Latest News from AJAX & RIA Journal

The Cloud Opportunity Window is Now Officially Open

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:15:00 EST

At the Cloud Computing Conference and Expo in Santa Clara, California, the opening keynote session venue was completely filled, with the organizer (SYS-CON Events) obliged to quickly expand the audience into two overflow rooms, in addition to mounting displays in hallways adjacent to the main ballroom. According to the conference organizer more than twice as many have signed up and are attending the conference than planned. And cloud "buzz" is electric within the halls.

Kaazing Appoints Wall St Technology Expert as Director of Technology

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:00:00 EST

Kaazing Corporation, a web infrastructure software company that enables customers to deliver fully interactive web applications with real-time information, today announced the appointment of Frank Greco, as its Director of Technology for the Americas. Mr. Greco will be responsible for understanding customer technology requirements, leveraging his experience as an architect for large-scale enterprise applications deployed by financial services firms.

Beyond Social Business Software

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:30:00 EDT

One of the most hotly debated questions among marketers and company executives is “What does it mean to be a social business?”Today Acquia, Inc., the enterprise guide to the Drupal social publishing system provides the answer and also reveals what Social Business Software vendors aren’t telling you: your investment in Social Business Software is at risk because it is only a one-sided approach to social business. Social publishing is the technology platform for true social businesses.

What Could You Do With Your Code in 20 Lines or Less?

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:12:00 EDT

What could you do with your code in 20 Lines or Less? That's the question I ask (almost) every week for the devcentral community, and every week I go looking to find cool new examples that show just how flexible and powerful iRules can be without getting in over your head.

Well we made it to 30 editions of the 20LoL. Soon we’ll break 100 iRule examples that are under 21 lines of code each. Pretty neat stuff, if you ask me. This week is the hoolio show, it seems. The guy is just a monster in the forums, what can I say? I sure am glad he’s on our side. I’ve got three examples that I randomly pulled from the forums because I thought they were cool. Only later did I realize that he had penned them all. So big thanks yet again to Aaron and all his hard work to better the community.

Pre-loaded searches based on host name

http://devcentral.f5.com/Default.aspx?tabid=53&forumid=5&postid=86016&view=topic

This cool little example is a neat spin on a simple HTTP redirect. The basic idea is to redirect to a given search site and set the search parameter to be the original host name of the request. So I could request bobschickenshack.com and be redirected to a search for bobschickenshack on the search page of my choosing. Very cool idea, and darn easy to implement.

 
 when HTTP_REQUEST { 

    # Rewrite the host header to www.yahoo.com and the
    # uri to /search?q=$host where $host is the originally requested hostname 
    HTTP::header replace "www.yahoo.com" 
    HTTP::uri "/search?q=[HTTP::host]" 
 }

More fun with nested switch

http://devcentral.f5.com/Default.aspx?tabid=53&forumid=5&postid=85807&view=topic

I know we’ve covered switch before, but this is yet another good use of it and I really like the idea of selecting snatpools based on which server the request is going to end up going to. I trimmed this one down a little but only by removing a few of the possible snatpool options, all logic is the same, even though it’s just an excerpt of the overall solution provided.

 when LB_SELECTED { 
    switch [LB::server addr] { 
       222.35.42.126 { 
          switch [IP::client_addr] { 
             192.168.3.11 { snatpool snat_crt_test2 } 
             default { snatpool snat_crt_pool } 
          } 
       } 
       221.218.248.155 { 
          switch [IP::client_addr] { 
             192.168.3.11 { snatpool snat_uni_test2 } 
             default { snatpool snat_uni_pool } 
          } 
       } 
       default { snat automap } 
    } 
 }

Updating referrers

http://devcentral.f5.com/Default.aspx?tabid=53&forumid=5&postid=85807&view=topic

Hoolio does a good job of not only pointing out the inherent problem with trying to replace referrer headers with hostnames from requests, but giving an option that works as desired even if it’s a little bit different direction than the OP was headed. This is a good example of in-line string replacement with string map, too, which is an often under used command that’s worth a look.

 
 when HTTP_REQUEST { 

    log local0. "[IP::client_addr]:[TCP::client_port]: New [HTTP::method] request to [HTTP::host][HTTP::uri]\ 
       with Referer [HTTP::header Referer]" 

    if {[HTTP::header exists "MyHeader"]} {  
       log local0. "[IP::client_addr]:[TCP::client_port]: Updating Referer to\ 
          [string map -nocase {http:// https://} [HTTP::header Referer]" 
       HTTP::header replace Referer "[string map -nocase {http:// https://} [HTTP::header Referer]" 
    } 
 } 
 when HTTP_REQUEST priority 501 { 
    log local0. "[IP::client_addr]:[TCP::client_port] (501): Current Referer [HTTP::header Referer]" 
 }

There you have it, 3 more iRules to show off just how much you can do in only 20 lines of code. Next time we’ll break past the 100 examples mark. See ya then.

