posted by Robert on Oct 3
PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) is commonly used for building Web applications. With PDT, Eclipse is providing technology that can be used as is by developers or serve as the basis for value-added products manufactured by tools vendors. Read the rest of this entry »
Sphere: Related Contentposted by admin on Sep 18
Many of Ripe Web Design customers are asking what is PHP and what is ASP and what is the difference, we found that there are many posts trough internet about this.
Both ASP and PHP are languages used to build Dynamic Web sites that can interact with Databases and exchange information. ASP (Active Server Pages) is from Microsoft and is used with IIS (Internet Information Server) that runs on Microsoft Servers. PHP (PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is from Rasmus Lerdorf, who originally designed this parsing language which was later modified by different people. It runs on Unix and Linux servers and it also has an NT server version. Read the rest of this entry »
Sphere: Related Contentposted by Robert on Sep 17
The Inquirer is reporting we should soon see Google’s PowerPoint clone, named Presently. Now, before you run around all excited–like a child with their underpants on their head–consider that we’ve heard these rumors since February.
Still, where there’s smoke there’s fire and the Inquirer has plenty of smoke…
Google is presently touring publishing houses to show Presently, so even if they make hacks sign an infuriatingly Web 1.0 non-disclosure agreement, an announcement can?t be far off.
As a Google Apps user, I’m excited that one day I can finally uninstall Microsoft Office.
Source: http://www.webpronews.com
Sphere: Related Contentposted by Robert on Sep 11
I still don’t fully get the whole Web operating system concept. Why run an OS inside a browser, when your browser is running in an OS to begin with? But AjaxWindows, a Web OS and application suite that launched today, makes a very good case for the Web OS. It’s not ready yet for adoption by the world at large, but the idea behind it, and some of the features in it, are too interesting to write off as just yet another science project.
Ajax13, the company that makes AjaxWindows, was originally started to create Web-based applications. It made a word processor, sketching program, and a presentation app. Founder Michael Robertson realized that making yet more productivity apps (see also: Google, ThinkFree, Zoho, etc.) wasn’t a Most Likely to Succeed strategy, so he’s rolled these apps into an ambitious Web-based operating system. It worked for Microsoft, I suppose.
It looks like a desktop OS, but it’s really a very fancy Web service.
The system even has a Windows-like Start menu.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
AjaxWindows stores its files in Google’s GMail. Considering Gmail’s free storage (over 2.5 GB), that’s clever, even if Google wasn’t consulted for this application. AjaxWindows, and its native apps, store everything except music files in GMail (Music is stored on MP3Tunes). Syncing your local PC’s data files to your online workspace is a snap with the OS’es built-in Synchronizer function, which neatly runs without requiring a standalone app download. Your workspace can also get synchronized with your browser’s bookmarks, and to even your desktop background and your Windows startup sound.
Beyond AjaxWindows’ own apps, your workspace comes pre-configured with links to several Google apps (such as Docs, Calendar, and Maps), as well as to Zoho Start (review) and other useful Web 2.0 apps like Meebo. But these non-Ajax13-made applications are not integrated into the experience. Clicking on Google Docs opens up the Web app in a new browser window, and files stored in Docs aren’t visible on the AjaxWindows file explorer. That’s ironic, considering where they are stored. Likewise, you’ll need a separate signup for non-Google-base apps, like Meebo.
There’s also an element of NetVibes with AjaxWindows. You can add widgets, like RSS feed windows and small games, to you desktop. Unfortunately, widgets written for popular platforms like Netvibes and Pageflakes don’t work in the AjaxWindows system.
AjaxWindows is an interesting experiment. For users who want to take their desktop with them without carrying any hardware, it’s an incomplete if tantalizing solution. The synchronization feature makes it a usable tool if you’re ok with using only the Ajax13 Web apps, since unless I missed something, the other apps on the desktop can’t access the synced files. (If you really want to avoid lugging a computer, you could also put your apps and working data on a USB thumb drive and get much of the same benefit.) Until more apps, their storage systems, and their sign-on mechanisms get more tightly integrated into this Web platform (see the OpenSAM initiative), AjaxWindows — and other Web-based “operating systems” — will likely remain a curiosity. This is, though, a decent start towards building a truly computer-free personal computing platform.
Source: http://news.com.com
Sphere: Related Contentposted by Robert on Aug 16
The robots.txt analysis tool at Google Webmaster Central received some much-needed updating, and should be more effective for webmasters today.
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| Google Teaches Robots Tool About Sitemaps |
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Google followed up webmaster feedback about the need to upgrade the Webmaster Central robots.txt analysis tool with a new version. The latest update makes the tool capable of recognizing sitemap declarations and relative URLs.
The Webmaster Central blog announced the update and its implications. Webmasters can see if their sitemap’s URL and scope test as valid, Google said.
