Archive for November, 2005
Well, we now have some beta level RSS feeds for work, you can get the OPML file here (Sorry this link is going to have to wait for a day or so). Currently I’ve added 4 feeds but the ability to add more is simple and very quick. Note that this a beta test and may or may not work / be live.
Other than that, I thought i create a constantly updated list for XMLHttpRequest methods and properties as the actual structure of the thing isnt amazingly easy to find:
Methods:
.abort() -Aborts the current request
getAllResponseHeaders() - Returns all HTTP headers
getResponseHeader(”headername”) - Gets the String of a header value
open(”method”,”URL”,async,”uname”,”pswd”) - Opens a remote URL
send(content) - Sends content
setRequestHeader(”label”,”value”) - Adds headers to the request
Properties:
statusText - Status as text (404 Not found)
responseXML - Response as XML DOM
responseText - Response as text stream
readyState - What state is the request in - (0 = uninitialized.1 = loading,2 = loaded,3 = interactive,4 = complete)
onreadystatechange - Usually a function is attached to this
status - Status as number (403/404,501)
November 25th, 2005
Looking into creating more structured and deeper javascript code by using objects. You can see what ive been doing by looking here
November 24th, 2005
Work has decided to allow Fridays (assuming other things are ok) to be a day where we do new innovative research projects.
We’re currently looking closely at building a comprehensive ajax based search system for the site and it’s going to be something remarkable. Stepping back from our current search problem, the solution seems simple but it’s taken a while to get there and some time to see it as such.
Part of the problem is trying to search data and producing a decent ranking algorithm. There are always search systems out there but it’s often the case that the kind of tweaks we need are such that developing a bespoke system is a better solution. Caching aside, the raw data comes from sql and i’ve come up with a decent ranking system for the search which produces pretty accurate results at fast speeds.
if ( fieldName like 'keyword', 20,0) + if ( fieldName like '% keyword %',15,0) + if ( fieldName like '% keyword', 10,0) ) as ranking
Now, whilst that is a reduced version it somewhat highlights my ideas about it. Matching on words in different ways produces differing ranking values, which when summed up produce and overall ranking value. Other conditions such as the popularity of the item, “custom tags”, section etc all add to the overall ranking. Most of the ranking values can be added to a small table or file and adjusted outside the code which enables fine tweaking to the search system without redeployment which is always a good thing.
The other guys are seperated out to work on the Ajax implementation, the automated (cron) system which will produce the core indexed data table and the sql database tests (we are going to trial mysql 5 and postgres). I’ve been into Ajax and the whole web2 thing for a while now and its excellent. I think this will put a new lease of life into our development and hopefully let us think of more innovative things in every day projects and maintenance to make our life and that of our users better.
November 23rd, 2005
Isn’t it crazy when you message people who sit next to you 
November 18th, 2005
Check out the latest Macromedia offering “flex 2″ at thier site. Interesting to see this and it’s got good potential. The days of the desktop and internet being seperate are numbered. High “LAN” speed broadband connections is beginning to bring into reality “INTERNetwork applications”.
November 17th, 2005
Are we starting to let Google have to much information?
It’s a question I’ve been asking myself for a while now but with the advent of Google Base, I’m somewhat worried that Google is starting to take too much information. Step back for a second and examine what they have already:
Google Groups, Google Gmail, Google Search,The Google COOKIE, Google Ads to name but a few
With all this information I’m becoming worried that they almost know too much. THe public seems to adore them without recognising that the data they now have allows them to know a lot about many people. You wouldn’t object to a few companies knowing a bit about you but i doubt you would give any company details of your emails, shopping habits, what your interested in and so on - it’s too much and essentially we don’t know what they really do with it..
I suppose the second point here is that we also run the risk that they will eventually monopolise the internet to such a degree that our reliance on them gives them the ability to start being less of the “nice” google and perhaps more of an “evil” google..
At the end of the day you have to take your hats off to them, they’ve done a remarkable job but that doesn’t mean we should sit back and let Google become the web instead of the web containing google.
November 17th, 2005
Well, took me a massive four hours to create this web site Haven’t got a lot of time so I hope people like it. I decided to do a little revamp so the homepage now includes my blog, projects and such aswell as rss xml listings. Blog backend is still using wordpress and I moved all the data to the database to make things a bit easier. Hope you like, feed back to web@webcoding.co.uk
November 17th, 2005
I was working with XSLT today and after some thought I realised that this (especially XSLT2) is turning into a proper programming language (of sorts). If you code XSLT and use the template system aggreesively you can really start to produce well structured XSLT (trust me, this is hard).
It leads me to think about introduced the well known @ comment tags. Creating XSLT with a “methodised” approach could really bring a display language into it’s own: e.g.:
<!--
@name getTableListing
@desc Gets a table listing
@param title:String - The title of the table
@author jh
-->
<xsl :template name="getTableListing">
<xsl :param name="title"/>
<xsl :if test="/ms/test = '1'">
<xsl :value-of select="."/>
</xsl:template>
This kind of approach really starts to produce maintainable style sheets. In fact we need a plugin for eclipse that also does the atypical predictive drop down approach when calling xslt functions - that would be sweet.
November 16th, 2005
Microsoft have released the .NET Framework 2.0 for your PC, you should grab it today! You can get the latest framework from Microsoft.
Expect to see more and more applications requiring this to run as .NET with it’s JIT compiler and other features look like a good thing. Now.. where’s the .NET port for Linux..
November 15th, 2005
Well I’m just about to undertake a port of my Java based RSS Ticker to Win32. IM going to attempt to replicate the BBC’s ticker in full but adapted to use the BBC’s RSS feeds. I’ll follow this post up with more news as it comes. The project will be titled, suprisingly, as “Backstage RSS Ticker for Windows”. Project will be built in C# and I dont expect it to take overly long.
I’ve only really been doing Windows programming for a few months but c# is so like Java it’s untrue. The process for the application is the same as the java one and the way c# handles XML files is impressive.
New screenshots now available of working demo: Click here
November 9th, 2005
After spending several million years trying to find a good way to handle my task load, that being work, computer home stuff and general life issues I havent had much luck… or that was until I had a spare 10 minutes and wrote an RSS feed for the job.
Continue Reading November 9th, 2005
Now in working stage. Proper installation to go but very cool. See pics here
November 7th, 2005
Well, it’s been three weeks and I probably the longest single stint I havent shaved for. Here are the crazy results of the shave which prooves that I should either have a beard or nothing but none of the other options! Here’s the link
November 7th, 2005
My Wife’s iPod decided to become corrupt. Seeking a solution and a happy wife I must look into the horrible structure that is the iPod Mini 
Result! iPod reformatted, all old music EXACTLY as it was before and a smiling wife.
Continue Reading November 1st, 2005