Technorati Tags: 20 lines or less,20LoL,DevCentral,F5,iRules,Colin Walker

#Colin

DCGS Worldwide Conference 2009

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:53:00 EDT

Yesterday I was on a Chief Technology Officer (CTO) panel at the 2009 Distributed Common Groundstation (DCGS) conference in Virginia Beach VA. The panel, which was pulled together by JFCOM J2 CTO John Marshall, included Ms. Michele Munson of Aspera, Mr. Lewis Shepherd of Microsoft, Mr. Rudi Ernst of Pixia, Dr. Kari Kelton of NSI [...]

Deskforce Signs Agreement with NZ-based ActionStep

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 11:00:00 EDT

Deskforce has signed an agreement with New Zealand based ActionStep to deliver ActionStep's CRM-based hosted solution to the service provider's 30,000 install base and to target new market sectors, via its established network of Managed Service Providers (MSPs). Deskforce is a provider of SaaS Desktop Management tools to the UK and European markets. ActionStep's hosted CRM solution integrates perfectly with Deskforce's established product portfolio and enhances its strategy to become a leading centre of excellence for SaaS-based applications. With six years' experience in the SaaS space, Deskforce will be launching a number of new solutions in the coming months, to widen and strengthen its service offering.

Selecting Your Data Center - Part 2 – Geography and Location

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:30:00 EDT

Data center selection is an exercise in compromise. Everybody would like to have the best of all worlds, with a highly connected facility offering 24x7 smart hands support, impenetrable security, protection from all natural and man-made disasters, in addition to service level agreements offering 5-Nines power availability at $.03/kW. Not likely we will be able to hit all those desired features in any single facility.

A Bard Approach to Learning Technology

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 04:59:00 EDT

In Shakespeare's 'Twelfth Night', Malvolio receives a letter containing the words: 'Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.' Substitute 'e-learning', in all its forms, for 'greatness' and you have a similarly apt observation on technology-delivered learning. Some organisations take to e-learning as though they were born to it.

Cloud Analytics: Dataflow versus Databases

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:34:00 EDT

As the need for realtime analytics grows we will continue to see a migration away from databases and towards more scalable parallel dataflow architectures for analytics. For twenty years, analytics has been viewed as just one specific area within the broader relational database industry. So, analytics has meant databases. Today that view is changing. Over the past year or so, a new movement, the "NoSQL" movement has emerged promoting the advantages of doing a variety of kinds of analytics without using any relational database technologies at all.

Ralph Folz Joins WordStream Board of Directors

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 18:00:00 EDT

WordStream, Inc., a provider of search marketing tools for continuously optimizing and expanding pay-per-click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) efforts involving large numbers of keywords, announced today that Ralph J. Folz has joined the WordStream Board of Directors. Folz is the Global Chief Operating Officer of Isobar, one of the largest digital marketing agencies in the world with over 3,500 people in 40 different countries. It is part of London-based Aegis Media. Folz also cofounded Molecular, a digital marketing consulting firm that designs and builds sophisticated Internet-based solutions. Folz was responsible for building Boston-based Molecular into one of the most respected digital marketing consulting firms in the United States, leading to its 2005 acquisition by Isobar.

Why Cloud is at the Top of the CIO's Priorities

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:30:00 EDT

In the most difficult economic climate in decades, CIOs are reevaluating their strategies and looking for new ways to reduce data center costs and overhead while improving responsiveness to business requirements. Cloud computing has emerged as a much more agile and efficient approach than what companies have done in the past: adding more compute, storage and networking capacity or trying to get more out of what they already own. Cloud computing did not emerge from a vacuum, but has its origins in three technology "megatrends" that most CIOs are already familiar with. These developments were all born out of the same need -- to drive down costs, simplify data center operations and allow IT to be as agile as possible. As these megatrends have become pervasive, they've helped put the cloud in the CIO's strike zone.

Convio Expands Open Platform

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 11:00:00 EDT

Convio today announced expansion of its Open Platform which is helping nonprofit organizations tap the power of technology and the Internet to better reach, engage and move people to support their cause. The company is introducing Convio Web Services, a new set of standard interfaces for building client applications that retrieve and synchronize data with Convio. The company has also delivered several new APIs and launched a new developer version of its Open website which offers improved documentation as well as access to more than 60 APIs (application programming interfaces) at www.open.convio.com.

