Working with my MAC

Yeh .. At last after fighting all the inner pulls and pushes, I have got a small MacBook. Not Pro, just the lesser of the laptops. Its my first time actually doing something on a Mac. But good friend Rajeesh helped me with some things but I need to get into the BSD (Darwin) shell and all the installations, applications that are possible in the system. Its a Leopard with 2GHz and 1Gb Ram. The HDD is just 80Gb but I intend to have an external Hard drive as well. Now I read what Cocoa, Carbon, AppleScript, Xcode etc were. But to get an idea I have to try something out. Its still early days and the console is the major thing to explore. Added most of the best rated softwares and looking for more great stuff. The UI is great. The XCode IDE is great as well. The Expose and Spaces are also nice, reminds me of the Fedore Core that used to use.

I am trying my hands with MacPorts and it looks very complex. Great Ruby On Rails, Java and python support. I am currently working in RoR and I feel this system would give me more that I ever wanted. I was disappointed when I understood that TextMate (on which the major RoR development is done worldwide) is to be paid for. I choose to have Aptana and develop in that IDE. I will download Eclipse and see if I get Red hat Developer Studio to work with Mac.

With my minimal interaction I feel that Mac is not devoid of viruses. How is that possible (the admin rights asking for execution of programsis great) when it uses executables? Have to investigate. Lots of questions to be answered thou. And I feel I would love using the Mac.

Imified Posting

This content that I am sending right now is from a service called Imified. I was just cruising through the net when this one just hit me. Just add imified@imified.com to your list in gtalk ( or other jabber systems) and then you could post items like this into your blog, live ournal , twitter, Jaiku and other stuff !! Isnt that cool or what !?? This is just great for me coz now Gtalk becomes a one big hub for all the activities. Messenger (duh !) and information passing to other applications (sites), content management (this even works with Base Camp !!!! ) and loads of stuff. The saying 'The world is a small place' is materialised by applucations like this !! Kudos to the Imified team for such a great idea (concept ) !!!

The Helpers ... Part 2

Its been sometime. Work caught up (at last). I got to work on some interesting things which made me feel that the libraries that those site use( the Java Script ones) must be optimized for performance more than anything. If the JavaScript you use slows down the application, the library is useless. I continue with some of the other libraries, in the search for the perfect one ( or a hybrid).

Bajax : Bajax is a small and simple JavaScript library to put Ajax driven content in your pages. When I heard about this library, I went on to search for this. The library is maintained by the BerliOS group. I did not see any kind of documentation, so I had to get hold of the READ ME. The library turned out to be very minimal. Just some functions where by you could call a page with arguments, insert some html to elements, insert whole pages to elements and get html from elements. That is it. :)

Behaviour : This library is an interesting one. I have always wondered how nice it would have been if I could assign some characteristics to some elements according to their class names. Like I want all elements which are of class 'fancy Hover' to have a border outline when hovered on. In this case I would have to write the onMouseOver and OnMouseOut methods for each element. This would clutter my code and make the behaviour and structure tightly bounded. Behaviour comes to the rescue in this case. By writing small lines of code and registering a behaviour we could assign elements of certain classes (or even elements of certain ids) to certain methods on certain events. This works with libraries like script.aculo.us to provide some snazzy effects as well. Some examples also give you the usefulness of this library along with its interactions with other libraries. This library gives me the option of adding behaviours to a set of elements at the same time and that, I feel, is very powerful.

Moo.FX : The Mo.Fx library is a lightweight JavaScript effects library written using prototype. The library is just 3Kb !! Even the tag line given is 'Size does matter'. When I went through the library I was amazed at what such a small library could do. Net Vibes also uses Moo.FX I suppose and the site itself testifies the abilities of this library. It has many stuff that a typical Web 2.0 site may require (accordions, Effects, Tips, Groups, Drag and Drop .. ). I had earlier used Dojo as a library for my sample application, but the library was so vast that it stalled my application more than often. I guess Moo.FX gives you the right amount of stuff to get started with and build a nice website with all those great Effects and some CSS support. I also found the Hash.Cookie feature (used to store values like the co ordinates of a drag gable element) very useful ( at least for sites like net vibes). Theming with Assets.CSS, loading images dynamically with Assets.Images, Chain Events and make them execute in a periodic fashion, Ajax calling and updating along with periodic access to those calls, Effects such as morph, transitions, scroll, slide and various other elements styles ( say you wanted the background to change very slowly, you will create an Fx object, associate it with a certain set of elements, and call the effect with the start and end states to get the effect). It also has sorters (which I think are the highlight of scriptaculous). Now the main difference that I see with the tremendous Dojo library is the amount of additional widgets (like context pane, tab containers, pop ups etc) that Dojo has. These kind of stuff can be built using JavaScript along with some help from Moo.Fx and Scriptaculous, but the maintainability will be a crucial point I feel here. If these kinds of widgets are available (or made into a simple extended library), I feel Dojo will feel to have some sort of competition.

