Mides 1.7 New Features and Changes

I wrote Mides originally to help me to write web applications when I am on the go.  A huge part of web application development is JavaScript.  The iPhone / iPod is an awesome device for heavy client JavaScript apps.  So as a result, I added JSLint in Mides 1.7 to make debugging JavaScript easier.

The main problem with the developer setting in Mobile Safari is that it is inaccessible to other applications.  Since one of the main purposes of Mides is to enable development with either no, or an unreliable internet connection, it wouldn’t be possible for Mides’ internal HTTP server to run and serve the mobile safari application with content.  This is the entire reason I wrote an HTTP server for Mides, so that JavaScript XHRs would work correctly for testing.

What I have done to help out with JavaScript debugging is to modify Douglas Crockford’s JSLint library slightly to make it work on the iPhone.  It helps out with outright errors, but also with many excellent tips for writing safe and readable JavaScript applications.  You can see the errors and optimizations by tapping on the burst and exclamation point icon when it appears over your JavaScript or HTML.  This feature is optional and can be disabled in the iPhone settings.

Another issue I wanted to address with a new feature is that I always forget the argument, or the exact PHP method call that I want to use, especially around MySQL.  I already had the documentation in there, but since it is a full-text search, it tends to take a while.  So I added a new feature that allows you to look up just the method signature, that is the method name and the arguments to the method.  I didn’t want to put a button in there for this, it just didn’t seem right.  I tried for a while to come up with something usable, and I think I have figured out something that works.  You just need to twist the phone to the right ( or left ) to do the code-completion on the method.  If the text before the cursor matches one or more PHP method signatures, then it will add that value in context, in line into your code with the argument types.  If it matches more than one, it will display a modal dialog that will allow you to choose from the top 5 PHP methods that match what you have typed.

One fix that a customer asked for on getsatisfaction.com/mides was that I make tabs parse properly.  I also added that in Mides 1.7, now your tabs will be properly displayed.  To create a tab, just space 5 chars into the document.

I am adding features both at the request of customers on the burgeoning community on getsatisfaction, as well as through my own usage of the product.  I probably won’t implement all of them, but please keep the suggestions coming.  They help tremendously.  Some of them are really tough to implement, but if they make it more usable I’m all for it.

One of the main issues around Mides is moving files onto and off of the phone, Apple hasn’t made it easy, and FTP is not the best solution, it is a nightmare to support, and difficult for users to set up.  I thought about having a small application that you could install on your Mac and PC that would make it much easier to transfer files with, but this didn’t seem like the best solution either.  I am actively thinking through better ways, but nothing so far has really stuck.

At any rate, I am constantly trying to make Mides more useful, I know it has been rough, but I’m glad to see that some of you are starting to get real use out of Mides.  I hope to keep making it better and eventually to rival and in some ways improve upon the desktop coding experience.

CSS 3 Keyframe Animations: A Step Too Far

I understand the desire to push the development of web based applications to the next level, and allow them to truly compete with their desktop counterparts.  I like the functionality with the new perspective properties, keyframe animations, transformations and the like.  For years we enjoyed these features as part of Flash, which could never really figure out what it wanted to be.  Was it a programming environment or some sort of design environment?  We continually had poor tools that we made the best of to do some incredible things, but I think its time to take a step back and look at what we are actually doing, and where web application development should be.

For example, have a look at this syntax for defining a keyframe animation:

@-webkit-keyframes 'wobble' {

0 {

left: 100px;

}

40% {

left: 150px;

}

60% {

left: 75px;

}

100% {

left: 100px;

}

}

This is strange in that we are now defining properties in CSS.  This is ultimately a named structure which defines the behavior of a function, that doesn’t exist to, and is not accessible from JavaScript, the supposed language for logic and control.  The problem here is that we have variables and objects that are outside of the scope of the primary programming language.  This creates a second language with overlap, and set of objects that controls and defines data for UI behavior.  So far, the only functional code in CSS is via the pseudo-classes such as :hover which can then trigger the animation or transition outside of JavaScript, but it wouldn’t stretch the imagination to see a future where CSS is doing more.