Kapow Technologies Earns Accreditation for IBM Information On Demand

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:15:00 EDT

Kapow Technologies, the leader in web data services for business applications, today announced that the Kapow Web Data Server has been tested and validated to work on hardware supported by IBM DB2 data server software and Kapow has been awarded IBM Information On Demand Specialty. This accreditation means lower deployment and data migration costs for customers using Kapow to create best-in-class web data services built on IBM Information Management software. To demonstrate this, Kapow will debut a mashup application built on IBM Lotus Mashups for attendees at the IBM Information On Demand Conference being held from Oct. 25th - 29th at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Convention Center in Las Vegas.

Moyea DVD4Web Converter V2.0 Converts DVD to FLV Fast and Synchronously with Watermarks

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 02:16:00 EDT

In order to be faster, stronger and accurater, new Moyea DVD4Web Converter V2.0 comes out with fast conversion speed, user-customized watermarks and stable, synchronous conversion process. Shenzhen P.R.C – Oct, 26th, 2009 - Moyea Software Co., Ltd. (http://www.moyeamedia.com): a rising developer of flash applications for the internet and multimedia software, today officially debuts the newest V2.0 [...]

Mojarra 2.0.1 Has Shipped

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 02:27:00 EDT

Just a short post to note that we've now shipped Mojarra 2.0.1. This version fixes a very serious bug when running on Tomcat. You can pick up the files from the usual places, see the release notes for more information. If you're using GlassFish, and already running 2.0.0 (you leading edge adopter!), there's probably no reason to upgrade - though the new v3 (b69) has the updated jar, and it will be propagated via the usual Update Center distribution.

Rhomobile to Announce Production Release of RhoHub at 4th Cloud Expo

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 08:45:00 EDT

SYS-CON Events announced today that Rhomobile, Inc., the makers of the Rhodes smartphone development framework, will be Exhibiting at the 4th International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo, taking place November 2-4, 2009 at the Santa Clara Convention Center, Santa Clara, CA. At the event, Rhomobile will be announcing the Production Release of RhoHub, the world’s first development-as-a-service offering for the mobile industry. RhoHub provides a web-based service for both smartphone app development and hosting of mobile applications, making native mobile applications easier to build, deploy and run on all smartphones including BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Android, Symbian and iPhone. RhoHub allows developers to generate, compile and run smartphone applications through the web giving them flexibility in their build environment. No SDK (Software Developer Kit) is required, making the build process faster and more affordable. Developers can write code online from the RhoHub website anywhere.

Life with Qlogic’s 5802V

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:03:00 EDT

If you follow me on Twitter at all, you’ll know that I’m a big fan of Qlogic. I appreciate the functional simplicity of what Qlogic designs encompass as well as the “get business done” attitude that they bring to their switches, HBAs, NICs, and CNAs. Imagine my happiness, then, when I got ahold of one of their latest “edge” fibre channel switches, the SANbox 5802V. The SANbox 5802V follows the typical edge-switch formula: 20 SFP ports for either 4Gb/s SFPs or 8Gb/s SFP+, 4 stacking ports that default at 10Gb/s Fibre Channel connection and can be upgraded to 20Gb/s FC when additional bandwidth is needed, a serial and IP-based management port setup, and dual redundant power supplies (the 5802V ships with 2 PSUs; the 5800V model ships with only 1).

Adobe May Cooperate with Apple to Transplant Flash Player to iPhone

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 22:51:00 EDT

According to the CEO of Adobe America, Adobe company is planning to transplant its flash player to iPhone. Adobe CEO indicated that Adobe may cooperate with Apple to ensure the smooth flash player application on iPhone in Adobe company’s first quarter performance conference early this week. These comments were made when he was asking about the [...]

Russia Hates Apple Big Time

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 22:50:00 EDT

I never liked online forums where comments to the original posts could be rated (+ or - 1) by other readers. But today, I changed my mind. These negative ratings can tell you a lot. There is a Web site www.habrahabr.ru popular among software developers in Russia. Today, someone posted an information about newly released hardware by Apple. You'd say, "No biggies. Apple has a steady and growing group of followers and often releases well designed hardware"

LTE vs. WiMAX. Duel to the Death or Different Strokes for Different Purposes?

