Learn about Linux
Download Linux
Get Linux helpSpecial Offers
NewsVac: News from around the Web
-
Microsoft and Yahoo! renew their marriage talks
2 weeks ago
Microhoo: Microsoft and Yahoo! have pulled their chairs back up to the proverbial negotiating table. Citing an unnamed source, The New York Times insists the two giants are now in "active merger talks." -
Is SaaS a savior or 'scary' for the enterprise?
1 month, 1 week ago
Salesforce.com's CEO Marc Benioff and SAP's chairman Hasso Platnner have at it in spirited debate. -
Steve Souders asks: "How green is your web page?"
2 months, 1 week ago
"Writing faster web pages is great for your users, which in turn is great for you and your company. But it’s better for everyone else on the planet, too." -
Web 2.0: Unsafe At Any Speed?
3 months, 1 week ago
Paul Ferguson, a network architect with antivirus vendor Trend Micro, summed up Web 2.0 as thus: "We're basically training our online users to be exploited." -
HTML 5:
A vocabulary and associated APIs for HTML and XHTML
3 months, 3 weeks ago
This specification defines the 5th major revision of the core language of the World Wide Web, HTML. In this version, new features are introduced to help Web application authors, new elements are introduced based on research into prevailing authoring practices, and special attention has been given to defining clear conformance criteria for user agents in an effort to improve interoperability. -
RubyStack 1.0 released
4 months ago
The RubyStack project finally reached 1.0! It is a free, all-in-one binary installer for Apache, MySQL, Ruby and the Rails framework. You basically click-click-finish your way to a complete Rails installation, including third-party modules such a Mongrel and ImageMagick. It runs on Windows, Linux and OS X and is distributed under the Apache license. -
Avoid unnecessary Ajax traffic with session state
6 months ago
Where possible, creating Web applications — including Ajax-based applications — in a RESTful way avoids a large class of bugs. However, a pitfall of REST is sending duplicate data across similar XMLHttpRequests. This tip shows how the moderate use of session cookies can maintain just enough server-side state to significantly reduce client-server traffic, while still allowing fallback to cookie-free operation. -
Facebook Defines the Web-Based OS
6 months, 1 week ago
Could Facebook become the next Microsoft? TechCrunch recently examined this and has their thoughts on the matter. Personally, I see Facebook as redefining the OS rather than simply mirroring successes of failures had by Microsoft. Placing them into the same category as Microsoft may actually prove counter-productive, as they are two completely different types of companies, despite any striking similarities. -
Mozilla, Microsoft drawing sabers over next JavaScript
6 months, 2 weeks ago
Mozilla CTO Brendan Eich and Microsoft's Chris Wilson are trading heated rhetoric over the proposed next version of ECMAScript, better known as JavaScript. -
I have lost my Wow
6 months, 4 weeks ago
"Last week, I mentioned that Mozilla is planning to give the Firefox browser a makeover. Alex Faaborg had mentioned that they plan to integrate the look of Firefox with Microsoft's Windows Vista and Apple's Mac OS X. The problem was Alex had failed to mention anything about the Linux operating system .... " -
Falt4 CMS massive speed up
8 months ago
Falt4 CMS, an opensource content management system, published a new major release. The main goal of the new release is mostly about speeding things up. Thus it includes a new caching engine to deliver 'almost flatfiles'. -
Build 404 error page CGI handler brains
8 months ago
Bad URLs, every Web site's bane, generate the infamous 404 error. Make your 404s useful by customizing redirects based on your site's content. This article shows you how to create your own 404 error-message intelligent CGI handler to provide useful links and 404 error page redirects for the contents of your site. -
How To Set Up A Facebook RSS Feed Reader Application For Your Blog
8 months, 2 weeks ago
This guide shows how you can build an RSS feed reader application for the social network Facebook that will display your blog's/web site's RSS feed on the profile pages of Facebook users (that have installed the RSS feed reader application). Each item of the RSS feed will have a Share button so that people can share the story with their friends, and the application will have an Invite link so that people can invite up to ten friends at once to also install this feed reader application. I will use PHP5 to build the RSS feed reader application. To parse the RSS feed and generate HTML from it, I will use Magpie RSS.