With HTML 5 we are packing more functional logic into the “structured data” tier of our web applications, which undermines MVC and creates unique problems to developing web applications that traditional desktop application developers do not face.  The complexity introduced by making developers use 3 different functional languages for UI, each with their own data objects, variables, and execution or functional code should not be underestimated, not to mention the complexity of the language they need to use for their application server and its interaction with JavaScript / CSS / HTML  languages.

As more desktop applications are moved to the “cloud” the engineering effort required to build applications approaching the complexity of Eclipse for example would be daunting, and could perhaps be more expensive than developing it natively for each platform.  This is due to platforms becoming less diverse as time goes on through things like Mono for ( C# ), Ruby and Java on Linux, these same things with native UI bridges on Windows and Mac OS X as well.

I don’t really want to see that happen, but for the web as an application development platform to mature, I think these languages need to be consolidated.  Typically in a normal windowing environment, such as Windows, Linux, or Mac OS X, there are libraries that are typically written in C / C++ that drive the UI and access to the hardware.  Previously, a developer would write code to that specific library on a specific platform for performance reasons, and be required to maintain multiple sets of controller / model code.  The performance reasons for doing this today are fading, so abstractions like the Cocoa – Ruby bridge are becoming more prevalent.  This allows a developer to implement most of their business logic once with a minimum of code dealing with specific platforms in the language of their choice.  Most of this code is usually portable to other platforms, including web.

The increasing complexity in web development, and decreasing complexity and homogeneity of desktop platforms / hardware, is setting up what I believe will be a renaissance of desktop style development, or mono-language application development.  I think, however that the new class of desktop / mobile native applications are different than the traditional applications in that their model may be in the cloud with just a data cache on the actual client.

I believe that this approach, having a cloud model with a less complex native client rendering content, represents the best of both worlds.  A robust service based model that makes tables of data accessible to the client, whatever its configuration is optimal for keeping your options open on the UI implementation.

You get the power of the local CPU, a reduction in complexity by utilizing the same language on the back end as the front end ( possibly ), and the flexibility of having the data model in the cloud by writing native clients in Ruby | Java | C++ | Cocoa.  There is a side benefit of being in closer compliance with the MVC pattern that should help reduce complexity and promote code reuse and readability.

Most web developers are doing this today, but they are doing it either by not using HTML / CSS and focusing all of their efforts on JavaScript, and treating HTML as the basic building blocks of a widget approach, building up the “windowing system” themselves, and then using another chunk of JavaScript as the “controller.” Or they are doing it by pre-generating the HTML / CSS / JavaScript on the server, and abstracting it away into their native language ( GWT as an example ).  Both approaches are fine, and they work, but they do not address the increasing complexity of the resulting applications.

I think that the most effective method for solving the problem is, as always, to meet in the middle.  XUL was an early attempt at this, but it still ended up requiring developers to use multiple languages.  What I am hoping to find time to work on is a browser that does all of the existing standards compliant stuff, but in addition to that gives developers a method to use the native windowing system through a scripting language, sort of like using JavaScript to do desktop application logic, but that is downloaded from the server and cached on the client in the HTML 5 manifest method.  The resulting application would use only that language for all UI and logic. The language would be required to bridge over the 3D engine ( OpenGL ), a widget interface that looks like native windows ( could still be web based behind the scenes ), and the sound APIs.  More importantly it would have to handle binary data as native objects and streams.

I think that currently the languages that are good candidates are Ruby, Python, and JavaScript.  Ultimately it would be best if the web application had access to the camera and other hardware with the user’s permission, but I don’t know if that is really required or desired,  Flash currently does a good job of managing permissions around this stuff, but I think more sandboxing is needed for something of the scale I am thinking of.  Microsoft tried it and failed with Active X, which was a good idea, but gave too much access to the local machine.  I’m working on it, but I’m just one guy with a day job, so it takes me a long time.  Eventually I’d like to make it an open source project, but I’m a long way off from it.

