O'Reilly News & Commentary

Google Closure: A New Way of Developing in JavaScript - A Guide and Links to Google Closure's Mature and Complex JavaScript Framework

By Davide Zanotti
November 19, 2009

Every day million people make use of Google products and these products are written mainly using one well known language: JavaScript! What makes this online software stable, fast and responsive is a good use of the language and an excellent system of data compression and asynchronous loading. Today this power is available to everyone, since Google has released its magic tool under Apache 2 license.

Announcing O'Reilly Answers - Clever Hacks. Creative Ideas. Innovative Solutions.

By Allen Noren
November 4, 2009

We're launching the beta of O'Reilly Answers, and I'm inviting you to be part of it. In brief, O'Reilly Answers is a community site for sharing knowledge, asking questions, and providing answers that brings together our customers, authors, editors, conference speakers, and Foo (Friends of O'Reilly). O'Reilly is at the center of an amazing exchange of knowledge sharing and idea generation, and we want you to join us in changing the world by spreading the knowledge of innovators.

Four short links: 29 October 2009 - Learning Programming, Functional Javascript, Controlling Firefox, Kicking Ass (with SSDs)

By Nat Torkington
October 29, 2009

Anatomy of SSDs -- A teeth-rattlingly technical Linux Magazine article explaining the different types of SSDs (Solid State Disks--imagine a hard drive made of rapid-access Flash memory). Artur Bergman told me that installing an SSD drive in his MacBook Pro gave the greatest performance increase of any computer upgrade he'd performed since he went from no computer to one. This and more in today's Four Short Links.

Four short links: 15 October 2009 - Open Access, Right to Broadband, Machine Learning Textbook, Javascript Performance Art

By Nat Torkington
October 15, 2009

Open Access Week -- October 19-23 is Open Access Week 2009. Open Access Week marks a time to show support for "free, immediate, online access to the results of scholarly research." Organizers hope that the week of higher visibility for their movement will encourage more people to support freely accessible research data with immediate online availability as soon as such research is published. This and more in today's Four Short Links.

JXT - Javascript XHTML Tags

By Davide Zanotti
October 12, 2009

First of all, I would like to thanks Rich Tretola and O'Reilly, for the possibility to write on this blog and talking about my project (http://www.jxtproject.com), I'm very thankful for that! ...and I'm quite embarrassed, because this is my...

jQuery and AIR - Moving from web page to application (2)

By Raymond Camden
October 1, 2009

Earlier this week I blogged about a new jQuery based AIR project, Hangman. In the first blog entry I talked about the game and the jQuery code behind it. One of the main problems with the code in that entry though is that it really isn't an AIR application. I mean sure it makes use of the AIR framework. Sure it's an AIR application technically. But none of the code actually did anything - well, AIR like! We can fix that don't you think? As a followup I discuss modifying my Hangman game to make use of a database of words.

Four short links: 11 September 2009 - Healthcare Fellow, Javascript Math, Web PDF Viewer, Tweeting Kegerator

By Nat Torkington
September 11, 2009

Healthspottr Fellow -- Do you know a healthcare innovator? Nominate them for the 2009 healthspottr fellowship program, an effort that awards healthcare entrepreneurs prizes up to $250,000 for both past work and future potential to make outstanding contributions to the "transformation of healthcare in the United States." This and more in today's Four Short Links.

Four short links: 8 September 2009 - Mobile jQuery, API to Google Book Search, Open Learning, Popularity Algorithms

By Nat Torkington
September 8, 2009

jQTouch -- Want some help developing your mobile app for the iPhone, Android, PalmPre or other device? Check out jQTouch, a plugin for mobile web development that offers a library of pre-built functions. Visit the jQTouch site to get the plugin and explore a demo. This and more in today's Four Short Links.

Web Video Hack: Many Movies, One Player

By David Battino
August 14, 2009

Here's a super-easy way to play multiple movies in the same area on a webpage. No JavaScript required, and it works on iPhone too.

Yes, you can now use quite a bit of SVG in the Internet Explorer too. With Ample SDK.

By Sergey Ilinsky
July 31, 2009

The Scalable Vector Graphics technology, SVG in short, seems to be experiencing nowadays its second (or third?) birth on the web. The browser vendors are investing heavily into lifting up what they initially prototyped long time before. This is true of Opera, Firefox, Safari and Chrome, but there is no clear indication on the plans to supporting SVG from the major browser vendor - Microsoft. True, Microsoft has recently made a vague statement on its commitment to support the standards and the thrilling web-as-a-platform thing aka HTML5, but in what extent and when? And what shall we do until that time has come, or until the older IE browser park has updated?

Using Ajax and Search Referrer Info to Help Users Navigate Your Site

By Kyle Dent
July 22, 2009

Using the referrer URL to detect what brought users to your site can let you help them find what they're looking for. The almost magical asynchronicity of Ajax lets you provide additional content for users from search engines. It requires only minor changes to your site and doesn't affect the experience for others.

iPhone Web Audio Playlist Hack

By David Battino
April 24, 2009

Mobile Safari, the iPhone's web browser, has surprisingly weak audio support. But here's a hack I discovered to embed audio playlists.

Are we losing the Declarative Web?