ByteFx : Its just another library which gives you an accordion, some effects and transitions. Nothing special (but I have not gone through the code).

wz_dragdrop : Now this library just has the plain old drag and drop features and some other features like re size, clone and some effects. This library has a limited number of features but is enough for some starter sites and applications.

SACK : Simple AJAX Code Kit is a small library used to facilitate AJAX calls. The file is small and the a demo comes along with the package. The routines to call when loading, loaded, complete etc could be specified just as we do in a normal AJAX call. The library just gives us a better organized way to do it.

OverLIB : A small JavaScript library if you want only tool tips to appear and nothing else !!!

Sarissa : This library is very interesting. Well the techie guys will know that httpxmlrequest gives you an XML file after access. Now if you were to traverse through this file (validate, find nodes etc), it would be great pain. Sarissa is here to facilitate this. Its the same as you use DOM parsers in Java. We create a DOM object then add/ delete/ traverse what we need using methods available. I like this in a way that I had used a lot of parsing for my previous project and became quite good at parsing and stuff (even used TagSoup parser to make valid XML documents out of Html documents). The library as such seems small, but the functionalities are very helpful. I would definitely use this library if any requirement comes into picture. Some tutorials and starting points are also given. We could use xpath type access to get the nodes and manipulate them by adding attributes and tags. The cross browser acceptability is great (MS XML crap for windows and other XML Http stuff) and library deals with it well. Xlst stylesheet manipulation is also possible. We could do something like update a part of the DOM using the updateContentFromURI method after applying a style sheet to the resultant XML request. This I think is particularly useful as we could maintain a same structure to the site with just having style sheets for different request results.

Nifty Corners : Typically when I see a Web 2.0 powered site, I see that the design is great. There are real nice Ajax features, some great Effects at the right places and finally wonderful CSS combinations. The so called 'rounded corners' for the DOM elements are just as important as anything to make the web site look good. I have tried my lot to get libraries coexist so that I could use one for my effects and one for the rounded corners. But I was not successful at all. Then I went on to do the CSS way and sticked to it. Now this is one of those libraries that I used. Now this library actually tricks the user by adding some blocks of code with a specific margin space so that it seems that the edge is rounded. It adds 4 bold tags on the top and bottom of the element( say div with a specific id), which has specific classes of its own (from a linked css file called niftyCorners.css ) , when the JavaScript function Rounded is called (nifty.js). Nice trick eh? Well CSS 3 has now specified techniques where by we could specify the radius of the corner of elements so that they are rounded when displayed. Mozilla FireFox ans Safari 3 have adopted this (IE as always sucks) and they look great !!!

Plex : This is a nice little JavaScript library for GUI. It has components like menubar, tabbar, contentpane, trees, grids and title windows. The library seems to be fast and lightweight. The style of writing the components is similar to Dojo ( xml like coding). It has some AJAX support (pulling data from a xml or yaml and feeding it to the data grid maybe) and uses it well. Custom functions could be triggered on events too. Cross Browser functionality is ensured by this JavaScript library. It is said that client side xslt loading is supported for IE and FireFox. Its documentation also says that the components could save their states in sessions and thus potentially solving the 'back button' problem. Worth a look but I would go for better alternatives. :)

The Helpers ... Part 1

Its just not that I tend to understand the wide world of the JavaScript libraries that are present (both as GPL and Commercial). I just wanted a comparison (need to browse to find out about these libraries and Stumble and Google helped me a lot with this). But why do we need these so called libraries? Of course we could manipulate the DOM using the native methods that JavaScript has and make our own js files. This would be in effect reinventing the wheel (just what we people who are trying to develop do not want). If somebody has done something good and effective, why not understand it, take a lesson from it and try to wrap something additional over it? Thats what these people (who have actually made these libraries ) have done. I will have some comparisons here (some of those libraries that i felt good using as a user and coding as a developer). So here we go ...

