Raible Designs

Cool Java Certification Site

Are you thinking about getting your Java Programmer 1.4 Certification? I am. I found JavaCertificate.com today via java.blogs. Definitely looks like a great resource for strudying. I don't know when I'll do it - probably when I get a few days to cram. I took the beta without studying and almost passed, so the "real thing" shouldn't be too bad.

Posted in Java at Apr 17 2003, 04:10:48 PM MDT 1 Comment

What's coming in XHTML 2.0

Mark Pilgrim has written an excellent introductory tutorial -- the first of several to come -- that is ostensibly about elements dropped from XHTML 2 (and what replaces them). But the piece works equally well as a general primer on how to make the transition from old-school presentational markup to modern, structural stuff. We've bookmarked this piece and look forward to reading next month's follow-up. [Zeldman]

From the article...

There are several key elements and attributes that are slated to be dropped from XHTML 2.

<br /> has been dropped, replaced by <l>...</l>.
The inline style attribute has been dropped, but there are still plenty of ways to define styles.
<img /> has been dropped, replaced by <object>...</object>. As we'll see in next month's article, this may present some serious migration difficulties.
HTML forms have been dropped, replaced by XForms. This is such a major change that it also deserves its own article.

Posted in The Web at Apr 17 2003, 02:57:54 PM MDT Add a Comment

Joe Hewitt Comments

I did a bit of research today and it looks fairly simple to incorporate Joe Hewitt-style comments into Roller. The hard part will be figuring out a way to convert an entry's comments into XML. For instance, Joe loads an XML document (sample) that contains all the comments for a given post. This document has a DTD which will hopefully make things easier. Here's what a sample XML-based comment entry looks like:

<comment id="000178">
  <author>Joe Hewitt</author> 
  <email />
  <url />
  <timestamp>April 3, 2003 04:14 PM</timestamp>
  <body>
  <p>I have readers??</p>
  </body>
</comment>

Looks pretty simple eh? So how do we convert comments to XML? Since they're already (or supposed to be) XHTML, should we just use a JSP and JSTL's "x" tag to do a little XSL? That sounds like an easy solution. Or should we figure out a way that we can hit the RSS feed (which could be enhanced to include comments)? Once we've done this, there's some JavaScript to load this document.

  // Make url unique to prevent loading it from cache
  var cacheKiller = new Date().getTime(); 
  // replace this with a link to a JSP or something
  var url = "/content/blog/comments/" + aEntryId + ".xml?" + cacheKiller; 
  loadXMLDocument(url, onCommentsLoaded);

Please comment with any ideas for the comments-to-XML conversion.

Posted in Roller at Apr 17 2003, 01:00:34 PM MDT 3 Comments

[T68i] Connecting to the Internet

I got a response for how to connect to the internet via my phone.

Yes it is possible, just download the modem driver from www.sonyericsson.com and you should be all set. As for the speed, the connection from your laptop to the phone (modem) is always reported as 115Kilobit/sec however the real speed is 33K if you are lucky! I have tested on many different location and I can never get the effective speed more than 28Kilobits/sec. Over a wireless link, this is very good.

Cool - I can't wait to try it!

Posted in General at Apr 17 2003, 09:39:36 AM MDT Add a Comment

On TMobile's Network Again

I'm on TMobile's Wireless Network again, only this time, rather than being in Starbuck's, I'm at the bagel place next door. Very cool! Julie's giving me a ride to work today so I can ride my bike home, and we decided to stop for breakfast. I needed to upload a customized release of the CV, so stopping here to do it seemed like a good idea. Why didn't I do it at home? I'm still on dial-up and the upload failed while I was sleeping. Our ISP is supposed to come out today, but I'm not expecting much.

Posted in General at Apr 17 2003, 07:23:33 AM MDT Add a Comment

Windows 2003 Server for $45

I won't be going, because frankly I'm not that interested in the next Windows Server. I've evolved as a computer professional - a year ago, I couldn't wait to get my hands on the latest Windows betas, and I always had them installed. It helped that the company I worked for had a MSDN subscription and I was always pursuing the next Windows certification. Now, I don't care so much about operating systems. Actually, I probably do care, just not this week. I never use my Red Hat box, because I don't have to - it just runs - I never have to tinker with it. Same goes for my Windows XP box. My OS X laptop is a different story - iPhoto is screwed up and Mail doesn't work. The lack of broadband keeps me from attempting to fix it. My ISP is sending folks out tomorrow, so hopefully it will be fixed. Anyway, back to the reason for this post. I got the following e-mail today - if you want Windows 2003 Server, it's quite a deal.

The RMWTUG (Rocky Mountain Windows Technology User Group) has permission from Microsoft to offer a special deal on Windows 2003 software. Anyone can get a 5 user nfr copy of the released Windows 2003 Server Enterprise Edition (about $2,500 street price) if they attend the 2003 launch, join the RMWTUG ($45) and attend our May meeting. If this sounds like a deal (and it is unless you are wearing a penguin suit), check www.rmwtug.org for details.

