some pie
- Canvas2Image: Save out your canvas data to images
- CSS Gradients in WebKit
- Using canvas to test your site with colorblind folk
- WebKit keeps going with CSS Masks
- CSS Variables are next?
Mobile
- iPhone WebKit Goodness: 3D CSS Transforms and ontouch events
- iPhone Remote Debugger
- Mozilla Fennec: The mobile browser wars
- Mobile Browser Concurrency Test: Get your mobile browsers ready
- Now your mobile phones get to take some Acid
Performance and the Cloud
- What does Google App Engine mean for Ajax developers?
- Aptana Cloud: Develop on your desktop, sync out to the cloud
- Appcelerator on App Engine
- Cuzillion: Performance best practices tool
- Fast Streaming Ajax Proxy
- What is the future of Ajax applications talking to the data tier?
Showcases / Games
- The Twubble with Bob Lee
- Super Mario; 14KB of JavaScript
- Upside Down Text
- Mad Mimi: WYSIWYG Email Marketing
- Mosaic Image Builder with Ajax
- Immediate Translation and Mibbit
- Fingerprint: A print for your typing
- TPHP: Your home page can be a JavaScript command line
- JSONVid: Pure JavaScript Video Player
- ProtoRPG: Role Playing with Prototype
- Twistori: Telling a story with Tweets and Script.aculo.us
- Spoiler Blocker When JS Isn’t Available
Utiltiies / IDE
- WaveMaker Visual Ajax Studio for Mac
- Spket IDE 1.6.11 Released
- NetBeans now includes JavaScript support
- DOMAssistant 2.7 is Out, Strong Unicode Support and Enhanced Performance
- JavaScript Type Inference in IDEs
Misc / Humor
- Google releases GWT for JavaScript 2
- Book review: Advanced Ajax by Lauriat (Part 2 of 2)
- But I’m not moving my mouse!
- Audible Ajax Episode 25: State of Ajax
- Popularity, History, and SCRIPT SHARED
- Flinging APIs in the Highlands
- Adobe Releases AIR for Linux, Joins LSF
- Web Archeology: Java Pluglet API
- SEO Rapper Friday
- Adobe AIR for JavaScript Developers Pocketguide
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