Prototype 1.6.0 : Its a library ( that is now used by many other libraries ) that facilitates the DOM access via JavaScript and the AJAX functionality. When I look at the documentation of this library, it reminds me of ruby. The syntax is similar and the constructs and more or less the same. The Class constructs are similar to Ruby's and there are mix ins too !! It concentrates on its Class structure where by you create Objects which is extend able. It has some utility methods by which you could access DOM elements ( say $ can be used for access elements with a specific id $('id') ). It has AJAX methods like updater (update contents according to the response), request ( give a request), responder ( set or unset certain listeners ), periodic updater (periodically call and update the element). Element object manipulations are present and there are many methods which facilitate the manipulation. Enumeration is another feature that is very strong with prototype. It allows enumerations (just as the each, collect methods in Ruby) and allows manipulations (anonymous pieces of code ) to be done on it. There are neat Event handlers in this library that can be used to track the events that happen on a particular event. The major methods that is used here is the observe, element and stop. It even kills the Microsoft IE memory leak problem. This is what Douglas Crockford has to say. This library has Form methods as well to get those form tags. For and AJAX call say we use Form.serilalize method to get the input fields and their corresponding values as url arguements. The bind concept ( It go me sometime to come into terms with this concept ) and its relief given by prototype by the Function helper. Insertion of html content after, before, top or btton of any element ( say a commenter .. ) is also done. A periodicalexecuter which is useful to say update a cricket score !! The Position utility which is used by libraries like script.aculo.us to position elements. Templates which can be used to substitute strings and stuff. It supports JSON too.

RICO 2.0 : A Open Source JavaScript library which has many AJAX powered features along with some great effects and components. It is also based on prototype. The effects are all things I see in the normal libraries. The ones which impressed me the most is the components features. It has such smooth UI features which closely resemble those Rich Internet Application created by Adobe Flex and Open Lazlo. The Live Grid and Accordion are two things that made me interested. This example shows how the Live Grid was used and it feels like its Flex. The weather example given in their webs site closely imitates the one originally developed in Open Lazlo ( which incidentally is one of my favorites ). In their site it has been tested for IE and Firefox and that the Drag and Drop feature does not work in Safari. Even the AJAX features does wok for Safari 2.0.3. Along with giving those Drag and Drop facilities it also provides some styling effects like rounding off the div so that it will not have sharp edges. Multiple objects may be updated as a part of the AJAX requests with RICO. This is one site which I found RICO to work very well. It provides the look and feel of a Flex application and runs faster that a Flex one ( Although this site loaded very slow for me. Dunno why !! ). Here is where I came across XOOPS as well ( Content Management System written in PHP and useful for social websites and corporate sites) and i will be exploring this in the near future. This Live Grid tutorial gives you a fair idea of what and how to do that access thing. The best part about this is that the Live Grid widget if connected to some database could be made to populate when the user scrolls the grid. This is an excellent feature and leads to better performance. There are tons of examples in this page and I suggest if interested view it.

MochiKit 1.4 - as they say it makes JavaScript suck a little bit less. Mochikit is a JavaScript library which stands alone. The primary contributor Bob Ippolito says that the library has taken the coding standards from python, objective-C etc. It has many cool features like logging, manipulating DOM elements, visual effects ( taken from script.aculo.us ), asynchronous server communication, functional programming, CSS manipulation, iteration and so on. The listening mechanism can be made use of (thought those concepts need some getting used to ) to make excellent Web 2.0 sites. Multiple elements could be configured to listen to a response ( say a JavaScript Array response could be traversed using evalJSON, and could initiate other Asynchronous calls to the server) and this is done through the slot/ signal technique that it uses. This article gives you an excellent insight into the core features that this library has. Turbo Gears is another framework built in python that uses this library. I am yet to go through this and try it out !! The main site has example where a sortable table is populated with contents using Asynchronous requests in both the xml and JSON format. It has both a development version and deployment version. The main categories are Async (asynchronous access), Base (Functional Programming stuff like map and filter and comparators), DOM ( create DOM elements like Tables to be inserted into nodes ), Drag and Drop, Color, DateTime, Format (those string operations go here ), Iterators ( some high end iterators), Log and Logging Pane ( the great logging features that this library has ), Selector ( access to the CSS elements using $$ ), Signal ( add event listener), Style ( style manipulation ), Sortable ( sortable drag and drop lists just as in script.aculo.us ), Visual ( visual effects like rounding of edges, fade, toggle etc). As it is python oriented I found this library hard to grasp though.