By Philip Fennell
March 31, 2009

I saw something the other day that I was both intrigued and bothered by in equal measure. 'Mozilla and the Khronos Group Announce Initiative to Bring Accelerated 3D to the Web'. Apparently, the working group will look at exposing OpenGL capabilities within ECMAScript. The intriguing part is that, as a fan of 3D Computer Graphics and Animation this has got to be a good sign, especially if it is exposed in this way; but the bothersome bit is how people will end up using it because it has been exposed in this way. The crux of the problem for me is the question, JavaScript - what's it good for? Absolutely...

Templates Offer Rails New Path to Ubiquity

By Simon St. Laurent
December 16, 2008

Rails application templates, just added in Edge Rails, offer Rails developers the chance to spread their wings and bring Rails to new audiences and new capabilities - and might even help Rails lead the next generation of frameworks.

What is Great About the Web

By Eric Larson
October 21, 2008

I'm not sure many people really understand what is truly great about the Web and why it works. Most developers see the web as a technology platform and nothing more. HTML, JavaScript, and CSS are simply tools that must be used to satisfy requirements. The sad part is that this lack of understanding will cripple the web and hurt users.

How to create Tabs with CSS and jQuery from scratch

By Eric Berry
October 13, 2008

Learn how to create a tabbed content window using CSS and jQuery from scratch.

Turbo-charging JavaScript - Trace Trees and V8

By Kurt Cagle
September 22, 2008

Persistence, performance, rich APIs and increasing broadband connectivity are all likely to make a huge difference for this latest generation of browsers, and the quantum improvement of JavaScript capabilities due to Trace Trees and precompiled JavaScript will likely play a major part in that evolution.

Seeking Ubiquity

By Kurt Cagle
September 9, 2008

Ubiquity, the open source add-on currently in alpha and being produced by the Mozilla team for Firefox, is intended to make such a command line possible. The idea behind ubiquity is to take advantage of both the internal storage capability and online communications in order to let users both create local "scripts" written in JavaScript that can be invoked to perform certain actions and to create a centralized (and vetted) library of such scripts online that people can load to accomplish nearly any task.

Dancing with Many Languages

By Eric Larson
September 5, 2008

A friend of mine pointed out Disco, a map-reduce framework written in Erlang and using Python for writing the actual map and reduction functions. I haven't tried it just yet, but the concept is interesting in that it uses both Erlang and Python.

Reflecting Upon Chrome

By Kurt Cagle
September 3, 2008

Chrome represents a change in the way that Google is choosing to play the game, putting them on a far more equal footing with the other browser vendors, and asserting that, on the browser as on the server, they have arrived.

David Flanagan on JavaScript 2

By chromatic
August 22, 2008

Is JavaScript and HTML the new BASIC? What does the average programmer need from JavaScript 2? Is the web the new client-server model of computing? JavaScript guru David Flanagan addresses these questions and more in this interview.

Harmony comes to JavaScript, but Not Everyone's Singing

By Kurt Cagle
August 19, 2008

A long and contentious struggle came to an end this week as ECMA Technical Committee 39, responsible for the development and maintenance of ECMAScript (known universally everywhere else as JavaScript), voted to establish ECMAScript 3.1 as the next "trunk" branch for the venerable web browser language, rather than the more ambitious (and contentious ECMAScript 4.0). While the breaking of the deadlock is a momentous achievement, not everyone is happy with it.

Where are the New Client-Side Development Environments?

By chromatic
August 6, 2008

The old client-server application versus client-only application debate is back on the Web, thanks to Ajax and RIA technologies. It's missing a long-forgotten third contender, however -- one which had significant drawbacks and very significant advantages.

Clear, Concise, and Entertaining

By O'Reilly Media
August 6, 2008

JavaScript: The Missing Manual from bestselling author David McFarland teaches you how to use JavaScript in sophisticated ways — even if you have little or no programming experience. Once you the master the language's structure and terminology, you'll learn how to use advanced JavaScript tools

10 Helpings of Dojo Goodness

By Matthew Russell
August 4, 2008

In an effort to promote my recent book, Dojo: The Definitive Guide, I've been writing an ongoing column for the ONLAMP blog entitled "Dojo Goodness". The idea behind the column is to provide bite-sized chunks of useful information that are...

Tuesday's OSCON Event Schedule

By chromatic
July 22, 2008

OSCON is happening right now at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, Oregon, bringing together thousands of experts, visionaries, and hackers in the trenches to explore all that open source has to offer. Today's afternoon sessions include: - Creating Location-aware Web 2.0 Applications on an Open Source Geospatial Platform - TCP/IP Troubleshooting for System Administrators - People for Geeks - Practical Erlang Programming - Porting to Python 3.0 - Hack This App! PHP Security Workshop ...and more! For the complete event schedule visit our OSCON 2008 site.

High Performance Scalable Web Sites and Optimization

By Simon St. Laurent
July 10, 2008

O'Reilly published Building Scalable Web Sites, High Performance Web Sites, and now Website Optimization. How similar and different are these three books?

Powering Up Ajax Development Techniques

By O'Reilly Media
June 20, 2008

Dojo: The Definitive Guide — This comprehensive guide to Dojo includes a hard-hitting reference to help you build rich and responsive web applications with complex layouts and form controls closely resembling those found in the most advanced desktop applications. If you're a DHTML-toting web developer, you need to read this book.

Powering Up Ajax Apps with Dojo

By Matthew Russell
June 14, 2008

The book I've been working on for the past year, Dojo: The Definitive Guide, has finally materialized and is now available on Safari. Printed copies should be available no later than this Tuesday, June 17th -- the same day Firefox...

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