Firebug version 1.3 have just been released with more than 50 bug fixes and lots of improvements and new features including :

• FBTrace service (for internal Firebug debugging).
• TraceConsole (for internal Firebug debugging)
• Script panel implemented with as viewport on source to improve performance on large JS files
• Find debuggers by scope chain analysis rather than jsContext
• scope chain shows in watches panel (from contribution by kpdecker)
• Reimplement console/command line to reduce chance of console undefined
• DOM properties alphabetical
• Reimplement all response views with nsITraceableChannel
• Centralize handlers for http-on-modify-request in firebug-http-observer component
• Net panel timing improvements: more categories in timing.
• Add TraceConsole to aid debugging Firebug.
• FBTrace panel removed from X versions (TraceConsole instead)
• new option DBG_SPY for spy.js
• firebug-service tracing to traceConsole

Rob Campbell posted on his blog that

this version will not be compatible with Firefox 3.1 (Shiretoko) and up. For that you’ll need a Firebug 1.4 alpha, soon to be dubbed beta available on getfirebug.com's releases directory

Published at AJAX Magazine

To welcome the new year, I wanted to share with you something I don't know if I can call it a book, or an interactive book, or a book 2.0 ?! It's a brain friendly guide titled "Head first Ajax". Written by Rebecca M. Riordan and published by O'Reilly (September 2, 2008), Head first Ajax is definitely an amazing new Ajax learning experience written in "Head-First" style in a very clear visual format. In about 500 pages, 12 chapters and 2 appendixes, the author covered all the necessary to master Ajax web application development starting from XHTML, CSS, DOM, JavaScript, then to more detailed components Json, XMLHttpRequest, using different techniques JS frameworks, forms validations ... etc.

The book is interesting for beginners, intermediate and even Ajax Experts to refresh their knowledge understanding of different Ajax concepts, or simply to learn about a new visual learning experience. After understanding the basics of Ajax, the book start with an introduction into designing Ajax applications with a registration page sample. Then JavaScript Events and Multiple Events Handler, to fully understand interaction between user and page and get full control on user actions.

In chapter five the author introduced asynchronous applications, and test it with the user registration page. This evoke working on different issues such usability, Asynchronous Vs synchronous, multi-threading ... etc. Then in chapter six you will learn how to play puzzle but with DOM ! A good understanding of DOM and how to manipulate different objects in the page is important to create good Ajax-based web interfaces. The concept is very well illustrated, that your kids might easily use it to learn DOM. Chapter seven goes more deeply into DOM manipulation and how to add an element, substitute a node for another, remove a node ...

Published at AJAX Magazine

I just wanted to profit from Google new year Doodle to wish happy new year to all Googling Magazine readers and PHP Magazine readers ! During more than three years I - and many others contributors - really enjoyed sharing ideas and thoughts with all of you. Thanks for your support and hope you will enjoy even more reading us in 2009.

Published at Googling Magazine

This week we have two new books to review, the first from Packt Publishing titled PHP web 2.0 Mashup projects and written by Shu-Wai Chow. The book is just 6 chapters and 283 pages, and include an introductin to create practical mashups in PHP. If you are new to web 2.0 and mashups, you will learn how to grab and mix data from different sources such Google maps, Flickr, Amazon, Youtube, MSN search, Yahoo!, Last.fm, and 411Sync.com.

You will get more familiar with web services and APIs such AWS, Internet UPC database, Microsoft Live Search API, Yahoo! Web API, ... A new experience to gain a thorough understanding of mashup fundamentals. The only problem is that API are frequently updated so you could be surprised to see your code not working anymore. Try to stay updated with the original documentation for each API you use.

The second title for this week is a framework that started gaining in importance from python users in the last two years : django. The definitive guide to Django, web development done right, is a book published by Apress and written by Adrian Holovaty and Jacob Kaplan-Moss. In about 450 pages and 20 chapters, the book aim to be your reference for the Django Framework and provide answers for advanced topics. This book is also available online for free at http://www.djangobook.com/.

The book cover almost all the necessary that you need from getting started to deploying your django project on server, you can easily become a django expert and be able to use this great framework on your web 2.0 projects.

Next week we'll have a very special book for Ajax magazine readers. Stay tuned !

Published at AJAX Magazine

Holidays already here, so are you ready to celebrate ? Like every year, google celebrate it with a serie of Doodles, numbered 15. As usual we will keep this post updated everyday with the new doodle as it will be available.

Published at Googling Magazine

OpenXava 3.1 is a framework to develop AJAX Java Enterprise applications in a different way: OpenXava avoids MVC. You provide only simple Java classes annotated with JPA and you obtain an application ready for production.

With OpenXava, you only need to write your model, POJOs and Java 5 annotations. You do not need to write the view, and the controller (for CRUD, printing, etc) is reused. And from that you'll have an application for CRUD, report generation in PDF, export to Excel, searching, sorting, validations etc. You only need to write a simple Java class, no XMLs, no JSPs and no code generation.