Dojo 1.0 : Dojo is a wonderful library that has great features and is preferred by most developers. Django and Web Works have integrated Dojo with their bundle asserting this fact. The biggest plus point that I see with Dojo is its wdiget construction helpers and components. I went through some of the docs that they have and was immediately impressed. They have widgets like Text Boxes, Check Boxes, Date Pickers etc which when associated with a theme will work as in a Rich Internet Application. It is said that the DOM level access is not that much but the UI features are awesome. A demo mail application and a Fish Eye Application are given in their site. When the package is downloaded, we also get a demo page which highlights all the UI features of Dojo. The cross browser features ( accessibility of DOM level 3 inside IE ) has been very tactically done by Dojo thus making event handling excellent. It gives the essential validations, tool tips, accordions, split panes, dividers, In place editors and whole lots of features. After looking at this one I feel I have wasted a lot of time with other libraries when I had a superb one right under my nose. After I went through the documents, I used it in my dummy application and to tell the least, the application rocks now !!

to be continued ..

The Widget Way !!!

I am a great fan of the Web 2.0 way of rendering its pages. The special effects, the sliding of windows, the drag and drop, the dynamic tabs, the user persona and the speed and effectiveness of the website. The feed capabilities and the user interaction get these sites up and running and as a result we see over a million users using these sites. I was asked to evaluate two of the best sites which have one of the best interfaces I have seen (Not forgetting those sites with huge flash content which makes the loading extremely slow and makes me want to close even before it opens up). I am talking about Netvibes and iGoogle. I will be talking about them and will try to compare them both as a user and as a developer. I will start as a user and then gradually go into becoming some what of a developer.

Both the interfaces are great. They are a treat to watch and in functionality they are the same. The guy who ever thought of the idea of having bulk data from all those pages you browse into one single page must have some imagination. The widget concept is the root here and the interaction between the widgets (drag and drop) is very fast. But I like the Netvibes interface better. They have many of the gadget and we could even add our own custom code (html) to make certain widgets. I feel Netvibes uses those nifty AJAX functionalities the most. Even when I need to choose another widget to add, iGoogle transfers me to another page and then it lets me add it. But with Netvibes I add it right from my own screen using the javascript libraries that it uses. Netvibes has more themes and stuff and those combinations are deadly. The time it takes to load is kind of the same. Netvibes even has the facilities where by you could add widgets or tabs. You could also go to 'Universes' (branded pages with widgets) and explore them.

Netvibes even has a search facility where by you could search within the widgets you added for a term. The search results loads up in the tabs (after filtering) and once you close the search it comes back to normal (and that too in very high speeds). Adding of feeds (xml or opml) is simple in Netvibes and iGoogle. Netvibes gives us a more of a view of the description as a tool tip where as iGoogle gives it as a clickable show all image. Of course Google has a Single Sign On facility and they have much more pages which have buttons telling you to add the content to your iGoogle, but for the sheer look and feel I will go with Netvibes.

Both these cool sites having tabbing facilities available (the AJAX way). These tabs are loaded when required and not before. The tabs Netvibes provide have more functionalities for the user (adding it to the tabs list, adding an icon to the tab and other stuff). Application could also be configured in individual tabs (I have the whole meebo application in one tab) for Netvibes. Although this is just adding the page url to the widget content, its effective. The one thing that I saw different for iGoogle is that the tabs could have its own look and feel. I don't see this as a shortcoming for Netvibes but as a special feature for iGoogle.

Now the developers view. Netvibes uses moo.fx for its neat Javascript features where as iGoogle uses its own libraries along with yui. The architectural basis is the same. They have a main frame for each widget and a unique id for the widget( may be a global variable in Javascript). They keep on incrementing this for each widget so that they have a unique id in that page. The widget is a combination of divs, spans, images and iframes. The main widget frame will have a header frame which holds the header information for the widget and the content which holds the iframe which has all the contents. This gives us the additional advantage that the widget content could be a stand alone application having its own logic and still be embedded inside the widget as the container is an iframe. The buttons you see (add to iGoogle and stuff) adds this content url to the base site (after you log in) and then you get to see the application inside an iframe.

