Web Info & Tutorials

Kris Zyp has just released a beta version of CrossSafe, a tool that provides secure cross domain JSON requests and partially implements the JSONRequest specification (the get and cancel methods).

You can also see a demonstration where you can pull information from Yahoo’s web services, Brad Neuberg’s transclusion web service, and a JSON object database at jspon.org, while staying secure in the midst of an attack from a malicious script. CrossSafe uses a technique for securing communication that is similiar to the Subspace approach from a recent Ajaxian post, that utilizes existing standards and is much more efficient and robust than the fragment identifier messaging.

Kris would also like to know if anyone can thwart the security in CrossSafe. It would be great if some good hackers could see if there is any holes, so we can really secure this software, and have a quality tool for the community for building secure mashups. From the test page there is a text box for entering in your own URLs to make it easier to stage attack attempts.

Time is flying by. This Friday (9/14) is the Early Bird deadline for The Ajax Experience East coast conference, taking place on October 24-26th in Boston.

There are a few changes taking place at this conference that I want to fill you in on:

• Tutorials: We had people asking for a set of tutorials, so we created a day of them which are included with your conference fee. These are perfect for beginners, or those in need of a quick brush-up. These 90 minute sessions are offered pre-conference, to eliminate any concerns you might have about pre-requisites, and get you ready for the full 3 days of technical sessions where you can jump into more advanced content. You can see the list of tutorials which includes Ben and I getting you up to speed on Ajax, David Verba of Adaptive Path discussing the design challenges of Ajax applications, and John Resig giving a rich overview of JavaScript libraries.
• There are a bunch of new speakers, including Paul Baukaus, Becky Gibson, Ted Husted, Carla Mott, Adam Peller, Stuart Halloway, Alex Russell, Chris Schalk, Tenni Theurer, David Verba.
• There are some exciting new sessions, including The Future of JavaScript (John Resig), Accessibility & Internationalization w/ Dojo, Refactotum: JavaScript (Stuart Halloway), Ensuring a Quality Web Experience (Patrick Lightbody - no abstract yet), Ajax on Struts, Retrofitting Struts with Ajax Taglibs (both with Ted Husted), Advanced JSON (Kris Zyp).
• We had our best panels every in San Francisco, so we hope that continues with an Ask The Experts, and Ajax Futures panel at this event. Got questions? Come along.

As always, the highlight of the show for me is getting you all together. In San Francisco we saw a crew discussing what became the end of browser possesion. The hallways are always buzzing, and I learn a lot about what the community is thinking, and where it is going.

Come join us again, and if you register by Sept 28th you will be eligible for an iPhone giveaway. Also, books and a few iPod Touch devices will also be featured giveaways for all attendees on-site.

Jonathan Schemoul has released SmoothGallery 2.0, a javascript gallery and slideshow system allowing you to have simple and smooth (cross-fading…) image galleries, slideshows, showcases and more.

Why would you use this over others out there? Jon thinks that:

Unlike other systems out there, JonDesign’s SmoothGallery is designed from the ground up to be standard compliant: You can feed it from any document, using custom css selectors.

And even better, this solutions is very lightweight: The javascript file is only 24kb.

The major new features are:

• Back and forward buttons of your browser now controls the gallery. Moreover, you can send that url up there to a friend, he will see exactly the same slide on the gallery than you. This is called HistoryManager. See a demo.
• You can have multiple galleries on one place and switch between galleries. This is called Gallery Sets. See a demo.
• Tired of that smooth fade-in of pictures ? SmoothGallery now supports transitions between slides. See a demo.
• Don’t want to use all of your bandwidth for some galleries ? SmoothGallery now includes a real preloader and loads only what is needed, while giving feedback to the user on the progress (Most of the time, users won’t even see a loading bar, as SmoothGallery tries to load what the user could want to see).

Cuong Tham has cursive up an warning of implementing anachronic enter upload using YUI.

His example walks finished the steps required to physique the functionality, and ends up with the mass ultimate meat:

Will browsers ever compel a richer type=”file”? Do we requirement to description discover a meliorate artefact to do this?