Web Info & Tutorials

Brian McCallister says that conversation started, innocently enough, discussing serialization strategies for web services... and out came BadgerFish:

BadgerFish is a convention for translating an XML document into a JSON object. Once you've got your XML document represented as a JSON object, it's easy to manipulate from within Javascript. If you're familiar with PHP's SimpleXML extension, think of BadgerFish as aiming for a similar goal: making it simpler to do common manipulations of XML documents with a predictable structure.

The Rules

• Element names become object properties
• Text content of elements goes in the $ property of an object.
• Nested elements become nested properties
• Multiple elements at the same level become array elements.
• Attributes go in properties whose names begin with @.
• Active namespaces for an element go in the element's @xmlns property.
• The default namespace URI goes in @xmlns.$.
• Other namespaces go in other properties of @xmlns.
• Elements with namespace prefixes become object properties, too.

So,

Becomes,

Thomas Fuchs has published his Ajax in Rails slides from the Canda on Rails showcase.

Once you download the PDF you can skip through to the RJS goodness that came in Rails 1.1.

In there you will see how you can just write Ruby, and the JS that gets generated. This is all based on Scriptaculous 1.6 and Prototype 1.5 that just came out.

A LIST OF FREE IMAGE EDITORS AND CONVERTERS

PowerBatch 2.7 - 1.6MB
- Batch renaming, resizing, converting, printing, rotating, colour adjustment, cropping.
- Crop with aspect ratio confinement.
- Built-in FTP client!
- All program files are contained in a single folder.
- Converts JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, BITMAP and JPEG2000.
- Supports animated GIF and multipage TIFF.
- Contact sheets.
- Image effects.
- Add text.

Paint.net - 4.9MB
- In development.
- Clean GUI.
- Developed with help from Microsoft.
- Requires 24MB .NET Framework 1.1 to run.
- Limited layers support (cannot be moved on canvas).

Pixia 3.1 - 3.6MB
- Not much known about this one yet.

Photofiltre - 1.6MB
- Multiple images open at once.
- Many plugins.
- More than 100 filters.
- Feature packed.

FastStone Image Viewer - 2.4MB
- Convert major formats (inc. PSD).
- Lossless JPEG rotation.
- Magnifier viewing.
- EXIF support.
- Resizing, flipping, rotating, cropping, colour adjusting tools.
- Crop with aspect ratio confinement.
- Compare images side by side.
- Batch image converter/resizer.
- Supports animated GIF and multipage TIFF

Xnview - 2.1MB
- Utility for viewing and converting graphic files.
- Imports 400 graphic file formats.
- Exports 50 graphic file formats.
- EXIF.
- Copy, cut and crop.
- Brightness and contrast adjust.
- Modify number of colours.
- Filters and effects.
- Windows print (Contact Sheet) and TWAIN support.
- Supports animated GIF and multipage TIFF.

GIMP - 7.3MB (Windows version)
- Probably the best open source contender to Photoshop.
- Requires GTK+ 2 runtime environment - 3.5MB.
- Layers support.
- Difficult to get used to GUI layout (or so I’ve read).

Thanks to Tim

Stefan Mischook

Over a few pints at a pub in Ballard on Friday night with Garren, Julia and Sanna Garren and I had the bright idea to head up to Bellingham on Saturday night and then go skiing/snowboarding on Mt. Baker all day Sunday for one last day on the slopes.

As it turns out the stars were perfectly aligned to not only make this trip happen, but to make it one of the best trips in recent memory. One of those trips where everything falls into place perfectly.

Garren and I headed out of Seattle around 7PM. About 15 miles outside of Bellingham is the Skagit Casino which, after some discussion and a quick turnaround, we went to in search of cheap Craps. Cheap craps we found with $3 tables and 10x odds. Something you won’t find in even the cheapest Vegas casinos. It was here that Garren quite possibly had one of his luckiest runs at the table. The luck appeared to spread as multiple shooters scored multiple points over the next four hours. Always nice when you walk out with more money than you walked in with at a Casino.

The next day the stars again aligned in our favor as we wound up in about 2 feet of fresh snow and very little competition for fresh tracks. I readily admit I was doing things I had absolutely no business doing on the mountain. Finding myself in the trees up to my waist in powder on multiple occasions giggling like a school girl.

Looks like you could have a lot of fun with this new PHP framework. Dutch Pipe has similar features to the other virtual-world/avatar sites we've seen earlier (e.g. Hive7), but is actually an open-source framework rather than a single (stovepiped :-) destination site. Using the framework, any developer can integrate a virtual world into their own web page. Some people have questioned how useful these things are; if there was ever a chance to find out, it would be an open framework like this where people can incorporate it how they please.

Characters have inventories, can express emotions, look around, and talk to each other. There's also support for automating characters and objects.

Demos on the site are limited, but this description suggests the developers have practical applications in mind.

* Make fora, chat rooms, card games or virtual RPG worlds with avatars. See your buddies wander around. See the site for a demo, no login required.
* Make easy-to-use product and shopping cart pages. Have automated and/or real person site assistants stand by to assist your customers and increase sales.
* Each page will become an abstracted environment or location where visitors and other items on the page are visualized.
* This status is retained as visitors move around.
* A whole lot of real-time interaction is possible.
* Developers program "world" objects in PHP - No Javascript coding required.
* Open source license (BSD).

Considering all the recent attention around Second Life, it seems like there's at least potential in this area, and the possibility of some integration with richer virtual words. Things could get interesting if combined with custom scripting and the ability for characters to communicate with external sites.

But for now, sit back and enjoy the beer ...