The drag and drop are all from the moo.fx library (Netvibes). Alternatively they could also have used script.aculo.us for their effects. They have pretty good tabs facilities which I guess script.aculo.us does not have ready made. I guess the code that iGoogle uses may be python based ( I honestly dont know ) but have not sure what Netvibes uses.

The reason for my sudden interest (or may I say incidental) is that I was trying to mimic this feature in a my own site. Now I used script.aculo.us and the base was set up within 6 hours using Ruby On Rails. ROR has great support for those AJAX and Javascript features that script.aculo.us provides and I really dont need to write a single line of code. Aptana IDE is the IDE of my choice when it comes to Ruby On Rails. The auto complete feature is not complete in this IDE but it's better than nothing. There are tons of libraries that I intend to use (tags, ferret and other plugins) and I am looking through these stuff as of now. Hope I will end up a better developer with this !!!

Small Task

These days I am trying to understand how the whole connectivity thing works. How do you post your contents (which may be normal HTML pages or flash widgets) to your favorite sites? The answer is pretty simple. You host your contents some where else and give the code which accesses these hosted files in your favorite site(say blogger). But how do you add external content to some site which is intended to give you only their stuff?? Blogger does this but allowing the used to add scripts and HTML content as page elements. I was given the task of finding how I can post something (say a flash file -swf) to facebook.

At first I thought of the task to be a simple one. Go to some site which has used the actual add to Facebook button and use http header and trackers to get the URL that is used to add contents to facebook. As my content was a widget, I decided to look through widgetbox. The site is a great site where you could actually make widgets (even write custom code) , save them and even add these widgets to your facebook account. The URL too was simple. It used the sharer.php page of facebook.

Now when i actually access the page I see a input box where in I am supposed to add my URL. Adding the widget.com URL worked fine, but when I added my flash video (hosted at my side), I got just the URL and no flash video. I started looking at the part where it shows a confirmation and saw many hidden variables. For the widgetbox URL these hidden variables were filled. But how does it do that ?? The only difference I saw was the meta data that was present in the widgetbox html. After googling some time I got the page from facebook (yeah I am a dumbass) which said to use the meta tags to populate the hidden fields. It so happens that the guys in facebook are so smart that they get the meta tags from the inputted html page and according to certain specified tags they conclude the content of the page and render it accordingly making the shared page either a normal html page, a video clipping or an audio clipping. The various options are showed in this page.

It turns out that getting the meta tags is not great a deal either. PHP4 and later we get this information using get_meta_tags(URL) which returns you a map of the tags(Facebook seems to be php code :) ). They then may be populating the hidden fields which then ets submitted to the actual page. Nice and effective trick I say !! I don't think the same goes for all those social websites but I am yet to explore them (God bless ).

During this exploration I stumbled upon some thing that may be useful for the future too. Its called Open Social and its from our very own Google. It provides a set of APIs for social websites across multiple websites. As I understand you can write your own widgets which may do things for you in your account (like adding a scrap in orkut ) but its embeddable. Many websites implement these APIs and in the near future we may have a set of APIs which are common for all those social websites. I had to join in this great venture and I have got my approval. Yet to start with programming the orkut sandbox though !!

That's all for today. And see you the next time I have something to write !!! Ciao !

The Enhanting World of Java Script

I got a call from a person today and he asked me some questions. I did not know the what he wanted to know about me or what his final goal was( may be he wanted to intimidate me). It was a short interview and he concentrated on asking me if I knew this and that. The first thing he asked me was if I knew Java Script. He wanted me rate myself in Java Script. Not forgetting what a great 'language' Java Script I said I stood at 3 out of 5. This made me write some thing I know about Java Script thus justifying the 3 marks.

Java Script is an interpreted language and it could run on any application which has the Java Script interpreter in it. Major browsers, Adobe Acrobat Reader are some examples. What Java Script primarily does is facilitate the user to run scripts with in the application. In the case of browsers its accessibility of the DOM (Document Object Model) makes it powerful. It is not necessary that the browser that you use has all those Java Script features required. It is not necessary that the Java Script code is even executed at you end (security reasons). To cope up Fault Tolerant Systems may be used by those who create the actual page. It could access parts of the shown web page and change its attributes dynamically. That's the whole deal. There are many libraries that make life simple for you along with providing those nifty user interfaces and awesome effects.