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:13:00 EDT

The truth is, 4G wireless technology evolution isn't a "Betamax vs VHS" winner-take-all competition. In fact, it's not, properly speaking, a competition at all. It's an engineering question. And like all engineering questions, choosing technology depends on not just on technical factors. A simplistic answer is that WiMAX is from Mars - data - and LTE is from Venus - voice. And just as both Mars and Venus have their essential place in the scheme of things, so LTE and WiMAX, too, have their respective places in meeting business goals - from profitability and customer retention, to business expansion and changing market demands.

CEO Claims Green IT Benefits Must Make it the Norm, Not a Trend

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 12:31:00 EDT

Navot Peled, CEO of Gizmox, challenged the “Green IT trend” with the announcement this week that its product, Visual WebGui, has been successfully providing energy and environmental benefits to enterprises, with its solutions that dually cut costs for hardware and software.

Brocade For Sale: WSJ

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 17:56:00 EDT

Much, much smaller Cisco rival Brocade Communications Systems, which has gotten a lot more popular with OEMs like IBM and Dell since Cisco went into the server business, is supposedly thinking selling itself off, or so said an unconfirmed piece in the Wall Street Journal Monday. The paper claims HP and maybe Oracle (think Sun) are interested but that nothing is imminent and in fact nothing may ultimately come of the notion.

Positive Word of Mouth and Your Brand, Part 5

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 14:00:00 EDT

This is part five of a five part series of the importance of personal branding in garnering positive word of mouth. In our hyper-connected society, word of mouth has become “world of mouth” and recommendations truly craft your online and...

Cloud Security on Ulitzer: Cloud Computing and Self-Service Security

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 14:30:00 EDT

So here’s the rub, if MSSP’s/ISP’s/ASP’s-cum-Cloud operators want to woo mature enterprise customers to use their services, they are leaving money on the table and not fulfilling customer needs by failing to roll out complimentary security capabilities which lessen the compliance and security burdens of their prospective customers. While many provide commoditized solutions such as anti-spam and anti-virus capabilities, more complex (but profoundly important) security services such as DLP (data loss/leakage prevention,) WAF, Intrusion Detection and Prevention (IDP,) XML Security, Application Delivery Controllers, VPN’s, etc. should also be considered for roadmaps by these suppliers.

SOA and Cloud Computing Funding Dilemma

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:04:00 EDT

Lately, and primarily among government users, I’ve been hearing about a potential clash of bureaucracy meets technology when it comes to funding shared services. It seems that the current government procurement and funding processes do not favor strategic sharing of software services as an outgrowth of a single development effort. I imagine that this issue might also arise in some large organizations where the business units are funding development using a self-funded IT organization, but I have yet to hear any specific stories coming from the private sector regarding this issue.

Mixing Ajax and Full Requests in JSF 2.0

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 13:30:00 EDT

JSF 2.0 makes ajax pretty easy - but it can't hide everything from you... It's tempting to just add a few ajax tags into your page, and not worry too much about interactions - here's one example of a problem you may run into.

Social Networking Is It For You?

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 08:59:00 EDT

When I mention social networking to driving instructors, most people immediately think of websites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Bebo etc which let people create friend lists, send messages and photos to each other, design their own pages, share music, blog, join groups and networks with other like-minded people and just generally keep in touch with those friends, family and work associates they consider to be closest to them. Images of business opportunities rarely spring to mind, yet many large companies have realised that it's not all about digging, super-poking and playing the world at poker or scrabble, and actually use these social networks and groups to the benefit of their business. The likes of Cadburys promoted their chocolate by creating, submitting and spreading their popular ‘gorilla playing drums' advert for FREE on sites like Facebook and YouTube through the use of viral marketing. YouTube has played the advert 3.4 million times with Facebook and MySpace posting the advert millions of times.

Six Secrets to Creating a Positively Remarkable Brand Name

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 22:10:00 EDT

A Great Product with a Terrible Name Will Sink. A Great Product with Terrific Name Will Soar. Think Google. Think Bing. Think Kleenex. Think Nike. But most of all think carefully before you attach that all-important brand name to your shiny new product. That’s the essential advice from Caitlin Randolph of BrandBucket.com in this guest post. BrandBucket teaches companies how to build new brands with a bang by choosing just the right name. 6 Keys to Turning a Terrific Idea into a Successful Product by Leveraging Just the Right Brand Name. For many start ups, naming a new business or product is even harder than coming up with the perfect name for your firstborn child. By the time your idea is ready to become a product you may find yourself in desperate need of a great brand name. But you may also find yourself a bit too close to your baby to give it the perfect brand name. We know how hard and how important it is to develop that name so let us shine some new light on the naming of your future brand.

