Brian Fitzgerald

Take a look at this column (support materials) discussing the iPod shuffle's audio supremacy.

Webnote

The Sith Sense

Wow. This is going to be big. CFAjax is the AJAX implementation for coldfusion. It allows javascript to directly call ColdFusion methods without refreshing the page. The possibilities of not having to submit and request pages blows my mind.

What is Netscape? As far as I can tell, it's been reduced to nothing more than an ISP and it's new browser is just one more branded application. The new Netscape 8 browser that came out yesterday drew some attention early as it was going to be based on Firefox, but has drawn more attention in the last couple of days because it also uses the Internet Explorer engine for other sites. Less than a day after it has been released they have issued a security patch for it. It's really sad that such an important name in the history of the web has been reduced to a messed up browser shell put out by a net-zero competitor.

How do you get columns to stretch the length of the page in CSS? There are many ways I'm sure, but the one I use most often is using background images to give the appearance of columns. There is a new article about this on Macromedia's site and also the article I originally learned the technique from at A List Apart.

The New York Times ran a story yesterday discussing Rich Internet Applications

Massimo's Corner has published a well-documented and thought out javascript form validator.

NewsPipe is a sourceforge project that will take a RSS feed and allow you to process it in your email client of choice.

Take this quiz to find out which operating system your personality most matches.

ThinkMac updated the NewsMac Pro news aggregator to version 1.0.2. This aggregator has a real slick interface and allows for syncing with Palm Pilots (via iSiloX). I tried it out, but didn't see enough to encourage me to switch from NetNewsWire. Perhaps it's in there, but it was frustrating that in order to read news I had to go through each news "channel" individually. I couldn't say "just give me all unread news regardless of channel (subscription)". If you don't already have an aggregator you love though, you may want to give it a look.

Here's some commercials for Firefox that a french advertising firm put together. Part of goal was to create commercials usable interntaionally -- thus the lack of dialog in any of them.

FrogBlog offers the best tip for logo design

h2. One: AJAX

• Stands for “Asynchronous JavaScript and XML”
• PanicGoods
• Google Maps
• “GTDTiddlyWiki”:shared.snapgrid.com/gtd_tiddl…" (based on “TiddlyWiki”:tiddlywiki.com)

h2. Two: Color Sites

• “ColourLovers”:colourlovers.com
• “Color Schemer Online”:www.colorschemer.com/online.ht…
• “Color Scheme Generator”:wellstyled.com/tools/col…
• “ColorCombos”:www.colorcombos.com
• “I Like Your Colors”:www.redalt.com/Tools/ily…
• “ColorMatch 5K”:www.colormatch.dk
• “Adam Polselli”:www.adampolselli.com
• (I can’t find the site that I mentioned that allows you to upload a photo and get a scheme from it)

h2. Three: Micro-Content Driven Web

“j3t05082005.mp3”:www.brianfitz.net/j3t050820…

If you want to be able to export iPhoto galleries as beautiful customizable pages, check out the free and just updated Galerie 5.1beta.

I was reading through my aggregator this morning and came across some postings that didn't really have anything to do with things that I subscribe to. This didn't bother me as I find some of the most interesting things through these types of posts, but I did wonder where they came from. I looked at the source and it was the Macromedia aggregator. This particular news feed is one of those I am aggregating from a source that is already an aggregation. My first split-second thought was that these things shouldn't be up there since they are not macromedia or web-development related, but then I considered my own blog. I have no idea in what contexts it may be getting aggregated. When I post off topic, it is still on-topic in the realm of my blog and feed as it concerns me somehow, but if for example my blog where aggregated with other web developers, many of my postings would be very off-topic in that realm and I wouldn't even know it. As a micro-content provider, one never knows how your content is being grouped elsewhere on the web.

Is this just going to be a characteristic of the new web or will the idea of tagging and categorizing micro-content become increasingly important? Is it the responsibility of a content provider or the one who aggregates to get clean relevant information?

Here's a section I just came across called "The JavaScript Diaries" at webreference.com that looks like it would be a good way to get started.

Firefox engineer comments on Apple/KHTML: Lead Firefox engineer Ben Goodger has spoken out in defense of Apple over the company's suggestion that the existing KHTML rendering engine be replaced by its own-developed derivative rendering engine (WebCore) for Safari, reports Macworld UK...

This story interested me because my first reaction when I saw that Apple would like to drop KHTML and go forward with webcore as a independent web renderer was a negative one. If Ben says that this is a good thing (or at least not a bad thing) then I certainly have no reason to criticize it.

If you care about education and the internet and how it's being used in schools with students, you really need to be reading Will's continuing discussion about blogging vs journaling...

Arstechnica has published an interesting history of the GUI.

Macworld: U of Maine to require iBooks for teachers-to-be: The University of Maine College of Education and Human Development has announced plans to require students working towards Maine teacher certification to have Apple iBooks. The program dovetails with the state of Maine?s own Learning Technology Initiative, where all students and teachers in seventh and eighth grades in Maine public schools also have iBooks.

From jeffcoughlin.com: Simon gave a great overview of his presentation on "Design Patterns and CFML" and Tim spoke quickly about his favorite new features introduced in Coldfusion MX 7.

Simon's full presentation can be seen at the upcoming CFUNITED conference next month.

To view today's recorded Breezo go to http://macromedia.breezecentral.com/p14693917/.

In the ongoing blogging vs journaling debate, a student chimes in with good words

Flex is Macromedia's solution (expensive solution) to allow normal object-minded programmers to create flash applications (RIAs). For examples of Flex applications, see Flex Authority.

Want to use great looking type on the web? Try the newly released sIFR 2.0 (a combination of javascript, CSS and Flash).