Its a weakly typed, prototype based language. Prototype is an object that can be cloned to produce another object. The concept of classes is different from the so called prototype programming and the attribute can be dynamically changed at run time too. Every function created has an object called prototype and addition of new attributes can be done using this Object. That is you are dynamically changing the attribute of an Object so that it could be used for further processing in the rest of the script.

function circle(){
}
circle.prototype.pi=3.14159;

function alertmessage(){
alert(this.pi);
}
circle.prototype.alertpi=alertmessage;

Now all those circle object that you create will have the alertpi function and you could call the function. We could even extend the normal defined Objects (like String) and it will be reflected through out the whole code. Another way to code this would be -

circle = {}
circle.pi = 3.14159;
function alertmessage(){
alert(this.pi);
}
circle.alertpi=alertmessage;
circle.alertpi();

Declaring stuff inside the curly braces is as simple as var a = { pi : 3.14159 }. This is what essentially JSON delivers too. The essential idea of associative arrays also makes a difference with Java Script. ie a.x and a["x"] are the same. Eg.

circle = {}
circle.pi = 3.14159;
function alertmessage(){
alert(this["pi"]);
}
circle.alertpi=alertmessage;
circle.alertpi();

There are private members and public members in Java Script and they can be quite useful.

function aa(a){
this.p=a;
var secret =10;

function pp(){
alert(secret);
}

this.service = pp;
}

function ss(){
alert(this.secret );
}

ll = new aa(10);
ll.ss = ss;
ll.ss();
ll.service();

Here secret is private, p is public, and service is privileged (access to private and public stuff). Calling ll.pp() will give an error while calling ll.service() will give 10. Even calling ss will give you undefined.

CSS along with Java Script provide a great deal of WEB 2.0 'ism' to any web application. They are very frequently used to get the AJAX functionality so that the user stays in the same page even though the details are updated in different parts of the page. The accessibility to the DOM object of Java Script is made use of to update the parts of the page dynamically. The main Object responsible for making AJAX possible is XMLHttpRequest (XHR). Due to the differences between the browsers and their rendering techniques the initialization of this kind of object differs (new ActiveXObject for microsoft and new XMLHttpRequest for all the others ). But once it has been instantiated the properties( onreadystatechange, readyState etc) becomes visible. We could use the POST or GET methods to pass data and the object finally will have the resultant XML as the responseXML / responseText. We then use this text to load it into the actual object in the DOM using the innerHtml method (which is present of all objects in the DOM).

Now for the bare essentials core Java Script is fine. But when you need more functionalities to be done in your site then the pain of structuring your whole Java Script becomes a hurdle. To facilitate this a lot of libraries are in place now. The primary one being prototype. Prototype has many added functionalities like the easy access of the DOM Objects , nice AJAX manipulation, JSON support and some nifty Object oriented features (creation of classes ). Jquery is another library that is quite useful. Another Java Script library which beautifies your web application along with adding the necessary functionalities is the DOJO toolkit. Many other toolkits like Script-aculo-us and MooFX make things easier for the programmer.

Now to understand at least some of these functionalities ( I know I am bad at writing), we primarily need to see some source code. When I see some features that intimidate me in any web application (done by Java Script of course) what I do is see the source code and try to manipulate the code. As Fire Fox is my favorite browser I use Fire Bug for the debugging, viewing and manipulating purposes. It is a great tool and is a must have among all those Fire Fox plug ins.

Even though Java Script makes your life easier by trying to provide up to date information, it has many downsides to it. It may make the loading slow sometimes( as I have faced ). The security concern is a major hiccup for Java Script. I would never pass authentication information of any kind using Java Script as it could be easily replicated. Other major problem is the eval function which evaluates an expression given (converting between different objects).

One of the people I really look up to regarding Java Script is Douglas Crockford (JSON). He has a lot of videos which describe the Java Script language and all its functionalities. There are many tutorials that you will find in the net that will make you a better programmer. Don't forget to try out the Yahoo UI when you are comfortable.

As of Java 6, they have introduced Java Script support in their java.script package which is said to make use of the Mozilla Rhino engine( A Java based engine). I hope I could try to implement some of those neat features that they say they have.

I am still understanding what Java Script is and if you find some errors in my writing then please comment on this.

