Raible Designs

iStockPhoto

Zeldman points us to iStockPhoto.

iStockPhoto is a collection of over 26,000 royalty-free photos, illustrations, and multimedia files created by a growing international community of artists. The site adds around 1,000 new royalty-free photos each week.

You get 2 free downloads for signing up (or at least I did) and you can purchase 40 download credits (I'm assuming 1 credit per image) for $10. Not a bad deal if you need stock images for a site.

Veterans Day

My cousin Paul and I are the first men on both sides of my family that haven't been members of the Armed Forces. My father had to serve as he was drafted in his early twenties. His parents (Margaret and Joseph Raible) were career officers and served in WWII. My mother's father (Oliver Hill) was in the Amphibious Corps, which predated the Navy Seals. I thank all these men in my family and all other veterans for giving me the freedom I have. Thanks for making this country safe for my family and for my children.

Macromedia's Contribute

Macromedia has released a trial version and QuickTime videos of it's newest app, cleverly named Contribute. It looks pretty cool, though I don't know many business types who want to edit/update their own website. They usually prefer to just have someone do the updates for them. I think it'll flop unless it's super cheap - like $50 or something.

Update: I found a good review here.

Update 2: Zeldman says $99 bucks.

DevMX, J2EE 1.4, iBlog and OS X JDK 1.4.1

Mesh on MX told us about DevMX this morning:

I haven't looked at it yet, but it does look interesting, so this post is my own personal bookmark.

Erik tipped us off about the J2EE 1.4 Beta and some good J2EE vs. Petstore articles. After logging into download the 1.4 Beta, I found the feature list and figured I'd let you know:

The platform features complete Web services support through the new JAX-RPC 1.0 API, which supports service endpoints based on servlets and enterprise beans. JAX-RPC 1.0 provides interoperability with Web services based on the WSDL and SOAP protocols. The J2EE 1.4 platform also supports the Web Services for J2EE specification (JSR 109), which defines deployment requirements for Web services and utilizes the JAX-RPC programming model. The J2EE 1.4 platform introduces the J2EE Management 1.0 API, which defines the information model for J2EE management, including standard Management EJB (MEJB). The J2EE Management 1.0 API uses the Java Management Extensions (JMX) and supports standard management protocols, including SNMP, WBEM and CIM. The J2EE 1.4 platform also introduces the J2EE Deployment 1.1 API, which standardizes the deployment of J2EE applications.

The Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) includes enhancements to the Java Servlet and JavaServer Pages^TM (JSP^TM) technologies. Servlets now support request listeners and enhanced filters. JSP technology has simplified the page and extension development models with the introduction of a simple expression language, tag files, and a simpler tag extension API, among other features. The J2EE Connector Architecture provides incoming resource adapter and Java Message Service (JMS) pluggability. Enhancements to Enterprise JavaBeans^TM (EJB^TM) technology include Web service endpoints, a timer service, and enhancements to EJB QL and message driven beans. The J2EE 1.4 platform also includes enhancements to deployment descriptors, which are now defined using XML Schema.

Recent report on J2EE vs .NET Relies on "Highly Flawed Methodology" says BEA.
Benchmark Bust-Up: The Middleware Company Responds.

It looks like Rickard might be published in the next issue of JDJ.

"To Do" this weekend:

Download and see if iBlog works with Roller. Recommendation via Russell and Dave Winer. Hmmm, after looking at Dave's iBlog sites, it appears to be software to run a blog, not post to one. My I-don't-need-this filter has kicked into effect.

Download and install JDK 1.4.1 Developer Preview 5 for Mac OS X. Tip o' the hat to Erik. A needed update considering the last 1.4.1 release didn't even run Tomcat for me.

Web Standards and Flash

Zeldman writes:

Your site complies with web standards 'til you embed Flash—at which point your page becomes invalid and your XHTML starts retaining water. It’s a common problem to which there has never been a solution. Soon there will be. The next issue of A List Apart will publish a technique allowing designers to embed Flash movies while adhering to W3C specs and eliminating code bloat. No, really. Watch this space.

Very cool! I've done a little flash development, but in recent years I've had a friend, James Stark (no blog), do the flash work I get. He's such an awesome animator that he could probably do the Toy Story movie in flash. He's really that good! I'll try to get some of his recent work to show you. If anyone needs Flash work done, let me know.

Thanks to Everyone

The blogging community is great, or at least the guy's blogs that I read. You know who you are. To everyone who's offered congratulations and given our daughter compliments (are you hitting on her already?!) - your thoughts and words are much appreciated. It's always fun to see your name in lights. Here's your names right back at ya (in no particular order) - you guys are great: Dave, Lance, Russell, Greg, Jeff, Rick, Anthony, Dominic, and Erik.

