Time is an interesting creature of change…  The more things change the more they stay same??  To a certain degree I find that to be correct.  Internet Explorer always seems to be a few revs behind its competition i.e. Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera and Safari.  I find it interesting how Opera and Firefox are leveraging the Internet to enhance the browsing experience.  It makes a lot of sense.  This could also be attributed to the general nature of improvement – things evolve over time.

Opera’s Unite, the web server in a browser,  is a good example of a web browser that is much more than a web browser.  It is an application that uses Opera servers (or personal servers) to share content.  That is a very vague overview, but it makes a point; web browsers today are much different than web browsers of yesterday.

I think this is a trend started by Firefox.  Firefox plug-ins that integrate delicious, flickr, facebook, or any kind of social media that is web based – is a change from the norm.  Even Mozilla is graying the line between desktop and webapp.  The introduction of Weave lets users sync up their browsers across many PCs and mobile devices.  Allowing for a more constant web experience – such a great idea.

Google Chrome lacks the plug-in features, but what it lacks in that area it more than makes up with speed.  The Javascript engine is a beast.   I’m certainly surprised by the lack of plug-ins for Chrome, but I do find myself using it more and more.  It just starts up so fast; maybe that’s why there are no plug-ins.  It renders things great and is just an overall great browsing experience.  Sometimes I think Firefox lost sight of that over the development of the application.

Who would of thought that browsers would come back with such innovation?  I remember back to the days of Netscape Navigator… Communicator…  Whatever it was called!  Internet Explorer was once a leader in this field surprisingly.  The most exciting thing is that there is more to come!  We are only beginning to touch the surface of the capabilities of browsers.  HTML 5 will be revolutionary for the web.  Google Wave is in the distance.  Windows 7 is on getting ready for deployment.

This is an exciting time for the IT world.  For the non IT world too because things renew so quickly.  Innovation is not hampered by centuries of corruption.  We are truly in the Wild West of Web Development.  We are learning as we go and innovating on-the-fly.  Treads come and go, but innovation is the key to what makes technology so appealing and productive.

It only helps everyone I believe.  The more people that know about web security – a better web will be had for all.

The overview from the research paper:

Google supports HTTPS encryption for the entire Gmail, Docs or Calendar session. However, this is disabled by default, and the configuration option controlling this security mechanism is not easy to discover. (1)

What they want done:

Rather than forcing users of Gmail, Docs and Calendar to “opt-in” to adequate security, Google should make security and privacy the default. (1)

I think Google is an unfair target in this situation.  I tried getting HTTPS on my Yahoo! mail – no going.  No options.  Appending https to mail.yahoo.com only encrypts your login and not your mail session.  How about getting them to change??

I don’t know about hotmail or live mail whatever it is called now, but I suspect that is also the same.  Google is far ahead of its competition, yet, they are singled out?  I don’t get it, but I do.

Google is an agent of change and represents the future; they are held to a higher standard.  They should be applauded for all the good they have done for the web and all of us. 

I’m not sure if Google should be forced into this situation of automatically enabling HTTPS for all users; do we need HTTPS at home?  How many of their users access from home or other secured network?  This is a question that Google alone can answer.  Sure, it would be nice to protect all the people who have no clue about security, but is that Google’s responsibilty?

I don’t know.  Should Google start a new PR campaign about the dangers of using unencrypted HTTP on a public network?  That sounds like something Microsoft or Yahoo! would do.

JavaScript is a powerful client side scripting language.  It allows developers to quickly add/remove functionality.  It can be dropped in or generated from code.  In WEB 2.0, JavaScript is the backbone of creating rich user environments.  It is quite the catch 22.  Oh how I love to hate and hate to love JavaScript.

JavaScript can pass some rudimentary tasks to the client so, as developers know, this can save processing cycles.  Sometimes it can actually add processing cycles, so it definitely depends.  Saving processing time allows application to run faster for the most part.  You don’t have to wait for a complete page cycle to do tasks ala 1998.  Basically, users are not patient nor should they be patient.  They are used to the Desktop world.  I feel JavaScript helps bridge that gap for users; sometime developers/designers go overboard.

Ease of Use

Love
Javascript is easy to use.  Compatible with any web programming language: Classic ASP, .NET, PHP, Ruby, JSP.  It integrates easily.  It is fairly lightweight and the syntax is not mind-blowing.

Hate
It is a little to easy to use and users can directly access things in your page.  It gives the user more control than what they know.  Look you can easily change the background of any page in the address bar.

javascript:document.bgColor = ‘#000000′;void(0);
^ Paste that into the address bar and press enter -> changes the background

This only touches the surface of what JavaScript can do.  It can get into your web app and change things around.  I use it for quick fixes on the fly or to try different things.  You can’t rely on JavaScript it will only cause you pain.  Can you trust the DOM?  No.