The Overview

This is it .. After having a good one on one with one of my mentors I have got an enlightenment. Blogging is the present, future and a way to let the world know the past. It gives the readers an insight of the individual and lets him judge whether the person is of any good or if at all is he trying to become someone. Blogging is necessary, not sufficient ( from the mathematics teacher who taught me during those schooling years . Of course he was not referring to blogging ).

A resume is just a document, but a blog is an idea. An idea that has all those branches and sub branches. And each part has its own significance. I always thought before this 'why do even people waste time in blogging ?? Dont they have anything useful to do !?? ' > now I tend to differ. They were and are doing some thing significant and the greatest part is that they are sharing it with the world. Just like Open Source(Yes I am a fan). Free as in people are allowed to read, comment, criticise, like, dislike or plainly ignore.

I am diverse when interests are taken into consideration. But I like the concept of having to tweak code. I am a developer and not a cracker by any standard( atleast I have not grown to that standard ). But I try my luck with most of the things. I like to experiment and go on. I dont stick to most of the things I do. But I try to get some thing out of it.

But what have I done ? Nothing much but I will discuss about somethings in my future blogs ( God Bless) .. Some of my interests are

• Java (all flavours). The thing about Java is that even if you have a general idea of a framework or a standard you are still in the middle of the god damn ocean. Theres a lot to learn and a lot to adapt and understand. I have tried ( trust me when i say tried) Core Java, Java with XML (all those apache packages, the DOM packages, the excellent and life saving Tagsoup parser but not the SAX parser :( ), Atlassian Jira application(Web Works X Works and loads of other stuff whew !! ), Atlassian Confluence ( same as above) etc. I whole heartedly thank the ECLIPSE community for developing on of the best softwares ever without which me and the rest of the world would be in total disarray.
  
• Some architectures (some thoery and some by practicals). I have been facinated by the SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) and its peers. The concept of reusability and agility are made the base here. The flexibility that any application can hook into another application (different platforms, different code but the required data) is great. And I have gone through the Head First - Design Patterns (though some of those patterns went straight over my tiny brain).
• Ruby and some python and perl. These are one of the best languages ever. They are some times draggy and slow but I get to do some cool stuff using them. Siting an example I have a small python script which I use to make the folder from which I call the script as the base of the http server. For some that might be like 'thats easy' but for me thats a BIG deal !! Ruby and Ruby On Rails for its flexibility and usability. Now I intend to dive deep into ROR as I have found Django (ROR for python) a little cumbersome (Sorry Python Fans). Perl's CPAN is the one of the best archive maintainers as yet. I have also wet my hands with Scala but not a fan.
• JavaScript (YEPP !!! ). I am a big fan of JavaScript (As all those Yahoo ! Guys are). I consider it a under estimated language ( but people may tend to differ after the wonderful things that Yahoo! has done with their web sites). The prototype helper and AJAX have all been great helpers to the development of this nifty language and now we have packages that do wonders with your website. Its not difficult now a days to set up a smooth looking web site with all those cool Styles (CSS thanks ) and great effects (courtesy script.aculo.us and moo ). ROR has a done a great job here by using all those features and I guess thats one of the reasons that they have a lot of developers thrilled in working in Rails. Douglas Crockford ( founder of JSON) is my idol when it comes to Javascript and DOM concepts. His videos about the Javascript language are excellent and a must watch.
  
• Firefox. What a tool. I use a Windows XP system at work( I denounce that still) but my favorite browser is definitely FireFox. I even had the original Mozilla source downloaded but did not get the time to work on it. I have some of those neat plug ins installed( FireBug is my favorite ) as well. When Safari came for Windows I had to try it as I had heard that it is the fastest of the browsers. But after using it twice or thrice I had to revert back. Its not because Safari is bad, its just because FireFox is better. Want me to talk about IE ? NO COMMENTS !!
  