To sum it up, I think that for the web languages to keep going the way they are is courting disaster; making CSS more beefy and complicated isn’t a good solution.  Already JavaScript, through the canvas tag, is impinging upon CSS’s supposed territory, but most of this display stuff should have been there exclusively from the beginning.

There is too much overlap between CSS / JavaScript and HTML.  We will be stuck with fail whales everywhere because there are too many points of failure, and too many areas to specialize in.  Even if IE fully embraces web standards the general development pattern will be too complicated to support the pace of development, and the complex feature sets available in desktop applications.  If you look at the cost of hiring a CSS specialist, a JavaScript specialist, and a server side specialist, web startups will be more expensive than desktop or mobile native app startups.  Hiring a “mono client” specialist that can do all of the things that previously required 3 people, it will reduce to cost of application development in the way that AJAX did originally, and keep the the more ambitious web startups viable.  Today for example I saw a startup offering to do video editing through the browser, wow!  The future is super bright for web development, but I think some refactoring is necessary to fuel the next surge of productivity.

Which JavaScript Framework is the Fastest

I have been wondering for a while which JavaScript framework is the fastest. I was thinking about writing some sort of test to try to determine which one had the best speed, but I have found one that seems to work. Mootools SlickSpeed Test is a good start.

It seems to focus on DOM manipulation / access / iteration speed, rather than testing the functionality built into the frameworks. I suppose that it would be tough since each framework offers different things. When I ran the test, Prototype 1.6.0.2 was the slowest, YUI 2.5.2 was the next slowest, MooTools 1.2 was next up from the bottom, JQuery 1.2.6 was the second fastest, and Dojo 1.1.1 was the fastest by a wide margin in Safari 4 beta, albeit with some errors.

In Google chrome 2.n beta, the results were as follows:

1. JQuery 1.2.6
2. MooTools 1.2
3. Dojo 1.1.1
4. YUI 2.5.2
5. Prototype 1.6.0.2

In Firefox 3.0.6

1. MooTools 1.2
2. JQuery 1.2.6
3. Prototype 1.6.0.2
4. Dojo 1.1.1
5. YUI 2.5.2

In IE 8 ( Wow IE 8 is slow )

1. Dojo 1.1.1 ( many errors disqualified )
2. JQuery 1.2.6
3. YUI 2.5.2 ( a few errors )
4. MooTools 1.2
5. Prototype 1.6.0.2

iPhone Safari ( DNF / Could not run / Simulator)

1. JQuery 1.2.6
2. MooTools 1.2
3. Dojo 1.1.1
4. Prototype 1.6.0.2
5. YUI 2.5.2

Android Browser

1. JQuery 1.2.6
2. MooTools 1.2
3. Dojo 1.1.1
4. Prototype 1.6.0.2
5. YUI 2.5.2 ( Big Suprise )

What is interesting about these tests is that in general it seems that you should use JQuery if your development pattern involves heavy selector use. I still prefer Prototype because of the programming features that I get with it, even if the selector part is slow. IE 8 breaks a lot of the frameworks. Prototype and JQuery hold up the best it seems. I haven’t really looked at MooTools however.

On mobile devices, you should think long and hard about using any framework that involves added overhead since the devices are really slow. It seems that Dojo supports the built in Safari functions for dom navigation or something. It was wicked fast in Safari 4, but had a few errors. Overall JQuery is probably the best. I guess I’ll have to take a look at it, though reluctantly. I still need to write a test to check iterator performance though.