If I missed your name, let me know, because I might not be reading your blog, and I certainly should be. Kudos go to Russell for the first post and my friend Brian Burke (no blog yet), both who guessed that we were giving birth from the lack of a Monday posting.

Our Little Girl has Arrived!

Proud parents Matt and Julie are doing great and loving life! Abbie is an awesome little girl and is making this parenting stuff look easy. Of course, we've only had one night so far - so I'm sure she'll get rowdy here pretty soon.

Cool Menus How To

Scott Andrew provides us some DHTML Menu love - using a little DOM action and <ul>'s. The beauty of these is that they will work just fine in older browsers - just like a regular list.

Dave Lindquist has taken this same basic concept one step further with these awesome DHTML menus. Both the dropdown and expandable tree variations are simple lists built with 100% valid XHTML. CSS and DOM scripting are added to extend the functionality. Dave even goes so far as to use ACCESSKEY attributes to make parts of the menu accessible via keyboard shortcuts. The result is a more widely accessible menu that doesn't sacrifice the whiz-bang functionality of DHTML. Try turning off the CSS rules (with a handy "Toggle CSS" bookmarklet) while viewing the menu demos and you'll see a plain, fully-accessible list. Better yet, run it through Delorie's LynxViewer to get an idea of how a non-graphical browser would handle it. Sweet.

Everyone wants a Mac

Greg tried to download an x86 version (I did this about a year ago and got Darwin installed before I realized you couldn't run OS X on x86), James wants one with a cinema display and even Gerhard longs for one.

Well I was lucky enough to buy one last Christmas. I got a 667 Mhz Powerbook with a gig o' RAM. I wanted a laptop for traveling to client sites and this seemed like the best laptop at the time. So 10 months later, you ask, "Was it worth it?" Yes and no.

• Yes: It's great to have OS X and I don't long for a Mac anymore.
• No: I hardly ever use it except for testing and surfing, not much development.
• Yes: My boss bought it for me as a Christmas bonus last year, so the expense was easier to justify.
• No: It doesn't give me much over Windows XP with Cygwin and Red Hat - they (seem to) both have Unix cores and my Win XP install seems to be just as stable as OS X.
• Yes: My client uses Macs for all their video-production and website-viewing. I can test their product on the Mac (with Mac browsers) before I release it. This is the #1 benefit to having the machine and it's paid for itself because of this.
• No: The screen resolution is fixed to 1152 x 768 and I'd like it to go higher. I can change it to be higher when plugging it in to an external monitor. The new Titanium G4's go up to 1280 x 854. Most Windows laptops I've seen allow you to 1600 x 1200.
• Yes: iSync rocks and it's great to sync with my T68i phone and have no wires.
• No: I expected a fast laptop because megahertz don't matter on Macs. Yeah right, my Windows XP machine (1.5 Ghz) was a year older than the Mac and with half the RAM was still twice as fast. I've heard that this has more to do with OS X than the hardware.
• No: I've used Windows most of my life and I'm much less productive when working on the Mac. I'm just slower, plain and simple, and that frustrates me to no end. I admit, this is my problem and not the Mac's, but it is a reason that I don't like it so much. Keyboard shortcuts have started to make my frustrations subside.
• No: I expected Virtual PC to run on the Mac so I could get the "best of both worlds" running Windows and OS X on the same machine. However, it runs so damn slow that it's unusable. My 300 Mhz, 256 MB RAM old Compaq runs faster - and it takes 5 minutes to boot up!
• Yes: People drool and it gives me buyer satisfaction.

I think if I used it more, I'd probably like it more and get faster at using it. However, with 5% of the market share, it doesn't get much love from the application vendors. And while Java runs great on the Mac, it's revisions are too far behind the other platforms. If you were on a project that wanted to upgrade to JDK 1.4, and use some new APIs in that version, you wouldn't be able to develop on your Mac for a year.

I too dream about the Cinema Display and my boss has been thinking about getting me one for my Christmas bonus, but is it work the money? $3500 for a fancy display you can brag to your friends and fellow bloggers about? Tough to justify, easy to buy. I have dual 19" monitors setup right now and they probably provide me the same function without the form.

.NET vs. J2EE Performance

If you've read this thread or this story at The Server Side, you owe it to yourself to read Rickard's rebuttal.

In other news, Simon Stewart (no blog to my knowledge) has sent me the font I needed, and therefore iCal is working again. What a guy - thanks Simon!