• Gtalk - what a tool man. These people have just rocked the entire world with their ground breaking tools. Be it Picasa, or the new Gmail. The do it and they do it with class. Google Maps and Google Earth where nothing like things the people saw. They were different and they were glorious. I have to say hats off to you guys for supporting Open Source and even conducting Google Summer of Code. I have even used Java to interact with the Google Desktop Application (which I would say is what i use to search and not windows search) and it feels it (SOA comes into picture here). Yahoo! Messenger was some thing that I have been using for a long time but it would sometimes stall my system( and believe me I get really UNHAPPY when my system gets stalled). Pidgin( the famous Gaim) has been my next love. The concept of getting your own jabber server up and running is great. I have tried out with WildFire XMPP server (I like XMPP too ! surprise ..) and the experience to set it up with and authentication system like LDAP is great. I really wished that my organization had a WildFire Server properly maintained and that every user who uses the Knowledge sharing platform (Confluence in my case) used this server for chat purposes. There is some amount of configuration but at the end of the day we get a system that integrates our ideas along with the ones of our customers. Its is some work to have an interface (pretty much like the small pop up chat messages that we see in GMail) work with confluence, but once you have it, software engineering becomes a piece of cake. I have also been using Trillian, Meetro and Exodus (if a jabber fan go through the list of recommended jabber clients ).
• For the concept of getting to host web site from your own system, I thank Apache. They have been pioneers in the field of Open Source and their Tomcat has laid the base of the whole Web Application Server. Apache is just not Tomcat though. Its a whole set of applications and projects that make your life easier as a developer and as a user. I aspire and hopefully will be a part of one of their Open Source initiatives ( may God bless).
• Linux. Though I know a little, it still makes me want to know more. Thats Linux for you. The whole concept of giving the user more data, information and control is what makes Linux kick ass. An of course the user does not get to be a dumb nut head sitting in front of a system that crashes even if a fly sits on top of the monitor( Yeh !! you know whose nuts I am striking !! ). I love linux simply because its like break it or make it. You will learn some thing about this great piece of art if you even try to do one of them.
  
• Stumble Upon has been one of the best things that has happened to me. I suddenly start reading articles, seeing interesting stuff and killing time(in a constructive way). The plug in with FireFox makes things easier. Previously I used to be a regular with Wink but now its all about stumbling now !!
• I have also done some work in PHP and its excellent connection with databases like MySQL. I found php to be very powerful. So powerful that Yahoo! has developed their own PHP that they use in their applications(both internal and external I suppose). Installing something like XAMPP where every thing is set up for you and you just need to code is some thing that is too easy for any developer. I should have mentioned PHP along with Ruby and python but thought of having this separate as this is a whole new area.

What have I not done ? I have not taken part in any Open Source projects and I see that as a disgrace. I have to and will be part of an Open Source project once.

I have had a great life where in I enjoyed more than I studied and there were many people who supported me and made me what I am today (If I am someone at all).

I here by solemnly swear to blog almost frequently so that I could share what I have experienced during these very few years.

Dinesh

Boring

To say the least I consider myself to be a person who like to explore. Being an explorer makes us more open. It gives a feeling that there is more to it than the shell. The urge to find, to know and to conquer makes us excel. I always have thought why those freaks used to jump from high mountains to an underlying pond or why a people would climb a 50 floor building with so much as a rope. Now I tend to understand. It is urge to succeed that makes him do it.

For me pessimism has been the driving factor. People may think otherwise but i tend to differ. When I am pessimistic I excel the most. Expecting nothing from a thing a getting something is always a bonus. We feel that we have done well to gain something even though it is minimal.

I am not a constant blogging sort of a guy. But today I write this because of sheer frustration. I feel i have so much in me and I am not used. Professional attitude is something I feel must be obtained by constant application and hard work and I feel the unavailability of mentoring and challenging atmospheres have done me in.

Sob is the only thing to do and hope for the best( Pessimistically )

Ciao .........

Thamannas wedding gift

Hi guys,

As you all know our dear Thams is to be married on the 5th of August. I
guess a lot of the guys from bangalore are going to attend the wedding and
finish the biriyani !! As a token of love and affection I suppose a gift
from our side is necessary. I was informed by Machan that our seniors had
given a gift certificate worth 10,000/= Rupees to a colleague when she had
wed. This seemed to be a reasonable gift and affordable if every one
contributed a substantial sum. Considering the fact that there are guys who
are not in a situation to pay, it would be great if atleast 20 people could
contribute 500/= rupees each so that the gift certificate could be bought
and given.

This is a mere gift possibility. Please do suggest the viable items that we
could gift our dear classmate. We have to make a decision quick and reply
to this would be very much appreciated. Please contact Machan in case of
clarifications and submissions.

Thanks and Regards,
Dinesh Vasudevan