Photo of the Day.
Today's photo of the day comes from a site I found for getting some sweet backgrounds: digitalblasphemy.com. I chose this "sunrise" photo in honor of being up so early.
The Angular Mini-Book is a
guide to getting started with Angular. You'll learn how to develop a bare-bones application, test it, and
deploy it. Then you'll move on to adding Bootstrap, Angular Material, continuous integration, and authentication.
Spring Boot is a popular framework for building REST APIs. You'll learn how to integrate Angular with Spring Boot and use security best practices like HTTPS and a content security policy.
For book updates, follow @angular_book on Twitter.
The JHipster Mini-Book is a
guide to getting started with hip technologies today: Angular, Bootstrap, and Spring
Boot. All of these frameworks are wrapped up in an easy-to-use project called JHipster.
This book shows you how to build an app with JHipster, and guides you through the plethora of tools, techniques and options you can use. Furthermore, it explains the UI and API building blocks so you understand the underpinnings of your great application.
For book updates, follow @jhipster-book on Twitter.
10+ YEARS
Over 10 years ago, I wrote my first blog post. Since then, I've authored books, had kids, traveled the world, found Trish and blogged about it all.
RECENT ENTRIES
Is your website obsolete?
In case you need more motivation to convert your site to XHTML and CSS, Zeldman rants that "99.9% of Websites are Obsolete."
Peel the skin of any major site, from Amazon to Microsoft.com, from Sony to ZDNet. Examine their tortuous non-standard markup, their proprietary ActiveX and JavaScript (often including broken detection scripts), and ill-conceived use of Cascading Style Sheets - when they use CSS at all. It's a wonder such sites work in any browser.
Photo of the Day.
I got this idea from The FuzzyBlog. I did a search on Google for Colorado Photos, and found www.coloradophotos.com. Very cool - I might have to showcase a new photo each day - it does wonders for making this site look better.
Eclipse plug-in for Cactus?
It's on it's way! Vincent Massol sent a message to the cactus-user mailing list today asking for ideas and help. If you're an Eclipse plug-in developer, or use Cactus and want to "get involved" - see Vincent's initial thoughts. Personally, I love Cactus, StrutsTestCase, and JUnit. They've all made my development life a lot easier (when they work). I'm constantly on the bleeding edge of Struts development, and StrutsTestCase seems to always break when I download a nightly build. Now if I could only convince myself to write more HttpUnit tests (or maybe use Solex), so I don't spend so much time trying to get my UI to load and look right. Anyone know of a CSS and Layout Testing framework that tells you that your colors need tweeking or your layout won't work in IE5/Mac? I could use that framework!
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.
- Jalopy for Eclipse
This works much better than the built in formatter in Eclipse 2.0 - The Tomcat Plug-in
If you do anything with Tomcat you'll want to have this. Make sure you have the latest update - CheckStyle
Even you don't care for the the powerful tools to enforce name conventions -- get this for the cool TODO feature - Solareclipse
Adds code code highlighting for JSP, HTML and more... - CompleteClipse
The new statement completion that will part of 2.1 setup as a plug-in to work with 2.0. Provide automatic parameter selection... very nice!
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.
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 ]