Posted in General at Apr 16 2003, 09:55:33 PM MDT Add a Comment

Cool Customer Service from AT&T

I have AT&T Wireless for my cell phone service. I was surprised tonight when I dialed 411. I asked the lady for the number to Brook's Steak House, which is a privately owned (non-corporate) steak house in Denver. We've always seen it advertised in airline's magazine, so we thought it'd be fun for our 3rd anniversary. The lady said to me, "would you like me to make a reservation for you?" "Sure!" I said. She took down my name and the time I'd like for my reservation and said she'd call me back in a half hour. It took an hour, but she called me back and we're booked for Saturday night. I even asked and it's part of my plan - no charge. Swwweeeeetttt!

Posted in General at Apr 16 2003, 07:50:29 PM MDT Add a Comment

MailTo: Links

I created a mailto: link today for our app at work. I used this page and Hiveware's Enkoder Form to hide the e-mail address from spammers. I even added a little browser information - since clicking on the link will send an e-mail to the help desk. Pretty cool - view source to see how I made the link below work.

Posted in The Web at Apr 16 2003, 01:05:01 PM MDT Add a Comment

My Roller To Do List

I'd like to add some additional features to Roller. Don't worry, I won't add them for a couple weeks (if I add them at all - being a Dad and husband is way more fun and satisfying than being a developer). Dave is imposing a code freeze this weekend and I don't want to mess anything up for the 0.9.7 release. Especially since we really need to get a release out - there hasn't been one since November 2002! Here's what I want to add after the release:

Joe Hewitt-style comments. Big surprise - it doesn't work in Opera 6/7. I'm not surprised as I despise that browser and pity anyone that uses it.
Use Tiles for the Editor layout and implement the Validator for validating fields. With the latest XDoclet, this will be a breeze, but could cause issues with the UI, so a good idea to implement after the release. A good strategy for implementing this would be to write a bunch of test cases with StrutsTestCase for Actions and Canoo's WebTest for JSPs.
Possibly this idea for highlighting entries added in the last few hours.
Implement struts-menu as an optional menu in the Editor to reduce the number of clicks to get to a page.

Unfortunately, none of these are on the fix me, I'm a popular bug list. Aaaahhh, the beauty of open source development: 1) you don't have to work on it at all if you don't want to, 2) you only have to implement the features you want, and 3) there are no deadlines.

Of course, if Roller's goal is to be the most popular Java-based blogging software, then squashing the bugs on the popular list is probably the best thing to do, but I don't think that's Roller's goal. I believe Roller's goal is to provide a learning environment for Java developers to tinker with. Besides, I think blojsom will win the popularity contest. Why? Because it's easy to setup and Roller isn't. Roller doesn't have chance until it can be setup in 5 minutes or less.

Posted in Roller at Apr 16 2003, 10:24:32 AM MDT 2 Comments

What I learned from this weekend's re-design

This past weekend, I re-designed the Content Viewer's interface I wrote for OnPoint Digital. The major motivation behind the mini-project was to make the CV compatible with IE 5.5 and Opera 6 on Linux. It was a nightmare because of the lack of DHTML support in Opera, and also because of IE. So I came to the conclusion that I hate IE, Opera and Safari. My main reason is because they do everything so different - why don't they adhere to standards (Mozilla does)?! It makes web development so much harder when you have to test 5 browsers on 3 platforms. Hopefully I'm a better developer from the experience, and here's a short list of things I learned.

The CSS rule "position: fixed" doesn't work in IE, but works in all other browsers. This is a great rule, allowing you to pin an element to a location in a page. For instance, you can have a floating menu or footer using this. You can achieve similar functionality in IE using CSS Expressions (a non-standard extension). For instance, to keep a footer at the bottom of a page, you could use something like this:

div#footer {
  position: absolute;
  top: expression(document.body.scrollTop + document.body.clientHeight - offsetHeight);
  left: expression(document.body.scrollLeft + document.body.clientWidth - offsetWidth);
}
If you're using standards-compliant mode in IE 6, you have to use document.documentElement in place of document.body above.
Using standards-compliant mode in IE with frames will just create headaches for you and you'll end up with a horizontal scrollbar unless you make the body's width 95%. An easier way is to remove the doctype and not go with standards-compliant mode.
If you're supporting IE 6 and IE 5.5, remove the XHTML doctype (which makes IE 6 standards compliant) - this will make the two browser's behavior more consistent.
Opera 6 doesn't recognize the "background: transparent" css rule for <button>'s.
Opera 7 doesn't recognize the "width: 65px" css rule for buttons. Maybe this is only when you have an image on the button. I found that my buttons in Opera 7 were only as wide as the images on them.
In Opera 6, you can't copy the contents of one <div> to another <div>. With all the other browsers, it's easy using document.getElementById('divId').innerHTML. This does not exist in Opera - I'm still hoping to find a similar way of doing this.
Opera 7 and Safari have strange position bugs or maybe they're more standards-compliant than the other browsers, but I doubt it. In Opera 7, I have a buttons div that ends up at the top left corner of the header, when they should be aligned more in the middle and 100px from the left. In Safari, this same buttons <div> stacks the <button>'s on top of each other, rather than side-by-side, like you'd expect a row of buttons to look.

I'm glad I don't need to support Opera 7 or Safari for the app, but it's annoying that they behave so differently. Camino, of course, works great, and so does Mozilla. You write your JavaScript or CSS according to the standards, and it works in Mozilla, perfectly. What a beautiful browser.

Posted in The Web at Apr 16 2003, 08:31:31 AM MDT 2 Comments

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