AJAX Magazine

Gizmox Reveals Cloud Apps Platform at Microsoft PDC

2009-11-17T08:11:00Z

Today Gizmox, the developer of Visual WebGui Web & Cloud Platform, will reveal its innovative cloud application platform which will allow developers and enterprises to deploy their applications to Windows Azure with the click of a button with no re-writes or new programming skills needed. The company will also expose with Microsoft Azure team a case study showcasing a successful migration and deployment of an energy management system to Windows Azure cloud using Visual WebGui.

Below the press release :

Visual WebGui to Reveal the First Cloud Application Platform to Migrate Legacy to the Cloud at a "button-push"

Developers can now deploy their applications to Windows Azure with the click of a button with no re-writes or new programming skills needed

Los Angeles, CA. - November 17, 2009 - Gizmox, the developer of Visual WebGui Web & Cloud Platform, today announced that it will reveal its application platform atop Windows Azure and its development framework, Visual WebGui web/cloud platforms offers the only push-button .NET desktop legacy application migration path to Windows Azure. With Visual WebGui enterprises will be able to migrate to Windows Azure, by reusing their existing Windows software code on Windows Azure without re-write or re-engineering. The process is as simple as copying and pasting the Windows code into VWG, selecting Windows Azure run in Visual WebGui SDK, and run.

"With our unique unrivalled legacy applications migration to Windows Azure, and the ability to run them as responsive as and as rich as desktop's, with proven unhackable security, we have crossed a new threshold," said Navot Peled, CEO of Gizmox, "While everyone is talking about the cloud, we're working with Microsoft to bring our solution to enterprises that are looking at migration to the Windows Azure cloud here and now. We also enable the fast development, desktop's performance, and richness and security benefits to newly built cloud applications"

SRP-Hermetic, New Ajax Security Library

2009-11-17T07:05:52Z

SRP-Hermetic, a JavaScript library which aims at providing a highly secure Ajax channel implementation (MIT license). Authentication is based on the SRP protocol, and messages can be signed using HMAC or fully encrypted using AES. An interesting implementation providing secure user authentication, communication integrity and communication privacy to AJAX applications, with main focus on efficiency, scalability and customisable secure channel as an alternative to HTTPS.

Your feedback is very welcome to review current implementation and develop it further. More information could be found on this blog post.

PMRPC, HTML5-based Inter-window Cross-Domain RPC Librar

2009-10-13T06:52:46Z

Pmrpc is a HTML5 inter-window cross-domain JSON-RPC based remote procedure call JavaScript library. The library provides a simple API for exposing and calling procedures from windows or iFrames on different domains, without being subject to the same-origin policy. Pmrpc also provides several advanced features: callbacks similar to AJAX calls, ACL-based access control, asynchronous procedure support and fault-tolerance via retries.

The implementation of the library is based on the HTML5 postMessage API, the JSON-RPC protocol and the JSON data format. Pmrpc uses the postMessage API as an underlying communication mechanism and extends it to a RPC model using the JSON-RPC, a transport-independent protocol that uses JSON for formatting messages.

The library is compatible with Firefox 3, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer 8, released under Apache v2.0 license.

Webopoly, New Ajax-based Property Trading Game

2009-09-29T09:24:47Z

Webopoly is a new Ajax-based monopoly-like game written in PHP where players can trade properties like web companies, or products. It supports multi-player games, in-game chat and a variety of other features, all without the use of any Flash or Java. The games uses many JavaScript libraries such taconite, soundmanager2, and greybox. Geeky and very addictive game ! Players can create their own private or public games and invite friends or colleagues to join.

Have fun http://www.webopoly.org/ !

Open Source RIA Framework Qooxdoo 0.8.3 Released

2009-09-12T01:39:39Z

The Open Source RIA Framework qooxdoo is now available in a new release 0.8.3. This release include many enhancements, 300 bug fixes, and lots of new features including :

New Form Handling
Unified Selection API
Advanced Data Binding
New Flow Layout
New Flash Widget
New Themed Iframe
Global Error Handling

"qooxdoo 0.8.3 is one of the best tested and most extensive releases to date." According to QooxDoo announcement there are about 1.700 Commits since last release, more than 1.100 Unit tests (incl. more than 3.200 assertions), about 30 Browsers/OS combinations continuously unit-/GUI-tested, and about 160 GUI-tests of applications, fully automated. Migration and more details about this release are available here.

More information and download at http://qooxdoo.org/.