Belgium ReMix and Architect Forum: 10 Years of Framework Design Guidelines

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 12:00:00 EDT

I had a great time at ReMix and the Architect Forum in Belgium. I had a chance to cover build an application end-to-end with Silverlight 3 and RIA Services which was basically this application. At the Architect Forum I had a chance to talk in more depth about the general application pattern we are thinking about for RIA applications. I shamelessly stole some slides from Nikhil Kothari for this one. Check out the slides.

ZK 5 RC Released

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 12:00:00 EDT

Since 2005 ZK has been renowned for its' server-centric approach, providing the ultimate in productivity gains. In addition, developers can now optionally leverage the full controllability of client-side programming. It is not about server-centric or client-centric, it is about developer-centric!

AJAX Tag Events and Listeners

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 16:08:00 EDT

Today we're going to talk about two features of JSF 2.0's f:ajax tag: the event attribute and the listener attribute.

The use of both of these is really, really simple - so I'll just briefly cover the basics, and then launch directly into the sample code.

The "event" attribute of the ajax tag indicates which event to use to trigger the ajax request. There are any number of possible events allowed: You can use the standard browser DOM events (like click, change, keyup, etc. You can also use two special event values - action and valueChange. These two special values correspond to the same events that happen on the server side in JSF. On the client side, action is typically mapped to click, while valueChange is mapped to change or click, depending on the component.

The "listener" attribute of an ajax tag is a method that is called on the server side every time the ajax function happens on the client side. For instance, you could use this attribute to specify a server side function to call every time the user pressed a key - Handy, eh?

Anyhow, without further ado, let's see how this works in a page. We're going to detect every time the user lifts a key (the keyup event) - when that happens, we'll run an ajax command which updates a counter, and refreshes an output field.

Here's the using page:

   1 <?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8' ?> 
   2 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
   3 <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
   4       xmlns:h="http://java.sun.com/jsf/html"
   5       xmlns:f="http://java.sun.com/jsf/core">
   6 
   7     <h:head><title>Ajax Tag Event and Listener Demo</title></h:head>
   8     <h:body>
   9         <h:form id="form">
  10             <br/>
  11             Echo test: <h:outputText id="out" value="#{listenBean.hello}"/>
  12             <br/>
  13             String Length: <h:outputText id="count" value="#{listenBean.length}"/>
  14             <br/>
  15             <h:inputText id="in" value="#{listenBean.hello}" autocomplete="off">
  16                 <f:ajax event="keyup" render="out count eventcount" listener="#{listenBean.update}"/>
  17             </h:inputText>
  18             <br/>
  19             Event count: <h:outputText id="eventcount" value="#{listenBean.eventCount}"/>
  20         </h:form>
  21 
  22     </h:body>
  23 </html>

As I said, we tag the inputText (line 15) with an ajax tag (line 16). That ajax tag listens for the keyup event - when such an event occurs, we send an ajax request to the server. That ajax request will run a listener method (listenBean.update), apply the new string value from the inputText (listenBean.hello), and then render out (line 11), count (line 13), and eventcount (line 19).

The bean itself is nothing special: here's the example below:

   1 import javax.faces.bean.ManagedBean;
   2 import javax.faces.bean.ViewScoped;
   3 import javax.faces.event.AjaxBehaviorEvent;
   4 
   5 @ManagedBean(name="listenBean")
   6 @ViewScoped
   7 public class ListenBean {
   8 
   9     private String hello = "Hello";
  10 
  11     private int length = hello.length();
  12 
  13     private int eventCount = 0;
  14 
  15     public String getHello() {
  16         return hello;
  17     }
  18 
  19     public void setHello(String hello) {
  20         this.hello = hello;
  21     }
  22 
  23     public int getLength() {
  24         return length;
  25     }
  26 
  27     public int getEventCount() {
  28         return eventCount;
  29     }
  30 
  31     public void update(AjaxBehaviorEvent event) {
  32         length = hello.length();
  33         eventCount++;
  34     }
  35 }

So - questions? Ask below.

MLB.com: Ignoring Requests for Removal from Email List

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 16:45:00 EDT

A few months ago I purchased Giants tickets through MLB.com to take my mom, nephew and boyfriend to a game. It was the first time I’d personally purchased tickets to a Giants game, so understandable that I would now be on their email list. Right away I started receiving emails from MLB.com. I like baseball, but not enough to want emails about it, so I scrolled to the bottom of the email and clicked to unsubscribe. A confirmation page came up confirming that I had indeed unsubscribed. But apparently, it didn’t take on their end.