Safari 4 – Worker Threads… JavaScript Domination

I do hope you will pardon the hyperbole a bit, but If someone had told me a few months ago that we would have JavaScript threading, which I have been begging for for years, built into the HTML standard.  I would have thought they were crazy.  Now we have a situation where Safari 4, Firefox 3.1, Chrome ( Gears ), and IE 8 ( all in beta ) support it.

Lets look into my crystal ball for a minute.  We have a situation where browser based apps are becoming more and more capable all the time.  Where arguably the most efficient method for developing against mobile devices is to use web technologies, and where we have an insanely awesome JavaScript engine available for general use in any programming system in Chrome.  Looking down the line, I can see that JavaScript will be the primary development language once we start seeing implementations for HTML 5 Web Sockets.  It may be there, I just haven’t checked yet…

If you have Safari 4, or the webkit nightlies, you’ve got to check out this link:

JavaScript Ray Tracer

The speed of JavaScript as an interpreted language is up there with any of the others, in fact, Firefox 3.1, Chrome, and Safari 4 are wicked fast.  Soon, we may not need desktop apps at all, and Microsoft’s bungled ActiveX dream may just come to pass.  What an exciting time to be a developer!

New Internet Explorer 7 to Allow More Customization

New Internet Explorer 7 to Allow More Customization

I love the ability I have to add more functionality to Firefox. Right now I have the web developer tools so that I can check out a page's stylesheets, javascript, block level elements, etc… I have the IP tool installed so that I can see the IP address of the site that I am currently visiting. I have the Gmail notifier and the PageRank tool all incorporated in my browser, most of which modifies the status bar at the bottom of the browser and is completely innocuous. Internet Explorer has always supported plug-ins, but they were limited in their ability to change the user's browsing experience, relegating them to toolbars and the like. That is about to change.

Similar to the new Google dashboard Internet Explorer will allow small web applications to be installed in the browser, it will allow a user to modify the webpages they are viewing, create a new download manager using the .net languages, really the implications seem to be pretty huge. There is just one problem. Security.

One of my biggest fears with a heavily extensible Internet Explorer is that people will be able to use it to compromise the security of the operating system. We have heard time and time again that in Longhorn, ahem, Vista, users will be able to run Internet Explorer 7 in a sandbox of sorts, or a least privileged user account, preventing would be hackers from compromising the system. That is great for Vista, but what about on Windows XP Service Pack 2? Don't get me wrong, I think Microsoft has done as much as can be expected of anyone when patching a completely insecure OS, and they did it in record time too. Still, there have been plenty of bulletins regarding more compromises and exploits in Windows XP SP2, some regarding Internet Explorer. If you give individuals the ability to distribute code that a user can install, it is possible, by definition to compromise that user's system. I'm sure that Microsoft would be quick to point out that then it isn't their fault that someone installed software that allowed hackers to have their way with all their files, but at the same time it is very easy to misrepresent a piece of software to a computer novice who is using Windows. Just look at how far Gator / Claria has gotten sneaking software onto systems. I think that while having the ability to customize one's web browser is cool, Microsoft should consider passing on this potential nightmare. It is sort of reminiscent of Microsoft's touting of Active X and how it was going to obliterate the line between desktop software and internet applications and change the way we all use our computers. Well, it changed the way we all use our computers, we all need anti-virus / spyware / malware filters that sniff out those Active X controls and disable them. Most of us, those in the know, if we have to use windows, turn the Active X controls off altogether.

I think that Microsoft should really not include this feature, and I mean even for toolbars unless they are reviewed by Microsoft and signed by Microsoft. That is the only way to be sure users aren't getting malware. If the plug-in isn't signed by Microsoft then the OS should refuse to install it. It should be that simple. Of course it makes developing for IE that much more difficult, but Microsoft could release a developer's version of IE that was open source so that the plug-in verification could be disabled to allow all plug-ins to be installed. Everyone in the software business knows that features move boxes, but Microsoft should keep their eyes on the prize of security. They really need to get their reputation back, and integrating more sketchy features in not the best way to do this.

