Andre Venter: Dev

How to build a rich, interactive Webtop for Web 2.0.

Tue, 19 Aug 2003 15:57:03 GMT

"The first step is to do everything that is possible with the existing browser (IE primarily) behind the scenes. What do I mean? A desktop CMS (content management system) with hooks to open Web 2.0 transport networks would provide the ability to recombine data and content custom ways within an existing browser. With that in place, the second step is to build a new presentation layer that goes beyond the constraints of a vanilla Internet Explorer (by putting the CMS in place first, it is easier to leverage the capabilities of the enhanced browser). Here are some ways to do this: "

Hire a development company like Social DynamX to build a custom interface that leverages Internet Explorer to provide a better user experience. See FM Radio for an example of an Web Services powered rich client interface built on IE.
Build it yourself using a development tool like Zeepe. FYI, they also have an example built on UserLand Radio called Radio Case.
Trash IE entirely and build a customized version of Mozilla.
Build a Macromedia Flash MX application that runs inside the browser locally. Here's a server side example. Any local examples? Another method is to build a custom app using Macromedia Central and trash the browser entirely.

[John Robb's Weblog]

Usability: Eine Diplomarbeit

Mon, 18 Aug 2003 15:31:17 GMT

Usability ist in der Praxis eine überaus spannende Angelegenheit. Theoretisch kann sie jedoch manchmal sehr trocken daherkommen, vor allem wenn sie zum Thema einer Diplomarbeit wird. Es gibt aber auch erfrischende Diplomarbeiten über Usability, und eine solche (seine eigene) hat mir Usability-Inside-Leser Nils Römeling geschickt: "Usability im WWW. Redesign eines Webauftritts mit Hilfe von Usability...
[Usability Inside | web-blog.net]

BloGTK

Tue, 12 Aug 2003 19:33:40 GMT

BloGTK is a weblog client that allows you to post to your weblog from Linux without the need for a separate browser window. BloGTK allows you to connect with many weblog systems such as Blogger, Movable Type, pMachine, and more. BloGTK is written using Python and PyGTK, and is designed to be fast and simple to use. BloGTK is open-source software released under the BSD license, which means that it is completely free for use. BloGTK won't make you more attractive to the opposite sex, it won't create world peace, and it doesn't make julienne fries. It does make updating your weblog from Linux much easier and more efficient. On the other hand, that could make you more attractive to the opposite sex.

Great piece

Tue, 12 Aug 2003 15:29:46 GMT

by Tim Bray that explains how designers should use XML. He describes the Worse Is Better school of XML format design. The names we use for elements are the worst-possible names, but they allow our software to interoperate. Namespaces create elements with names with colons in them. I bet Tim agrees that funky feeds, even if they're valid RSS, hurt interop. So much of this is obvious, yet we spend years arguing about it. [Scripting News]

Disney ports Photoshop to Linux

Tue, 12 Aug 2003 15:20:27 GMT

Disney Feature Animation and two other animation studios have funded an effort to make Adobe PhotoShop work on Linux using the Wine emulator, saving an estimated $75,000 a year for Disney. [Workbench]

Chicken and Egg

Thu, 07 Aug 2003 15:03:04 GMT

Jon Udell: »When I look at today's Web, I see precious little metadata. We mine the scraps we have -- email addresses, URLs, HTML metatags -- for all they're worth. We know intuitively that with more and richer metadata, we could build more and richer applications. People much smarter than me imagine what it would be like if machines could "reason" about the things described with metadata. I'd love to see those people get the chance to do their experiment. So would Tim Bray, who also thinks the Web is "terribly metadata-thin" and has issued a challenge to produce a killer app for RDF (Resource Description Framework).« [Der Schockwellenreiter]

Logo art: logotypes.ru

Mon, 04 Aug 2003 19:32:13 GMT

(review) Today's pick is a true resource for anyone interested in logos. You could spend hours, even days (if you're really interested), browsing through the enormous library of logo art... [Coolstop Daily Pick [jenett.radio]

An article in News.Com

Mon, 04 Aug 2003 15:20:29 GMT

while extremely incendiary, may be seen as the last gasp in the Great RSS War of 2003. [Scripting News]

Sunlog lite

Mon, 04 Aug 2003 14:57:23 GMT

YA Weblog tool ... [thomas n. burg | randgänge]

Firebird's next killer

Mon, 04 Aug 2003 14:33:48 GMT

Forget weblog posting popups and textareas the future is Web Panels and XUL. [phil ringnalda dot com]

Confusticated apache

Mon, 28 Jul 2003 18:18:01 GMT

I'm not sure if you'll see it but I wanted to say Thank You to all those who responded to my question about Apache security for a specific GET request and also to ScottJ for putting the word out.

In the end I capitulated and modified the CGI. I appreciate learning about the mod_rewrite approach. It's neat and would definitely have worked... if this copy of Apache had mod_rewrite installed. Which it doesn't. It's on an old RH7 box, there is no source available. It's brittle. Bleuch!