News Is a River Is a Blog

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 12:21:00 EDT

WLEX-TV in Lexington, Kentucky, an NBC affiliate, has turned its news site into a blog. It actually contains news produced independently of what goes out on broadcast. Very very interesting. It’s a different way of slicing the news, with much debt to Dave Winer’s river of news idea, and it’ll be fascinating to see how and in what ways it’s useful and how it changes our idea of what news should be.

WebSphere CloudBurst in Test Organizations

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 07:15:00 EDT

The WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance can bring speed and agility to test organizations by drastically increasing the pace and ease with which users interact with WebSphere Application Server environments. I recently got a chance to catch up with IBM's Robbie Minshall. Robbie is a WebSphere Test Architect, and he is responsible for a team of testers that harness a lab of over 2,000 physical machines to put our WebSphere Application Server product through some pretty rigorous testing. Toward the beginning of 2009 Robbie’s team started to leverage the WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance in order to create the WebSphere Application Server environments needed for their testing.

Young Entrepreneur Strikes It Rich

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 03:05:00 EDT

In 2005, young Aaron Patzer grew frustrated with the Intuit-owned Quicken financial software he used to track his spending. He believed it was not user-friendly enough and decided to create a better version. In four short years, Patzer's Mint.com grew to be the leading free, online money management software in the U.S. In a twist of sweet irony, last week Intuit signed a definitive agreement to acquire Mint.com for $170 million. The transaction is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2009.

Mobile Devices: Authenticate or Encrypt?

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 19:15:00 EDT

I was already thinking about the insecurity of cell phone communications because Molly Dolesalek reported on them in Processor Magazine. "It's fairly easy to tap into a cell phone conversation, but the business world doesn't really understand that," Dunleavy says. For that reason, he believes that there will be more interest in voice encryption, including VoIP encryption," she wrote, quoting Mike Dunleavy, president of Diginonymous.

Should Our Business Tweet in the Cloud?

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 10:24:00 EDT

Your company’s online popularity, reputation and ultimately success is derived from two core things – what you say, and what others say about you. Let’s address these communication elements as “attributed source information” (ASI). “Attributed” from the perspective that there is in fact a known source (though it may be an anonymous ID), “source” from the perspective that it’s the very first sincere representation of the communication or concept actually published online, and “information” in that it’s not just some data or graphic fragments, it’s actually a message or concept with enough context to drive interest.

WebGL Is Now in FireFox Nightly Builds

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 14:21:37 EDT

Last week I wrote about WebKit including WebGL as part of the development code base. Today, FireFox code base also contains WebGL. WebGL is a technology that allows you to build 3D environments within the CANVAS element. How cool is that? Having a working code base is the first step towards the technology becoming part of the released code. For the record, WebKit is the foundation for Apple's Safari (both desktop and mobile), Google's Chrome and Android browsers and the Pam Pre WebOS.

Tagging Is Not Augmented Reality

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 07:45:00 EDT

Interesting post from Joe Wilcox on betanews that discusses tagging as a form of augmented reality (AR) and suggests that tagging could cut into Google's search business on mobiles. I have a few comments on this.

HanselMinutes Interview on RIA Services

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 12:18:00 EDT

I had a great opportunity to chat with the famous Scott Hanselman recently on .NET RIA Services. We drilled a lot into the background for RIA Services and what the high level patterns we are addressing with RIA Services.

Bruce Chizen Joins Voyager Capital as Venture Partner

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 22:15:00 EDT

Well-known as CEO of Adobe Systems, Chizen transformed the company into one of the world's largest and most diversified software companies in terms of revenue, global reach and breadth of products. During his tenure, Chizen tripled revenue and transformed a company known mainly for its popular design products into one of the most significant forces in the software industry. Chizen also led the company's expansion into new markets, including the enterprise, knowledge worker and consumer.