JavaScript is an interesting topic still it was once vogue, faded out, and then came back (with velocity).  I think at one point in JavaScript’s history it was somewhat confused for Java, but I don’t think that is currently valid.  There are so many great JavaScript libraries out there that enhance the UI and the total web experience.

• • JQuery
  • MooTools
  • Prototype

They are even available from the Google API with no API Key which is an added bonus; unlimited connections to boot.  I don’t think a lot of these effects/plug-ins would be as robust or available if not for JavaScript libraries and the good old Goog.

I really don’t hate JavaScript, but I think it can be overused or used incorrectly (say for validation).  Sure it can help in notifying the end-user of validation issues; it should also be validated on the server side.  Web development is a many layered burrito.

Can Internet Explorer 6 be considered a modern browser? It was released on August 27, 2001 (1).  Its market share has been dropping 28 straight months to a current low of 17.4% (2).  It peaked during 2002-2003 according to Wikipedia and W3schools.  I find it amazing that still after all these years it still has market share at all.  With Firefox, IE7, Opera, Google Chrome, how has it survived?  There are so many choices why are people still using it?  Corporate policies? Ignorance?  Lack of knowledge?  From a security standpoint it is down right frightening.

It has been almost 8 years since IE6 was in a public beta test. IE6 should not be hanging around anymore. It hardly follows any spec on CSS or HTML. It is Microsoft’s this is how it should be done and falling short of expectations. Though in its time it was the browser of the Internet reaching upwards of 95% (2). I was never a fan, I used Netscape, which wasn’t much better, then Opera, and now Firefox.

Change is Hard

I don’t think we will ever know the true reason why people still use IE6.  If you do a quick search you find a ton of sites giving lots of reasons.  “They don’t know any better”, “they dislike change”, “because they have to”, “they have an old computer” (3) … all valid reasons why but that is not the point.  Change must occur.  There are so many better choices people must be informed.  This blog does not render correctly in IE6, its close but no cigar, and I think that is how people will ultimately change.  We must move forward and leave people behind so they will catch up.

The Future is Now

I stumbled across a nice little blog Lea Verou that is done totally in CSS3.  Very ambitous and is what a lot more sites should do.  We must move forward so others may follow.  We need more blogs pushing the newer standards.  I don’t think corporations can do this because they are afraid of losing sales or isolating customers; a valid point.  Is this a drawback of Corporations on the web?  That all forward progress must grind to a halt?  To a point.  Yes.

There are a lot of interesting things happening right now that I think correlate to aging technology.  The rise of netbooks hampers this forward progress.  Vista and Netbooks never going to happen.  Windows 7 and Netbooks sounds promising.  I feel we are stuck right now.  I think that is okay as things cannot be the same forever.  The one balantly obvious fact is Microsoft’s model of stitching the browser to the OS will never work.  It has to be independent to be effective.  The next iteration of Microsoft IE codenamed “Gazelle” finally sounds like they are becoming a modern browser (hopefully).  Looks like they are going to follow Google’s implementation of Google Chrome with a multi-process browser (each tab is a process).

The one certainty is that IE6 is dead and people need to be weaned off of it ASAP.

What browser do you use?

To add a Tooltip to each individual item you are going to have to loop through the control.  By setting the title attribute to whatever you want will give you the individual control to name each checkbox in the checkboxlist.  This can done be done when pulling items in or on the case of a control firing.  Whatever works for you.

' Loop through CheckBoxList and set tooltip to checked if selected
For Each item As ListItem In CheckBoxList1.Items
If item.Selected Then
item.Attributes("title") = "CHECKED"
End If
Next

This is really just a quick and dirty way to add tooltips to checkboxlist items.  If you are already pulling in jQuery or some other library I would say use one of the many Tooltip plugins out there.  If you are not using any Javascript libraries this can be a quick way to help achieve a goal.  I’m not sure if this will work in Firefox, but if you are going for crossbrowser definitely check out a Javascript library.

Hello World.

Home ownership, bills, working a lot, puppy, more bills, working around the house…  It feels like I barely have time to breathe most of the time.  I guess that is what life is about, the next phase in a way.  Less time for friends, less time for family, building my own family, my own life.  Not being in college anymore is a total departure from what I have been come accustomed to.  It is nice on one hand.. no homework or projects sucking the life out of me..  Now it is just house projects and work projects doing that.  It was a trade of sorts.  I am happy with my job and it is a lot less time consuming than school was.

I was on a walk with the dog last night and I was remembering back when I was in High School; it seems like a lifetime ago.  A different town a different day.  I remember lifting weights in my parents basement at 1:00am listening to the radio.  It was just a neat time in my life.  I didn’t have many worries or concerns; I was young.