IE Extensibility – From the IE blog

Internet Explorer 6 Hangs with Multiple Connections

Internet Explorer 6 Hangs with Multiple Connections

At work we are using the demis map server, which by itself is an incredible application. We had built a flash based client as our application to allow people to see images overlaid on top of the vector data digested by the map server. One of the issues we had observed with the application was that it tended to hang, or stop responding when a user would ask for many images to be shown on top of the vector map, then they navigated away from the current screen. Now, since I had seen the code and it was a mess with JavaScript setting cookies that ColdFusion was supposed to read and pass to flash, and images for checkboxes, I automatically suspected the code. However, the problem was deeper than that.

The code needs to be rewritten no doubt, there are many more efficiencies to be had, but that didn’t explain the hang. I combed over the server, watching response while a user was using the application. The map server stresses the machine, because it needs a ton of I/O and it would spike the CPU frequently, but no processes went to 99% CPU utilization, and the server seemed to respond to other clients even when one of them was hung up. It was pretty clear then that the problem wasn’t with the server. To take this logic a little further, we built a load test using wget and saving the result to a file. We looped over the calls as fast as we could and we never caused the map server to hang. It performed as expected.

The next logical step was to look at the possibility of corrupt files. We did notice that we could get the map server to crash when we fed it corrupt files, but we found no eveidence that the files that we were using in production were corrupt in any way. At this point we were plenty dejected, because we had spent something like 35 hours over a couple days working on this problem and we had nothing. We performed a new ColdFusion install on a different server, we built a server with better hardware, we reinstalled the map server application multiple times, nothing seemed to affect it. We even improved the network bandwidth available to the client, still nothing. At that point I was down to either it was the code, or it was the client.

To test this theory I commented out all of the flash calls on every page and went through the application to try to cause the system to hang. I couldn’t do it, so I had effectively limited the possible cause to the Flash movie. I started to go through what the Flash movie was doing, and what could cause it to fail. The demis people told us that they had seen hangs when the map server wasn’t responding, and the Flash player was parsing XML. This lead me to try the application in Firefox, and lo and behold, it never hung up. It worked like a charm. The only problem was that our client was set on Microsoft Internet Explorer

I started about the arduous task of removing all XML parsing from the Flash code, then I tried it and it still hung. I was truly disappointed, but I rethought what was happening with the XML. It was making server calls, I realized that I could have up to 8 consecutive connections going on. At the time I thought it was nothing, but then I started trying to find out what was different between Internet Explorer and Firefox. I happened upon an article on MSDN about a known bug that Internet Explorer will hang for 5 minutes when there are 2 persistent connections to a server, and rich content is downloaded. I had found my culprit. It turns out that I had to add 2 keys to the registry. MaxConnectionsPerServer, and MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server. I set the latter to 8 and the former to 24, hexadecimal. The keys need to be DWORD keys.

That would allow 8 connections for HTTP 1.0 and 32 or so connections for HTTP 1.1. The HTTP 1.1 guidelines recommend that there only be 2 connections allowed, but if Firefox wasn’t adhering to it, why should I. I added the keys to HKEY_CURRENT_USER>Software>Microsoft>Windows>Current Version>Internet Settings and it worked like a charm. Everything was perfect. Talk about looking for a needle-in-a-haystack. I’m still amazed that I found it.

The purpose of this entry is so that no one has to go through the week that I just went through. Generally no software should be in front of the client before it is ready, but in this case we already had a client. Hopefully this will help anyone out there who is experiencing hangs in Internet Explorer. Darn Microsoft and not fixing bugs for almost 3 years!