On balance of pain, and as much as I didn't want to, modifying the CGI made more more sense.

Thanks anyway though.

[Curiouser and curiouser!]

Mon, 28 Jul 2003 18:15:27 GMT

Comment Authentication Prototype.

I've built a prototype of the comment signature system discussed earlier. The prototype consists of an authentication server which anyone can register with and support on this blog for verifying signatures. So far it seems to work.

To gain the ability to sign comments:

Add the following HTML to the head section of your homepage/weblog: <link rel="sigserver" href="http://simon.incutio.com/auth/confirm" />
Create a comment authorisation account.
Log in to your authorisation account and add the bookmarklet it provides you with to your browser.
You can now sign a comment on this site (and any others that support the prototype) using the bookmarklet. You must activate it while looking at the entry page containing the 'Add Comment' form. The site will do the rest. Note that the bookmarklet will fill in the name, email and url fields on the form, saving you the hassle.

To add support for comment authentication to your own blog (assuming it uses PHP):

Grab this file: sig-confirm.inc.php. It contains a function which can be used to confirm a signature. It requires IXR, which you can download from here.
Make some minor modifications to your 'add comment' form, to make it compatible with the bookmarklet. You need to assign ID attributes to the input fields for name, email and URL of 'commentFormName', 'commentFormEmail' and 'commentFormURL' respectively. You also need to add a hidden field like this one: <input type="hidden" name="signature" id="commentSignature" value="" />
Modify the code that processes the add comment form. If 'signature' is not an empty string, the comment has been signed so confirm the signature by calling the confirmSig() function (documentation of the arguments is included in the sig-confirm.inc.php file). If the function returns true, flag the comment as signed. I suggest doing this by saving the signature variable along with the rest of the comment.
When displaying comments, be sure to visually indicate comments that are "signed".

The system is decentralised, so if you want to host your own authentication server rather than relying on mine feel free to grab the PHP code (warning: it's a bit of a mess) and use it as a starting point.

This is more of a proof of concept than anything else, so feedback and suggestions would be very welcome.

Incidentally, this isn't the first time this problem has been tackled. See here and here for details of a system that uses PGP to sign and verify comments.

[Blogging]

Mon, 28 Jul 2003 18:14:24 GMT

More Code for Pythonistas. "i love rss" Stupid Element Tricks, Part 2. »The RSSWrapper class from the last article supports RSS 0.9x and 2.0 feeds. There's also a third RSS format, RSS 1.0, which is based on RDF, and stores the channel and item information in a slightly different fashion.« [Der Schockwellenreiter]

Fri, 30 May 2003 13:51:00 GMT

Veni Vidi Wiki. Erik Möller setzt seine ausgezeichnete Artikelserie über Wikis und die Wikipedia fort: Tanz der Gehirne, Teil 4. [Der Schockwellenreiter]

Fri, 30 May 2003 13:50:23 GMT

Für den SysAdmin. Top Five Open Source Packages for System Administrators. AEleen Frisch, author of the best-selling Essential System Administration, 3rd Edition, offers the final installment in a five-part series on the most useful and widely applicable open source administrative tools. The countdown concludes this week with the number one utility, Cfengine. [Der Schockwellenreiter]

Fri, 30 May 2003 13:30:17 GMT

Wahre Geeks.... produzieren Ihre Buttons natürlich scriptgesteuert mit dem Gimp, mit ImageMagick oder mit der Python Imaging Library (PIL). Aber niemals, niemals, niemals mit Photoshop!

[Der Schockwellenreiter]

Fri, 30 May 2003 11:50:52 GMT

Wired News: Gesture Your Mouse Goodbye. The most common hand gesture made toward a computer may involve one finger, usually in frustration over a lost document. [Daypop Top News Stories]

Wed, 28 May 2003 15:51:09 GMT

Three Star Hotel, Five Star Connection. I'm on my way home from the excellent BlogTalk conference, where I learned a great deal about the future of... [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]

Wed, 28 May 2003 15:50:42 GMT

The Blogosphere, RSS, Microsoft, Apple, Etc.. My older, wiser brother Steve has posted three items called "Shucks and Aww" relating to the emergence of the blogosphere,... [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]

Wed, 28 May 2003 13:05:29 GMT

Wie finde ich ähnlich denkende Blogs?. BlogMatcher »is a program that helps people find weblogs that match their interests and find like-minded blogs. When given an URL to a weblog (called "Reference Blog") the system finds other blogs that appear to discuss similar topics.« Ich glaube zwar nicht, daß die 721 Blogs, die auf die gleichen Quellen wie ich verlinke, auch unbedingt die gleichen Interessen (oder gar die gleiche Meinung) haben -- schließlich verlinken alle auf Telepolis, Heise und Spiegel --, aber es macht Spaß. [Der Schockwellenreiter]