Raible Designs

XMLBuddy Download

I got a tip today from Olivier, a developer of Solex, to disable my ad blocking tools (I use Norton Internet Security) and I would be able to download XMLBuddy. Sure 'nough, it worked!

Olivier had contacted me after reading my blog (wow, people ARE reading this) to let me know about Solex, which is:

A Web application testing tool built as a plug-in for the Eclipse IDE. Based on a built-in Web proxy and a concept of extraction, replacement, and assertion rules (including regular expressions), Solex provides functions to record a client session, adjust it according to various parameters and replay it. This is typically done in order to ensure the non-regression of a Web application's behavior.

At first glance, it looks like a recorder of your browser interactions, so you don't have to repeat "click, click, click" over and over again to test some functionality. HttpUnit probably can accomplish the same thing, but you have to physically write code to test everything. Solex looks like it'll just record the test case. Looks cool to me, if I can find an hour to install and tinker with, I might even use it.

Eclipse Goodies.

Jeff Duska has some good links for Eclipse plug-ins. I use Jalopy (love it) and have Solareclipse installed (I use HomeSite/Dreamweaver for JSP editing). I will be downloading and installing the others today, just because.

I've also heard of XML Buddy, but have never been able to download it. I click "I Agree" on the download back, and "doh!" I end up back at their homepage. Sounds like a website bug to me. If anyone knows of an alternative link, let me know.

The whole can of worms! In my search for some more Eclipse plug-ins, I found a list of 126 plugins. I'll be bookmarking this page. This site is very nice in that it shows user's comments about plug-ins. I even noticed someone had my same XMLBuddy comment. No workaround response though. :(

Eclipse 2.0.1 Released!

It is now available on the Eclipse download page at www.eclipse.org. I received a reply from the eclipse-dev mailing list today with some hints for OS X - noticed that 2.0.1 was out, and updated all my machines (Win/Linux/OSX) with ease. For Jaguar, You can find the latest "inofficial" build here. It worked great for me. If you already have 2.0 installed, you should be able to update your installation via the Update Manager.

Coming tomorrow - JSF and Struts 1.1, should you upgrade?

I recommend Eclipse.

In response to Russell's post on IDE's, I figured I'd give my opinion. I hate IDE's - for the past couple of years, I could never bring myself to use one for a few reasons (1) too slow, (2) I liked HomeSite too much and it worked for all my Java dev needs, and (3) I didn't like the UI's - not pretty enough for me. Granted, most of these are bad reasons, but we're allowed our opinions right? But with Eclipse 2.0, it's given me enough value-add that I now use it everyday, over IDEA and Sun ONE Studio 4 (a.k.a Forte for Java). It's still slower than HomeSite, but I really like it's look and it does everything I need (although I still use Ant to compile/deploy).

A good story.

A friend of mine, Cliff Nellis, is riding his bike across America for charity and fun. He left last weekend, and had an opportunity to send us (friends) an e-mail today.

Towing 50 pounds of gear, the heat, no clouds, no shade, no breeze, running out of food and water with 15 miles left, and ending with one climb after another heading west into Walsenburg proved to be a test to say the least. FOUR miles outside of Walsenburg, I finally passed a house, and even though there was only four miles left, I knew I had to stop for some water. The lady was really nice...gave me some cold water and a popcycle. Still those last four miles were tough. I completely BONKED.

It was very enjoyable for me to read, so I asked him if I could share it. He said sure - [ full story ].

From Denver, I will bike to San Diego, and from San Diego, I will bike across the southern coast to Miami, FL. The total distance covered will be roughly 4,600 miles. On the way, I will bike through some of the areas that have been hit by wildfires this summer. I will pitch a tent at campgrounds most nights. I will carry my gear in a one-wheel B.O.B., which is essentially a trailer for a bicycle. I am excited to bike through many scenic parts of the country, including Moab, Lake Powell, the Grand Canyon, Lake Mead, the Mojave Desert, and the Rocky Mountains. I also look forward to biking through major cities, such as Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, Houston, Mobile, Biloxi, Orlando, and Miami. Mostly, I look forward to meeting the people. On a previous cross-country bicycle trip, I found that the people make the trip. If all goes well, I am registered to compete in the Great Floridian Ironman on October 19, 2002, in Clermont, FL. [ Website ]

Mozilla 1.1 Released!

View Release Notes. Download: OS X, Windows, Linux.

Google ranks raibledesigns.com #1

in 2 different queries! I found via my usage statistics today that both "j2ee designs" and "raible" (of course) turn up this website as it's first choices. Cool, and after checking the cached versions, that was before adding new meta tags last week!

Am I color blind?

As I sit here pounding the keyboard on a late night, get-it-done-before-the-deadline (that's tomorrow), I stumbled upon's Eric Costello's standards compliant Blogger template with DOM-based font customization features and silly randomly morphing color scheme. See it here - you might think you need your eyes checked too! (Tip: I had to refresh in some browsers to get it to work.)

Reason to QA your site.

This guy seems to work for Microsoft, and you can tell, have you looked at his blog in Mozilla? It gets a little ugly, not unreadable, but enough to make you wonder.

My opinion on browsers is: IE rocks on both OS X and Windows XP for one reason, and one reason only - it opens faster. That's it, the only reason I have. I really like Chimera (for OS X) and Mozilla, but they just take too long to open. I'm impatient. Even on Linux, Konquerer tends to open faster, so I use it more than Mozilla.