*EDIT Make that 8 years, since IE 8 appears to still suffer from the same problem!*

Here are some helpful links that might be better at explaining than I am…

Wininet Connection Issue

IE Hang Issue

I Finally Found a Real-World Use For AJAX

I Finally Found a Real-World Use For AJAX

I'm working on this project now that makes heavy use of standard javascript, Flash, ColdFusion, and HTML. The project is using the TCallFrame javascript function to control the flash movie. Because of the nature of the project, the timing between the movie refresh calls makes using a refreshing iFrame not possible for the text information that I need to display. Likewise, the text needs to be displayed using complicated styles and colors, controlled by ColdFusion components that Flash can't handle easily.

So I was faced with a dilemma. I couldn't refresh an iFrame without throwing the timing of the TCallFrame request, combined with some javascript cookie writing, I didn't write the original application, and Flash remoting calls. Basically, nothing should happen until the cookie is written, which it doesn't, most of the time.

It eventually dawned on me, not only that the application needed to be strengthened with some type of cookie listener at the very least, and a small-scale rewrite at the most, but that I only really needed the application to think that there was no iFrame refresh, but an AJAX call using an invisible iFrame could work.

So I began working on it and it evolved into a two-part system. On one hand, the div that contained the text to be returned from the ColdFusion components needed to be continuously refreshed, which I found out after struggling with another timing issue. Eventually I realized that the variable that needed to be set in my parent window was empty at the time of the screen refresh because the iFrame hadn't finished loading yet.

So what I had to have happen was for the iFrame to make a javascript function call to the parent once the variable was written. Once I had that accomplished it was easy to have the checkboxes that called the TCallFrame javascript call the function to refresh the iFrame. It worked wonderfully, but unfortunately it still caused a timing issue with the main movie. It delayed the writing of the cookie by a hair. Still it was cool to see, that I had an actual use for AJAX.

I have actually found other uses for it, but none as clear cut as that. Flash just wasn't flexible enough. I'm not reversing myself, I still think that Flash should be most developers' first choice when it comes to remoting, but in a pinch AJAX is allright!

Microsoft IE Developer Toolbar

Microsoft IE Developer Toolbar

I didn't even know about this and it has been out for about a month. Microsoft has heard the cries from web developers used to using Firefox's developer toolbar extension. While it is often pretty easy to validate your pages using Firefox, see how your block level elements are behaving, and look at the DOM of your page using the Firefox extension, it has been almost impossible with the awful lack of tools for Internet Explorer. They have finally addressed this.

The new IE Developer Toolbar has almost everything that its Firefox adversary has, except for the strong javascript debugger. This is very upsetting especially considering the lame debugging that is built into IE today, but with the relative dearth of tools for internet explorer, anything is welcome.

I have found the toolbar to be extremely useful. The DOM inspector is wonderful in that it highlights the selected item if visible to indicate for which item you are viewing properties. If you have to build applications or websites using Internet Explorer at work, I hope you are designing for Firefox at home, no… I guess you always have to design for Internet Explorer, then you will love the new toolbar. I'd suggest that you download it and install it right away.

IE Developer Toolbar

Adobe ColdFusion MX?

Adobe ColdFusion MX?

Now, I am almost never one to stand in the way of business progress, however this doesn't seem to be a good day for application developers. There are those who believe that with more capital, everything gets better, but this developer is not one of those people. Does Adobe have better marketing than Macromedia? Arguably, no they don't. Has Macromedia done a great job of marketing ColdFusion? No, they haven't. Will a combined Macromedia and Adobe do a better job than an unacquired Macromedia? Probably not. I don't think that Adobe will put the resources that are needed behind future ColdFusion development. It is just too far away from their core business competency. So just where will ColdFusion go?

It makes sense for Adobe to sell off ColdFusion and Flex, kill Freehand, GoLive, and ImageReady, and roll Dreamweaver and Fireworks into their Creative Suite in their place. It also makes sense for them to continue Breeze development as that is well within their abilities. Flash will probably thrive under the combined company as should RoboHelp, etc…

I think that if Microsoft is paying attention, and I believe they are, it makes sense for them to acquire ColdFusion from Adobe and combine it, Flex, and XAML into one ubiquitous language. It wouldn't be too hard to map ColdFusion to XAML and vice-versa. The benefit to Microsoft is that they could phase out ASP altogether and embrace the tag-based ColdFusion as their web development language of choice. After all it is in line with their corporate vision which is apparently to let web developers make desktop applications as easily as they currently build web applications.