DHTMLX v2.5 Released

2009-09-07T23:06:22Z

DHTMLX 2.5 have just been released, one of the most interesting JavaScript libraries to build amazingly rich UI for web applications for both GPL open source and commercial apps. "We were working hard, carefully preparing this update, to make it more comfortable and easy for you to build rich web interfaces with our dhtmlx components" announced Ivan Petrenko.

Version 2.5 introduces lots of significant improvements, including:

Object API

In addition to the existing functional API, all the components now have an object API that provides a familiar way of initialization for those who are used to work with object oriented model. Instead of writing large number of commands, you can now define an object within a single command with all the properties set inside of it. This new object based approach allows you to initialize the components in more simple and clear manner. The old commands based model is still available as well.

StreamHub, Realtime Comet Server

2009-09-03T14:29:44Z

HTTP Push Server for Streaming Real-Time Data is interesting solution for real world Ajax applications. One of these solutions is StreamHub, a highly-scalable HTTP Comet server allowing you to stream live data to a web browser without requiring any plugins or security-policy changes. It uses a technique known as Comet or HTTP Streaming to keep a persistent connection open to the browser.

HTML, Ajax, .NET and Java clients can all receive data from StreamHub. Data can be streamed into StreamHub using the Java or .NET SDKs. Early access is available to interested parties for Silverlight, Flex, iPhone and Mobile APIs. StreamHub's highly-scalable architecture is suitable for streaming live stock quotes, real-time chat, live news delivery, online-gaming and a whole host of Rich Internet Applications.

StreamHub is available in community edition (Free), Web and Enterprise edition for commercial use. The enterprise provides additional features such Clustering, Secure HTTPS Support, .NET Adapter SDK for Streaming, Java Thick Client SDK, .NET Thick Client SDK. The clustering option is obviously not available for the web edition.

Download StreamHub community edition. Some tutorials are available to get started with StreamHub and Comet or to create a Comet Chat applications.

CKEditor 3.0 Released

2009-09-01T10:58:07Z

FCKEditor knew lots of changes recently and version 3.0 came with a new brand name, the editor is now called CKEditor where the CK meant for Content and Knowledge (the web 2.0 fragrances) instead of taking its creator initials Frederico Caldeira Knabben. Lots of new features in addition to bugfixes, amazing performance, and accessibility compliance with W3C WCAG and the US Section 508 accessibility standard marked this new release. CKEditor got a brand new UI, now you can easily change color of the editor interface to match your website's design in addition to skins, editor's options are fully customizable. CKEditor interface is available in more than 50 languages.

CKEditor is released under GPL, LGPL and MPL open source licenses. Commercial license (CDL) is also available for companies interested to integrate the editor in their software or solutions. The editor is compatible with most internet browsers and operating systems including Internet Explorer 6+, Firefox 2+, Safari 3+, Google Chrome and Opera 9.5+. Languages integration is also available for JavaScript, AFP, ASP, ASP.NET, Coldfusion, Java, PHP, Python, Adobe Air ... etc.

More information and download at http://ckeditor.com

OpenAjax Alliance Delivers Software for More Secure Enterprise Mashups

2009-09-01T10:15:49Z

SAN JOSE, Calif. - 31 Aug 2009: The OpenAjax Alliance announced today the approval and availability of OpenAjax Hub 2.0 as an industry standard for more secure Web 2.0 mashup applications. Advances in security in Hub 2.0 can help protect enterprise mashups from malicious intent, giving IT staff greater confidence in adding these features to their Web sites.

OpenAjax Hub 2.0 was developed over the past two years at OpenAjax Alliance, an organization dedicated to the adoption of open and interoperable Ajax technologies. Ajax is Web development technology based on HTML and JavaScript that runs mashups, widgets and gadgets. Mashups allow business users to drag and drop "mashed up" components to create customized Web applications in minutes.

The major addition to Hub 2.0 is a JavaScript Library for Secure Enterprise Mashups created to better protect widgets and mashups from hackers and malicious intent. It addresses concerns among IT managers that may have inhibited adoption of mashup software within companies.

"OpenAjax Hub 2.0 is a major step forward for the OpenAjax Alliance towards its mission of promoting Ajax interoperability," says David Boloker, OpenAjax Alliance Steering Committee chairman and chief technology officer for Emerging Internet Technology, IBM. "In order to realize the potential for mashups across the industry, there needs to be standards. Hub 2.0 defines a key industry standard for how widgets can be isolated into secure containers and then how widgets can talk to each other through a mediated messaging bus."

TestSwarm, Distributed Continuous Integration for JavaScript

2009-08-29T12:01:11Z

Do you believe that jQuery project is 4 years old now ? The project is even more mature with the latest TestSwarm alpha released this week, "jQuery is now being tested against 50 browsers on 9 platforms, on every commit. That's pretty much insane.", said John Resig, the creator of jQuery and TestSwarm.