Adobe to Acquire Omniture

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:05:00 EDT

The combination of the two companies will increase the value Adobe delivers to customers. For designers, developers and online marketers, an integrated workflow — with optimization capabilities embedded in the creation tools — will streamline the creation and delivery of relevant content and applications. This optimization will enable advertisers, advertising agencies, publishers and e-tailers to achieve greater ROI from their digital media investments and improve their end users’ experiences.

i-Meet Announces Social Media Supplier Listings

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 07:15:00 EDT

i-Meet (www.i-meet.com), the professional and social network for people who plan meetings and events, announced today a new future approach to supplier listings that features social media and web 2.0 features. Interactive 2.0 Listings are available to reserve now, and will be released to the i-Meet community before the end of the year. Jennifer Long, Director of E-commerce at Millennium Hotels and Resorts North America, endorsed the new concept: "i-Meet has advanced the value of supplier listings by bringing them into the world of social media interactivity. Opening up a dialogue online allows relationships to build in a more dynamic environment. We like the fact that our listings can engage prospects and customers, and we're excited about the ability to re-purpose with other social media messaging that we already produce."

Adding Rounded Corners to HTML with CSS

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 10:30:00 EDT

Cascading Styles Sheets 3, or CSS3, comes packed with a number of great new features. In this article you will learn how to use CSS to created rounded corners to rectangles without having to use a complex image cheat.

Bridging to Open Ajax

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 12:45:00 EDT

The Open Ajax Alliance is a standards organization with the mission of ensuring interoperability within Web based Ajaxified applications. One of their standards relates to intercomponent communication - the ability to subscribe and publish messages which can then be picked up by code written by other authors. Please note that if you don't have an interest in Open Ajax, this post may not be especially illuminating - I've talked about the addOnEvent function before, even recently.

Busy Status Indicator with JSF 2

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 06:00:00 EDT

I've had a few requests on how to write a busy status indicator - you know, the little spinning ball that's there while an Ajax call is active, and which goes away once the request is complete. So, I spent about two hours today, and did just that - including putting it into a component so it's reusable. As usual, it involved no Java, and only a minimal amount of JavaScript.

First, I needed an animated gif for a spinning image - there were a number at http://mentalized.net/activity-indicators - I just picked one. They're all in the public domain, and there are other sites which offer similar animated gif spinners.

After that, I tried to imagine what it would look like in the using page. Something like this seemed appropriate:

   1 <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
   2       xmlns:ui="http://java.sun.com/jsf/facelets"
   3       xmlns:h="http://java.sun.com/jsf/html"
   4       xmlns:f="http://java.sun.com/jsf/core"
   5       xmlns:ez="http://java.sun.com/jsf/composite/busystatus">
   6 <h:head>
   7     <title>Busy Busy</title>
   8 </h:head>
   9 <h:body>
  10     <h:form id="busyForm">
  11         <h:inputText id="in" value="#{string.string}">
  12             <f:ajax render="out"/>
  13         </h:inputText><ez:busystatus id="busy" for="busyForm:in" /><br/>
  14         <h:outputText id="out" value="#{string.string}"/><br/>
  15         <h:commandButton type="button" value="Click Me"/>
  16     </h:form>
  17 </h:body>
  18 </html>

On line 13, you see a component, busystatus, with a single attribute, "for", which is pointing at the rendered ID of the component I want to monitor. Otherwise, it's a straightforward JSF Ajax app - Ajaxify the "in" component, write to the the "out" component. I had to use the rendered ID (busyForm:in) rather than the JSF id (in), because there was no easy way to do ID resolution inside the component, but we've had to deal with that often enough at this point that the difference shouldn't be too confusing.

We'll also have make sure that the Ajax request lasts long enough to visibly trigger the indicator - that's as simple as adding a Thread.sleep(2000); to the setString method of the bean referenced by #{string}.

With that out of the way, let's write the component. Here's the composite component implementation section (the interface section just refers to the "for" attribute, so there's nothing to see there):

   1 <h:outputScript name="jsf.js" library="javax.faces" target="head"/>
   2 <h:outputScript name="busystatus/busystatus.js" target="head"/>
   3 <script type="text/javascript">
   4     busystatusdemo.init("#{cc.clientId}", "#{cc.attrs.for}");
   5 </script>
   6 <span id="#{cc.clientId}" style="display:none;">
   7    <h:graphicImage id="busyindicator" height="15" width="15" name="busystatus/spinner3-greenie.gif"/>
   8 </span>

Line 1 loads the jsf.js library, if necessary. We'll need it in the next file for listening to events - note that it'll get loaded anyway, from any f:ajax tag we use, but it's good practice to make sure that it's loaded before we try to reference it. Line 2 will load the JavaScript we've written for this component. We could have just put the script inline in the composite component itself, but then we'd bloat the size of the page unnecessarily if we used this component more than once in the page. What works best for performance is going to vary on case by case basis, but since we're trying to create a generally reusable component, this is probably the best way to do it. Lines 3 thru 5 call the init function for this component, which we'll use to associate the component ID with the for attribute: this is the same trick we use for almost every Ajax component on this blog, so again, this shouldn't be surprising. Lines 6 thru 8 define a span wrapping an image. The span is initially set to be invisible with a style attribute, and we'll make it visible via JavaScript calls once the ajax request is active. The image itself is loading the spinning animated gif as a resource - and it's in the same resource library as the component itself.