While I don't particularly relish the idea of Microsoft owning my current development lanugage of choice, they do know a thing or two about marketing code, and it wouldn't be difficult to have it run on top of the .net framework and Java so that it could be portable. It would of course be a little faster on the .net framework. Besides, Microsoft ColdFusion just sounds better than Adobe ColdFusion. Having used the VisualStudio beta for C#. I really like it. I could get used to this being my development environment for ColdFusion. It would also be nice for Microsoft to release a VisualWebStudio for Mac and PC centering around ColdFusion. While we are speculating, it would also be nice to have a .net framework for Mac and Linux, but this could take a while.

So, lets assume that Adobe has a clue of what they have in ColdFusion. They could begin to use it to develop their own desktop application language around Flex and the standalone Flash player. This is why Redmond's ears will be perked up today, and for the next couple of years. Adobe has interest in delivering 3D over the web, and Flash makes a good vehicle for this. It would be possible to either expand the Flash player into a Flash runtime and use ColdFusion as the language to create all sorts of juicy applications that spanned the web and the desktop. They would then be in a position to deliver a rapid development environment for desktop applications and would compete squarely with Java and Microsoft in this space, albeit with a much better interface aestetic.

I hope the latter is what will happen. I belive that competition in all aspects of technology are good for consumers and the overall business. Still, either way ColdFusion has either a very bright future, or a very convoluted future. I find it interesting that none of the analysts looking at this acquisition are looking at ColdFusion. I guess that is because it isn't the primary business driver for Macromedia, and Adobe is all about graphics, which is my primary concern.

There is a third option, and one which looks really good to me. It is possible that Adobe will simply allow ColdFusion to languish and eventually the product in that form will atrophy and die. This would be bad, but there is an open source movement for an OSS version of ColdFusion. It would be sweet to see this because it would become more robust, more object oriented, and a lot faster. It would also be more secure because of all the eyes on the code. ColdFusion could become an underground hit, much the way that PHP has been getting a lot of attention recently.

Enter Apple. Has anyone been paying attention to the Apple Widgets in the new Tiger? Does anyone get how important this is? Web developers can create really sexy looking desktop applications as widgets using JavaScript and CSS. This has massive implications as there is already a significant installed base of JavaScript developers, and many of them happen to be pretty good at CSS. JavaScript has been seeing a revival of late and I expect that it will continue. Soon delivering cool applications over the web to Mac users will be easier than it is to learn C# and do it for Microsoft users. Enterprises will feel good about building enterprise applications that use these widgets to communicate with Java applications on the back end. Many people are switching to the Macintosh because they feel more secure running Linux than they do Windows, and this is another reason for businesses to embrace the Mac, although many of them don't realize it yet.

All of this will marginalize the need for PC users to upgrade to Longhorn. Microsoft already is going to have a tough sell to businesses based on the stagnation of hardware sales and the poor business case for upgrading. Most large organizations are still running Windows 2000, and they are going to tell them that they have to upgrade every system company wide in order to run this? If they can get away with it, I'd expect most organizations to upgrade to Macintoshes because of their lighter IT demands and more granular controls over user access.