Expanded reporting options for the analysis tool look much more useful. It will tell if multiple problems per line of robots.txt exist, instead of just stopping with the first problem noticed. Google said they have also improved analysis and validation.
We’ve previously noted two new features added to the Robots Exclusion Protocol, and Google mentioned them again in their most recent Webmaster Central post.
The unavailable_after META tag allows webmasters to control the presentation of pages in search results. If a webmaster tags a page as being unavailable_after a given date, it will not be returned in response to a relevant query after that time.
Google also noted the new X-Robots-Tag directive for non-HTML content. Items like PDFs and videos can be controlled with unavailable_after just as web pages can.
Unavailable_after appears to be a response to companies that have complained of Google’s indexing and presentation of content that the content owners want to control. It provides a compromise between not indexing content at all, and having content available forever for searchers.
News organizations like AFP and Copiepresse have sued Google over its indexing practices, but declined to make robots.txt edits to keep the search engine out of their content. The page-level controls Google now recognizes with the unavailable_after and X-Robots-Tag directives should suit these groups, assuming they choose to use them.
Source: http://www.webpronews.com
Sphere: Related Contentposted by Robert on Aug 10
LAS VEGAS–Thursday morning at BH, Window Snyder and Mike Shaver of Mozilla released new tools for testing their browser, Firefox, and other popular browsers, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer, Apple Safari and Opera. The tools include a protocol fuzzer by Michael Eddington, and a Javascript fuzzer by Jesse Ruderman. Fuzzing is a method by which researchers randomly simulate common conditions under which most browsers fail.
In an interview before the presentation, Snyder said that Firefox enjoys a community of users in the millions worldwide. Of these, there are about 10,000 users who regularly download what are called nightly builds. Whenever the Mozilla security team puts out new fixes in the nightly builds, it’s these 10,000 users who test the fixes on a wide variety of machines and under a wide variety of circumstances. Thus, Mozilla is able to roll out its security patches faster and with fewer headaches.
Because Mozilla enjoys a very enthusiastic community of users, the company decided to put out tools in the hands of its users that’ll help make future releases of Firefox even stronger. After thinking about it, it decided the tools could be used on all browsers, not just its own because many similar vulnerabilities affect other browsers as well. The tool can be downloaded from Mozilla..
Source: http://news.com.com
Sphere: Related Contentposted by Robert on Jul 25
Google AJAX Search API now has image search results reports the Google AJAX Search API blog.The basic code is this:
var searchControl = new GSearchControl();
searchControl.addSearcher(new GimageSearch());
With Image Search you can expect:
More information is available at Google AJAZ documentation. Post your suggestions and feedback at Developer’s forum.
Source: http://www.webpronews.com
Sphere: Related Contentposted by Robert on Jul 25
Google provided a handful of additions to their Spreadsheets product, and fixed a couple of issues.
Speaking of addition, Google coded a new feature called Quicksum into the Spreadsheets. By selecting cells, Quicksum displays their total in the lower right corner of the page. Garett Rogers at Googling Google noted how this allows for calculations without having to write a formula first, which should benefit new spreadsheet users.
Google also added what they call a ’sortbar’ to Spreadsheets. The sortbar is a draggable, horizontal break between column headers and data, they noted, with each column having a place in the sortbar for fast sorting without leaving the Edit tab.
By dragging that sortbar down, users have the option to freeze rows in Spreadsheets, a feature that makes editing a lengthy spreadsheet document much easier. Dragging and releasing the sortbar performs the freeze, with rows below the sortbar able to scroll freely.
Collaborative editing will be color-coded by user. As multiple people edit a spreadsheet, each cell a person edits will be assigned a color, making it easier to tell who has done something on a sheet.
Google expanded the viewability of Spreadsheets to any browser, but only supported browsers will be able to edit a spreadsheet. Their product team also fixed uploading issues with data and graphs that had been reported by users of the service.
http://www.webpronews.com
Sphere: Related Contentposted by Robert on Jul 19
“The PHP development team hereby announces that support for PHP 4 will continue until the end of this year only,” project organizers said on the PHP Web site on Friday. “We will continue to make critical security fixes available on a case-by-case basis until Aug. 8, 2008.”
The announcement came on the third anniversary of the launch of PHP 5, and project programmers said they want to focus on the upcoming PHP 6. PHP 4 was released in 2000.
“This announcement ensures the whole ecosystem moves forward together,” including those who build PHP, those who use it directly, those who employ it in higher-level applications such as Drupal or Joomla, and the Web site hosting companies that let customers use PHP, said Andi Gutmans, co-founder and co-chief technology officer of Zend, a start-up that commercializes PHP. PHP 5 “answers the challenges of building modern Web applications: Web services support, Ajax, XML, object-oriented programming.”
