Rails webdevelopment blog has a great tutorial that explains how to use the new Effect.Queues in the popular script.aculo.us JavaScript library. Effect queues allows you to queue up multiple effects on a DOM node or group of DOM nodes.
Some great photoshop and cartoon work over at When Graphic Designers Get Bored.
Lead Firefox developer Ben Goodger give us The Inside Track on Firefox Development that includes a roadmap that outlines some of the improvements that will be made to Firefox 2.0. It looks like the biggest enhancement will be to the bookmark management system. Hopefully we’ll see some innovation in this space. Bookmarks work the same in every browser I can remember from the days of Netscape 2.0. The only real change was when MS decided to call them ‘Favorites’ ;-)
Stephen Soderbergh’s new film ‘Bubble’ hits theaters, TV, DVD on same day today. What a neat way to release a movie and as you can expect, the theatre industry is not too happy. In fact many theatre chains have chosen not to play it! They are unhappy that they are not getting their traditional first rights to display the film.
Hmmmm. Maybe if you improved the movie going experience you wouldn’t have to worry about movie going fans saying “I think I’ll just buy this one on DVD”.
This has got to be one of the greatest Firefox Extensions aimed at the Web 2.0 developer. FireBug is a docking pane that essentially replaces the Firefox DOM Inspector, JavaScript Console and HTTPRequest Sniffer all in one fell swoop. The pane docks against the document loaded into the current tab or window and shows information only for that page. The best part is that the DOM inspector included with this tool is far simpler and more powerful than the one installed with Firefox. Go get this one now!
A new feature has been added to the latest nightly builds of Safari/WebKit. The Web Inspector is a tool that lets you browse the live DOM hierarchy in a compact HUD style window. You can find out more about this tool for web developers by reading Surfin’ Safari’s article titled - Introducing the Web Inspector.
I know I shouln’t be such a chicken when it comes to open source software, but for some reason, I’ve been reluctant to install Open Office on my PC. I’m not sure why, but I recently discovered Portable OpenOffice.org which allows you to run the free alternative to MS Office on a thumbdrive. So far I’m very impressed! Good interroperability, nice consistant UI and some great tools all to be had for the cost of a free cup of coffee!
Are you unsure about using Ruby on Rails for your next web project? Here are some answers to the Questions Ruby on Rails skeptics ask.
Web develolper Pete Freitag offers a nice concise AJAX Tutorial using Prototype - a popular JavaScript library. The tutorial walks you through the steps to create a live zipcode lookup widget.
Quick Lookup is simply the most amazing web programming reference I have come across in quite a long time. It is an AJAX enabled tool that allows for quick lookup of syntax for PHP, MySQL, JavaScript and CSS. You can load it into your sidebar for easy access.