Microsoft has to get XAML right, and it makes sense for them to buy their only real competition which is ColdFusion, especially now that it is owned by an ally who is almost incapable of understanding it, or its fanatical developer base (of which I am proud to be a part). They would probably let Microsoft have it for a song, and ultimately ColdFusion would be a more robust language with wider appeal. This would be a good thing. But Microsoft really needs to get their act together today if they hope to sell even one copy of Longhorn Server. If CF were bundled in the IIS package with this, I would most certainly upgrade to it. I think that most developers who don't have an irrational hatred of Microsoft would too, if it were a serious effort to make both CF and IIS better. My major gripe with Microsoft is that they make consistently boneheaded business decisions, missing the boat entirely in some places, and jumping out with an idea that is ten years ahead of its time in others. I don't hate them for obscure philosophical reasons, in fact I don't hate them at all, I just think they aren't getting the best out of their products or their developer community, and aren't offering their customers what they want.

Dirty Tricks in Web Advertising

Dirty Tricks in Web Advertising

Contrary to what most people believe, web advertising is in its infancy. Many companies are still trying to figure out what works, and what doesn't. Their experiments are understandable, they are trying to figure out an audience that spans all known geographic, ethnic, social, economic, racial, religious, ideological, and moral boundaries, phew! That was a mouthful. There are still even newer marketing demographics and sub-demographics being created while they are trying to figure out how to target the old ones. How on Earth is a marketing / web development studio supposed to get a grip on all of it. The answer is elusive, but first I will say what won't get the job done, then we'll explore some ways to get it done.

The way advertisers won't get a grip on web niches is by utilizing dirty tricks in advertising. This includes, but is not limited to, pop-ups, pop-unders, javascript pop-ups, unwanted javascript redirections, flash pop-ups, spam email, and tacky, poorly designed banner ads. Let's look at these one at a time. There has never been a time in the history of the internet where unsolicited pop-up advertisements have been a good thing. As indicated above, this was forgivable because the internet was new, and this was a new way to reach people. Once, however, people began to hate this method of advertising, and demonstrate it by installing software to prevent pop-ups it should have stopped, right. Wrong, instead web marketers began to circuimvent users' defences and use pop-under ads, or advertisements that would come up and hide behind your top browser window, waiting until you closed your browser. Great idea right?!!? Wrong, that is like letting that one advertising exec with the awful ideas in the office get a shot at a limted run of ads. For example, he comes up with A new cola bottle with an overweight child pouring a bag of sugar with the cola label into his mouth, with a moniker reading cola making a big America even bigger. This runs in limited fashion despite the passionate pleas of every focus group it is exposed to. Cola sees a radical drop in its sales numbers, but instead promotes this guy to creative director, thereby putting the ads on billboard all over the country. Eventually Cola goes out of business, a smouldering ruin of its former greatness.

That should never happen in real life. That is the absurdity of trying to irritate users into adopting your product, it just doesn't make sense, and will end up making a company bankrupt. But it didn't stop there, the anti-pop up software got smarter, and was better able to block pop-under, and javascript pop-up windows. Now, there are always going to be an element of shadyness associated with some companies. That is as true in reality as it is on the web, hence unwanted redirections. But there were and are legitimate companies that have used, and are still using these tactics. Surely by now these companies have gotten the message that users don't want a bunch of pop-ups littering their desktops; and they have. The problem now is that in an effort to be less invasive, they have adopted CSS and Flash pop-ups. Talk about dense! People don't want to wait to get to their content. These are barriers, just like splash pages. People will click away.

Spam email is probably the most reviled thing the internet has ever produced, however companies continue to do it, and they put their (click here to remove yourelf from our list) in like 6pt. font at the bottom of their email surrounded by disclaimer information. Most users at this point aren't even looking at the garbage that comes across in their email. They either delete it immediately, or they look at the ad, remember the vendor so that they can never ever buy anything from them again.

Tacky banner ads are the least of the evils described in this article, but they can be just as distracting as pop-ups. Flashing, excessively moving or audible banner ads are no-nos. If you want people to be able to view your website at work without their bosses going nuts, you should make it look professional so that it blends in with the rest of their applications. Not draw attention to it so that they get a repromand for spending too much time on the net.

So, now that we have explored how not to advertise on the net, let's see how to advertise. When I go to Froogle