The main new feature of 3.1 is that generates AJAX appplications, in this way if you update to OX3.1, your OX (3.x, 2.x, or 1.x) applications will be AJAX without touching a single line of code. In the other hand, if you application is not OX but you use JPA entities, you can move your JPA code to an OpenXava application and obtain an AJAX portal application easily.

Published at AJAX Magazine

Alexandre Plennevaux pointed us to a jQuery-based online portfolio of the the photographer Lisa Pram. The interface is a specific design approach to online image galleries aiming to produce an integrated graphical product based on the work itself. The result of this search is an "interactive barcode", generating a unique representation of Lisa Pram’s work in a non-metaphorical manner, through indexing of her image sets according to four main keywords, which stand for the main areas of her work - Professional, Experimental , Advertising and Editorial.

Clicking on each of them allows the visitor to filter through her image galleries. Each gallery is represented by a line which thickness reflects the number of images it contains - 1 image is 1 pixel width. This simple principle leads to the barcode representation. Clicking each of these lines unfolds its pictures in a continuous strip inside the barcode, thus introducing the user into the colors and contrasts of her work.

Finally, an additional navigation system is laid out underneath the barcode, to ensure that this interface website, although experimental, achieves a good level of usability. The interface was entirely done with progressive enhancement in mind. No Flash plugin was hurt in the making of this website, thanks to the outstanding jQuery javascript library.

Published at AJAX Magazine

I noticed recently at BrainBrench a free certification about Ajax. I decided to pass it this week and got 3.95/5, even that I missed to answer many questions while on phone, or talking with people in my office - I Scored higher than 96% of all previous test takers, which is great, but weak in security and communication, while it's more my Strengths points. Anyway, that's what this certification is all about, a series of 40 questions that you have to answer, and you have 3 minutes for each question. Most important that you have to prepare yourself seriously to get a higher score.

First is it interesting to have an Ajax certification in your CV ? Or a more general JavaScript certification ? I personally passed the certification and I don't think that according to the questions that I have answered, I am qualified to create Ajax enabled web applications. The certification mean that you have the necessary knowledge to create Ajax applications, so it could be good only if you add to your CV some Ajax projects that you have already created. From the website description :

The AJAX test measures knowledge and skills needed to develop web pages using AJAX. Designed for use by web developers, programmers and other IT professionals for whom this knowledge is necessary to perform their job.

Brainbench is ISO 9001-2000, so even if it's free, I think the certification will have a good value in your CV - for Ajax developers. The same for employers looking for Ajax professionals, a certification will have an additional value to find qualified people for their companies.

Published at AJAX Magazine

As a DBA, I have been asked many times to provide an ER diagram for an application schema. There are many tools that can do the job, mostly expensive CASE tools which have reverse engineering capabilities. There are also some rather exotic freeware tools which are largely unsupported and difficult to find.

Fortunately, there is a software tool ideal for drawing ER diagrams, called GraphViz. GraphViz is a general tool for drawing all kinds of graphs. It was created by AT&T Research specifically for graph drawing and it uses so called "dot" language. The tool itself is available on the following web page: http://graphviz.org

The tool uses rather simple language called "dot", which would not be a problem to generate by PHP but the task can be simplified even further. It turns out that PHP Extension and Application Repository, known as "PEAR" contains a package with PHP bindings for GraphViz. The home page for this package is http://pear.php.net/package/Image_GraphViz. In order to use GraphViz, one has to install the GraphViz package, highly portable and available for many platforms, both MS Windows and Linux, among others. Installing the PHP bindings for GraphViz with PEAR installer is also a breeze:

#> pear install Image_GraphViz 
downloading Image_GraphViz-1.2.1.tar ... 
Starting to download Image_GraphViz-1.2.1.tar (Unknown size) 
........done: 23,040 bytes 
install ok: channel://pear.php.net/Image_GraphViz-1.2.1 
#> 

Now, let's see the basic elements of the "dot" language:

Published at Oracle PHP Magazine

Provides Unprecedented Combination of PHP, Ajax and Cloud Development Features

Aptana, Inc. today announced the long anticipated 1.0 version of Aptana PHP, an open source, integrated development environment (IDE) for PHP application development. Aptana PHP extends Aptana Studio, the popular Eclipse-based IDE for Ajax and Web development that is on track to exceed 2.8 million downloads before year-end. Combined, Aptana PHP and Aptana Studio provide unprecedented ease for developing, deploying and maintaining Ajax and PHP applications.

Aptana PHP features the core things one would expect from an integrated development environment, but does more for novice, intermediate and expert PHP developers alike. Code assist and instant syntax checking features simultaneously support PHP, Ajax libraries, JavaScript, HTML, and CSS so that you can code faster with fewer errors. Use the internal PHP server that's part of the Aptana PHP installation, or another PHP server of your choice to preview your PHP pages in any of the multiple Web browsers built right into Aptana Studio. Save significant time through automated PHP code and PHPDoc generation features. Refine your code quickly via integrated PHP debugging and refactoring tools.