TestSwarm provides distributed continuous integration testing for JavaScript. It was initially created by John Resig as a tool to support the jQuery project and has since moved to become an official Mozilla Labs project.

Actually TestSwarm is provided as a service to test few popular JavaScript libraries including jQuery, YUI, Dojo, MooTools, and Prototype. You can also download source code and setup your own swarm. TestSwarm will give you a visual interface for failed or successful tests against every single commit and different browsers, which make it really easy to locate any error and keep JavaScript libraries compatible with most web browsers.

You can see below a screencast of the TestSwarm site :

JavaScript and MVC, Why When and How?

2009-08-20T11:08:32Z

We talked previously about the JavaScriptMVC Framework - a really good JavaScript Framework project to keep an eye on. Since MVC now became a "default" feature in most web frameworks, it was interesting to explore its usage in JavaScript, Ajax, and web 2.0. The MVC pattern is mostly used in web application development to separate between design and logic and make development easier and highly maintainable in enterprise environments. Since JavaScript is excessively used in enterprise today, how could we make it better with design patterns ?

Jonathan Snook wrote an interesting introduction to MVC usage in JavaScript where he applied Model-View-Controller pattern on form validation. It's probably very complex to use in small application, but if you are writing large JavaScriupt-based application this could be with big benefits. Jonathan pointed also to other JavaScript MVC frameworks in addition to JavaScriptMVC : SproutCore and TrimJunction.

Like anything else in development, you�ll have to decide if the trade-off of this kind of separation is worth it. For small applications where you only have a few functions, this type of separation is surely overkill. The larger your application gets, though, the more it benefits from the separating code into Model, View, and Controller.

Would you use MVC in your JavaScript web application ?

OpenGoo, Open Source ExtJs-Based Web Office

2009-08-18T10:06:39Z

OpenGoo is an Open Source initiative to create a complete web Office which focus on improving productivity, collaboration, communication and management of your teams. OpenGoo support text documents, presentations, task list, emails, calendars, web links and contacts; Spreadsheets support is coming soon in future releases. OpenGoo interface is based on ExtJS, but I don't find it much user friendly compared to Google Documents, or Zoho, but it's already a great start for an open source project !

OpenGoo requires PHP 5.2+, MySQL 4.1+ with InnoDB support, and Apache 2.0+. The project rely on many other open source libraries in addition to ExtJS - including ActiveCollab, Reece Calendar, Swift Mailer, Open Flash Chart, Slimey, FCKEditor, JSSoundKit, and PEAR. Released under the Affero GPL 3 license.

You can try their online demo, but if you downloaded the package don't try to find an application launcher, Please ! Via Matt Asay, CNET, Alfresco.

SimpleCart(js), Shopping made easy with JavaScript

2009-08-17T10:07:11Z

SimpleCart(js) have just released version 2, the JavaScript shopping cart solution. SimpleCart provides an easy to use shopping cart that you can run in minutes without using databases or any programming. SimpleCart(js) is just 20kb, lightweight, fast, simple to use, and completely customizable, you will only need to know basic HTML to get it working correctly. A detailed documentation is available to help you setup, configure, and customize the shopping cart. Support Paypal and Google Checkout for payments.

JobSpice, Ajax-Based Resume Creator

2009-08-11T12:19:25Z

JobSpice is a new Ajax-based resume creator powered by jQuery. The interface is intuitive, complete, and very easy to use, it allows to create different section for your CV : Contact information, Objectives, Education, Skills, Publications ... etc. For each section a ready-to-use form is displayed with edit-in-place fields that you fill directly in your browser without having to create an account. All sections support drag and drop so you can change their display order.

The service provide different styles that you can use for your resume, or you can create your own style for designers. Registration is available if you want to save your resume or share it (username and password only), otherwise you can simply print or download a PDF on the fly. Simple and neat, and if you didn't like a section ? Just move it to Trash ! According to TechCrunch, JobSpice is co-founded by Andrew McCollum - a Facebook co-founder who served as the social network's original designer.

Notice jQuery and JobSpice code are combined in a single script, the same for stylesheets.

jCharacterfall, Small addictive jQuery Game

2009-08-08T09:16:22Z

jCharacterfall is a small and easy to play jQuery game. The game has two levels easy and hard and your mission will be to save characters which fall down by pressing the correct character on your keyboard before it hits the ground. The game goes faster after each character you save. The hard level will take a life away when you press the wrong character. The game is created with jQuery and CSS3 using the jQuery Easing plugin. Enjoy !