But retiring widely used software can be difficult, as Microsoft found when trying to end support for Windows Me and Windows NT 4. Not everybody is eager to see PHP 4 fall by the wayside.
“PHP 5 has been, from an adoption point of view, a complete flop. Most estimates place it in the single-digit percentages or at best the low teens,” Matt Mullenweg, the founder of the WordPress blogging software and site, which uses PHP, said on his blog. “Now the PHP core team seems to have decided that the boost their failing product needs is to kill off their successful one instead of asking the hard questions: What was it that made PHP 4 so successful?…Why wasn’t PHP 5 compelling to that same audience? Are the things we’re doing in PHP 6 crucial to our core audience or simply ‘good’ language problems to solve?”
In an interview Monday, Gutmans disputed the PHP 4 popularity statistics, saying that 80 percent of Zend’s customer base has already moved to PHP 5 and that the PHP community was “conservative” in choosing the date for ending PHP 4 support.
“What we find is that everyone who is doing active development has already migrated,” Gutmans said. “What’s skewing the numbers is there are lot of legacy applications on PHP 4 that just work, and nobody wants to change them.”
Yahoo and Facebook, two prominent PHP users, have moved to PHP 5, Gutmans said, in part because of better performance.
“The end-of-life date for PHP 4 inside Yahoo is much more aggressive than the public date,” said Rasmus Lerdorf, the original PHP author and now a Yahoo programmer.
Ending PHP 4 support is driven by practical necessity, Lerdorf added. “We are an open-source project with limited resources. With PHP 6 on the way, we don’t have the resources to support three different versions of PHP at the same time,” he said.
Gutmans also argued that PHP, while changing, still places a premium on being accessible. “Our foremost goal is ease of use,” though another is “expanding the language, making it more suitable to some of the new trends in the Web space like Web services and Ajax,” Gutmans said. “We constantly have to balance those. Our decision-making always leans toward ease of use.”
One reason for ending PHP 4 support is to focus on PHP 6, which Gutmans said is due in about a year.
PHP 6 features include better international abilities, in particular support for Unicode character sets that include not just Roman alphabets but also Arabic, Korean, Chinese and many others. Another feature is better security.
“Certain features we decided not to support anymore. We believe they can lead to bad security practices,” he said. “We’ll make it clear to users how to make migration easy.”
Source: news.com
Sphere: Related Contentposted by Robert on Jun 6
Moderated by event organizer Danny Sullivan he gave a brief introduction of the panelists (Vanessa Fox (Google), Amit Kumar (Yahoo! Search), and Peter Linsley (Ask.com), and Eytan Seidman (Microsoft), like the geeks in the room needed to be reminded.Beginning first was Eytan Seidman (Microsoft), the Lead Program Manager, who stressed on the fact duplicate content fragments your rank. Also, to be maintained is simplicity in session parameters. Duplicate content is okay for different locations if the content is unique. An important pointer was to ‘always use client-side redirects’.
When someone asked, “How do you avoid having people copy your content?”.
Seidman: All my experience is based on sites I helped administer. One thing is a simple method - tell people that if they use your content, they should attribute it to you. You can also block out types of crawlers, detect user agents, block unknown IP addresses from crawling.
Microsoft handles duplicate content via aggressively searching throughout for session parameters while also tracking parameters during crawl time.
Peter Linsley Ask.com’s Senior Product Manager for Search proposed using a copyright or even a creative commons notice to ward off duplicate content. Another of his pointer was to make content difficult to be molded any other way so that it maintains its uniqueness. if at all none of these work, take legal action.
Next to speak was Yahoo! Search’s Senior Engineering Manager, Amit Kumar. Yahoo extract links while crawling through sites but maintains a policy where they do not take content from pages they know are mere duplicates. However, Amit stated 4 reasons Yahoo! considered legit for duplication:
Finally, it was Google’s very own Vanessa Fox who talked about duplicate content in the context of an episode from “Buffy the vampire slayer”. In one episode, there were two Xanders who had to be joint to end the problem. However, there was another episode where there were two Willows, this time the problem wasn’t the same as the previous one as in this situation, on Willow was good while the other Willow was evil, so the evil one had to go.
Ending the sessions was a whole lot of questions between the panel and invitees. Some of the most importan pointers are:
Peter: For the most part, a meta refresh is the same thing as a 301.
Vanessa: Use robots.txt to get rid of duplicate content
Vanessa: Tracking URLs and parameters is easy by linking to the canonical version to prevent dilution.
Though the Search Engine engineers were anti the suggestion most people attending were in favor of digital signatures to prevent content scraping.
Does someone have a picture of Matt McGee’s face when Vanessa mentioned Buffy the vampire slayer? Another interesting feature was that only Microsoft’s Etyan Seidman’s Powerpoint worked well.
Source: http://www.webpronews.com/
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