Published at AJAX Magazine

Very busy week at php.net, and very busy gift-season also ! PHP 5.2.8 have been officially released fixing a major security bug in 5.2.7 - a bug-fix version that was released two days before. So in addition to the ini bug fixed, you will get around 120 bug-fixes from the 5.2.7

The PHP development team would like to announce the immediate availability of PHP 5.2.8. This release addresses a regression introduced by 5.2.7 inregard to the magic_quotes functionality, that was broken by an incorrect fix to the filter extension. All users who have upgraded to 5.2.7 are encouraged to upgrade to this release, alternatively you can apply a work-around for the bug by changing "filter.default_flags=0" in php.ini.

Note that 5.2.7 is no longer available. Security enhancements and fixes in PHP 5.2.7 include :

• Upgraded PCRE to version 7.8 (Fixes CVE-2008-2371)
• Fixed missing initialization of BG(page_uid) and BG(page_gid), reported by Maksymilian Arciemowicz.
• Fixed incorrect php_value order for Apache configuration, reported by Maksymilian Arciemowicz.
• Fixed a crash inside gd with invalid fonts (Fixes CVE-2008-3658).
• Fixed a possible overflow inside memnstr (Fixes CVE-2008-3659).
• Fixed security issues detailed in CVE-2008-2665 and CVE-2008-2666.
• Fixed bug #45151 (Crash with URI/file..php (filename contains 2 dots)).(Fixes CVE-2008-3660)
• Fixed bug #42862 (IMAP toolkit crash: rfc822.c legacy routine buffer overflow). (Fixes CVE-2008-2829)
• Fixed extraction of zip files and directories with crafted entries, reported by Stefan Esser.

Download current PHP 5 Stable 5.2.8

Published at PHP5 Magazine

This is a firefox plugin that I was looking for since long time, you will probably say why we need activeX with Firefox ? But some Intranet application require some functionnalities that are already available as ActiveX. I had a ActiveX twain solution that I wanted to run on firefox, so finally I think this could be done using ff-activex-host.

The extension is developed by Leeor Aharon, IT Structures Ltd, makes possible to use ActiveX controls in Firefox and provides full access to the hosted control (events, functions, properties) based on the Gecko NPAPI. Concerning security :

The plugin has some security related features to limit the risk it might pose to users by making ActiveX controls available in Firefox. First of all, it is using a special MIME Type so that it won't get triggered by sites that were not specifically designed for it. Additionally, it supports lists of well known CLSIDs and PROGIDs so that it can be limited to use with specific controls and interfaces. Finally, it can be "site locked" to make sure it's only being used by a predetermined list of domains.

You can find sample usage and download in the project website at http://code.google.com/p/ff-activex-host/

Published at Firefox Magazine

Just in time for the gift-giving season - as mentioned christopher in his blog - annoucing the December edition of the Underground PHP & Oracle Manual. We have announced the previous edition 1.4 of the manual back in may 2007. The current edition is written by Christopher Jones and Alison Holloway, it include 290 pages and 16 chapters and is 50% bigger than the previous edition - unfortunately we don't have the previous edition at this time to compare, but what we can say is that it's a great eBook that you should get for anyone working with PHP and Oracle.

The manual still aims to bridge the gap between the multitude of PHP books and Oracle books on the market. It is still a "braindump" and in no way replaces any of the other PHP-Oracle books in the marketplace. They all cover different aspects of development with PHP and Oracle, and I encourage you to also consider them for your bookshelf.

Download Underground PHP and Oracle Manual [PDF]

Published at Oracle PHP Magazine

Today we have for you a selection of two Ajax Books from McGraw-Hill Professional. The first one is for beginner and people looking to get started with Ajax : A Beginner's Guide, by Steven Holzner, and published by McGraw-Hill Osborne Media. The book in 475 pages and 12 chapters explains how to use Ajax to construct web applications easily but without having the need to use any of the modern JavaScript libraries, but you will have to learn instead how to write your own - or at least a basic one. This is more intersting than start coding directly with jQuery, Prototype or any other advanced JS lib.

The book explores also the handling of XML data, CSS, handling of dynamic HTML, then the interaction with PHP. Probably the most interesting part is the validation of user input with Ajax and PHP. The last chapter is about using the HTML DOM and Ajax. Overall the book is definitely great is you are new to Ajax and JavaScript and willing to get started creating your first Ajax-enabled applications.

Published at AJAX Magazine

Vertigo-projects have a new and amazing racing game powered by jQuery and using the GameQuery plugin. The game itself is about one thousand lines of code, but you will need some practice to not shift too early or to avoid crashing. It's interesting to see the level of applications that we can build today using modern javascript libraries such as jQuery. The design is pretty attractive to run a level or two, have a look and enjoy the race http://www.vertigo-project.com/projects/redline-game.

Published at AJAX Magazine