I have seen 1:00am only a couple times since I have been out on my “own”.  I think that is good having a schedule and such.

This post has nothing and everything to do with technology.  Technology is a passion in my life and it has taken me to where I am today, but technology is playing a different role in my life recently.  Since I have less time to see people that I have seen for years technology is a great way to keep in touch and see what people are up to.  Actually a friend I had in High School contacted me on Facebook yesterday, which was pretty cool.  I haven’t seen her in years.  She has a cute kid.

I have been on Facebook, Myspace, and other social networks for many years, but I think their role has changed.  I think when I was younger they were an addition to face to face encounters and now they take that place.  It is good, I think, because otherwise I would not no communication with my hectic schedule and life.

I don’t know if I am growing up or growing old.  Maybe neither.  I am changing because life is change.  It’s definitely not easy.  There are so many sacrifices that I am not used to.  With responsibility comes sacrifice to a degree.  I gain so much from my sacrifice though.  It’s a good trade.

1)  Just use an old VCR!
2)  Just use an old computer!

End of thread…  End of post… That is where the story ends and it leaves a lot to be desired.  I have problems with both of these solutions.

1)  The VCR is archaic
2)  I don’t want to leave a computer running in a room that will be used sparingly
3)  I don’t want to wait for a computer to boot up

This can be negated if you have a cable box that already does that.  But there are still people out there without cable boxes.  Or don’t want a cable box in every room or on every device; I’m sure the cable companies want you to.  I can’t seem to justify the extra $30 + fees for the box to move away from basic cable.  Renting a cable box seems like a dirty tactic to me; in the long run they have to make a killing.

I have NetFlix so if I want to watch a movie I can just get it off of there.  Also, there is NetFlix streaming which is awesome.  I do not want to give the cable companies more money – it’s already highway robbery.

The problem with this is that projectors do not have a TV tuner.  It doesn’t know what to do with the coax connection.  Projectors cannot tune (most of them that are out there anyway).  But I believe there is a happy medium… a product by Ambery.com -> Super Video to WXGA Converter.  This device works much like a cable box expect that you can buy it and use it how you like.

It takes a coax connection (Clear QAM), it won’t decrypt any of the pay channels like a real cable box, and converts it to composite, VGA, or S-Video.  Composite will most likely be your best choice for a projector.  I believe they also have one with component connections.  If you are looking for HDMI I’m not sure what will be needed – I’m guessing an upconverter of some sort.

Clear QAM is important.  If the device is not Clear QAM then it will not be able to tune to the cable frequencies.  If you have been looking at the Analog-to-Digital most of the ones that I have found do not have clear QAM meaning they will not work with cable; you will need an antenna to retrieve the signals.

My coax cable runs into the Super Video to WXGA Converter and from there the S-Video runs into my projector.  I also have component cables for in the future.  There is also some HDMI lurking behind the panel, but I don’t think it will be needed for awhile.

This face plate comes from, LibertyCable, an interesting cable that does orders by the phone, but none-the-less has a really great product; not too many other choices out there.

So composite into the wall that runs up to the projector that is mounted on the ceiling.  It’s really that simple.

I hope that can add some clarity to a problem that can be over/under thought.  This is my geeky trade-off do-the-job kind of way of doing things.

The problem I ran into was going to browse for media it would display a Page Not Found.  I’m guessing the method it was previously calling got depreciated.

Here’s where the error occurs:

flvplayer.js

function BrowseServer()
{
OpenServerBrowser(
‘flv’,
oEditor.FCKConfig.MediaBrowserURL,
oEditor.FCKConfig.MediaBrowserWindowWidth,
oEditor.FCKConfig.MediaBrowserWindowHeight ) ;
}

Replace that with the following:

flvplayer.js

function BrowseServer()
{
OpenServerBrowser(
‘flv’,
oEditor.FCKConfig.FlashBrowserURL,
oEditor.FCKConfig.FlashBrowserWindowWidth,
oEditor.FCKConfig.FlashBrowserWindowHeight ) ;
}

Voila!  This cleared everything up for me and I was off and running…

—update—

I see this update has already been add to the comments of the project on sourceforge, but it has not made it into the source code.  I wonder if the developer has abandoned it.

—end—

Another change that isn’t a bug that I made was automatically setting the width/height of the videos instead of having to enter that with every FLV file.

add the following:

new

flvplayer.js

// set default video height/width

var vWidth = 350;
var vHeight = 250;

replace the following:

old

flvplayer.html

<body scroll=”no”>

add the following:

new

flvplayer.html

<body scroll=”no” onLoad=”txtWidth.value=vWidth;txtHeight.value=vHeight;”>

Now the width and height will automatically be populated with the setting in the config file.  Just a quick change that I thought was cool.