So, to recap what's happening in this file: We load the required scripts, run an initialization function, and set up an invisible span holding the image we'll display later. Now, let's examine the last file for this component, the busystatus.js file that holds the functions that'll be doing all the work on the page:

   1 if (!window["busystatusdemo"]) {
   2     var busystatusdemo = {};
   3 }
   4 busystatusdemo.onStatusChange = function onStatusChange(data) {
   5     var status = data.status;
   6     var componentID = busystatusdemo[data.source.id];
   7     if (!componentID) {  // if there's no request to listen for this one component, then leave
   8         return;
   9     }
  10     var element = document.getElementById(componentID);
  11     if (status === "begin") { // turn on busy indicator
  12         element.style.display = "inline";
  13     } else {  // turn off busy indicator, on either "complete" or "success"
  14         element.style.display = "none";
  15     }
  16 };
  17 
  18 jsf.ajax.addOnEvent(busystatusdemo.onStatusChange);
  19 
  20 busystatusdemo.init =  function init(componentID, forValue) {
  21     busystatusdemo[forValue] = componentID;
  22 };

Three sections here: Lines 1 thru 3 set up the namespace. Lines 20 thru 22 are the initialization function that creates a map between the component and the for attribute. Let's go over lines 4 thru 18, though, since that's doing the interesting bit...

On line 18, we're adding an event listener - after this call, whenever an event occurs, the onStatusChange function will be called with a single parameter. When that function is called, on lines 6 thru 10, we retrieve the id of the component that generated the event, and use it to look up the associated "for" value, and exit the function if there's no associated "for" value. Then, lines 11 thru 15, we check whether we're beginning the Ajax call, or ending it. If beginning, we display the gif - if ending, we hide the gif.

So, that's our very simple busy component. But please note that this isn't really done. For instance, by revealing and hiding the gif, we're actually altering the layout of the page - there's traditionally two different ways to deal with this: you can either swap between the animated gif and a blank, transparent gif of the same size, or use CSS to hardcode in the size of a span, which wraps the component that's having it's display set to none. Either would work, and both are really out of scope for this blog - my only goal for this blog was to just show you how to use the event to trigger changes that updated a status indicator.

As usual, you can find the code for this blog in the Project Mojarra codebase, under the jsf-demo/ajax-components directory.

Questions? Please ask in the comments section, and I'll do my best to answer them.

Inline Scripts with Mojarra

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 07:15:00 EDT

A few weeks ago, I blogged about ways to execute scripts on the client which you were writing out from the server via Ajax. By popular demand, the latest build of Mojarra now allows execution of inline scripts.

So, instead of having to either bundle code into an <eval> tag, or using an event to execute it later, you can now simply say something like:

right inside the rendered html.

You can also say something like:

And the script will be loaded as well.

This feature will (probably) be the next revision of the specification, but you should be able to use this feature without fear of compatability issues going forward - the specifcation's Expert Group has already expressed their approval of including this.

Computers Are Just Tools; Computer Science Is About People

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 04:00:00 EDT

In some sense computer science is like geometry. When the art of measuring crop fields was under development by the ancient Mediterranean’s it was most naturally coined geometry – literally meaning measurement of the Earth. Geometry was slowly developed by many scholars to solve a wide range of practical applications. This includes, but is certainly not limited to, forecasting expected crop yields, division of land into parcels, and even to build some of the Seven Wonders of the World as present in classical antiquity.

Enterprise JavaFX

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 13:45:00 EDT

This article is also posted on JavaLobby.com This is a guest post by Anton Polyakov. Anton is Senior Developer at Exadel, he describes our experience building a JavaFX front end for a Seam booking application. JavaFX is new tool set for developing and delivering Rich Internet Applications or RIAs. JavaFX 1.0 was released in December [...]

SQL Anywhere Server and AJAX

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 09:45:00 EDT

AJAX has dominated the web space so extensively that it needs no introduction. Connecting to a server via XMLHttpRequest and making a partial page refresh is what makes this technique so attractive. However, use of these AJAX requests, although very attractive, can pose dangers as well. JavaScript acts as a vector to infect websites with worms, such as SAMY, using cross-site scripting, also known as CSS or XSS.