http://www.howtoforge.com/rss_facebook_app_php -
Speed up your AJAX applications while dodging Web services vulnerabilities
8 months, 2 weeks ago
"To eliminate redundancy and memory leaks and reduce the amount of bandwidth and the number of small HTTP requests, you must plan ahead on creating, testing, and deploying Ajax performance improvement projects. This article will help you resolve these issues and make your job of speeding up Ajax applications easier .... " -
Interview with Opera Software's VP of Engineering
9 months, 1 week ago
Christen Krogh is responsible for all software development at Opera. In this interview he discusses Opera's strengths when it comes to security, their technology in general, their take on the full disclosure of vulnerabilities, and more. - More News
Linux.com : Web Development
Brad Neuberg, Google Gears, and the future of the Web
"I like to make browsers do things that they weren't supposed to do," Brad Neuberg likes to say. As a developer advocate for Google Gears, Neuberg has a wide scope for pursuing this interest, not only as an active developer, but also as a frequent speaker at conferences. His message is that Gears is not a means of working offline with Internet content -- which, so far has been its main function in applications like Google Reader and Google Calendar -- but also a potential universal update mechanism for browsers that could help to keep the Web free.
Webtop software development with LAMP and Prism (video)
Bridging the gap between the desktop and the Internet is becoming easier and easier. In this video I show you how to create an application that looks and feels like a desktop application but runs on a typical Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP stack. The application has a back end database, is written in PHP, and uses Mozilla XUL instead of HTML. I also discuss how to use Mozilla Prism to create a streamlined version of the application that will run outside of a typical Web browser.
Paterva Evolution is dead, long live Maltego
As noted in the update to our review of Paterva Evolution, a personal data mining tool, Roelof Temmingh has removed the binaries for the application after having received legal threats over its use. In an email on the Paterva announcement's mailing list over the weekend, Temmingh revealed more about why the binaries had to be removed and unveiled his plans for future work on the project.
Add star ratings to Web pages with AJAX Star Rater
If you want feedback on the contents of your Web site, let your visitors rate your pages. Some content management systems include this functionality by default, but if yours doesn't, you can add rating capabilities with AJAX Star Rater, a PHP/MySQL application that allows you to display AJAX-ified star rating bars on any Web page.
Movable Type 4 to go open source
Anil Dash of Six Apart has let the cat out of the bag on his blog: The next release of Movable Type (MT), one of the most popular blogging platforms, will have a version released under the GNU General Public License (GPL). A beta of MT4 is available now, though not yet under the GPL.
Bringing Web-based applications offline
The Web 2.0 mantra suggests that you forget desktop applications and embrace AJAXified browser-based apps that you can run from any OS, anywhere, as long as you have a speedy connection to the Internet. But what about times when you can't get online? Firefox, Opera, and others are looking to make it possible run applications offline, anytime, anywhere.
Debug your Web code with Firebug
Developing Web sites isn't as straightforward a task as it used to be at the turn of the century. With an influx of new tools, technologies, and development methodologies, a Web page is no longer a string of plain ol' HTML, but instead a complex mix of stylesheets, markup languages, and scripts. Debugging this complicated blend is no easy task. Firebug is an open source add-on to the Firefox Web browser that lets you edit and debug everything from simple CSS and JavaScript templates to complex AJAX applications.
Create a Web-based interface for MySQL databases in a flash with phpMyEdit
If you've ever worked with MySQL databases, you are probably familiar with phpMyAdmin, a PHP-based tool that allows you to create and manage MySQL databases via a browser. It is an indispensable tool for anyone building a PHP/MySQL-based Web application. But while phpMyAdmin eases the task of creating and managing the back end of your Web application, it is of no help when it comes to designing a Web-based interface. To simplify creating PHP-based front ends, try phpMyEdit, an ingenious piece of software that can generate a functional Web interface in a matter of minutes -- no PHP programming skills required. Although phpMyEdit hides the complexity of generating a PHP-based interface, it still offers an easy-to-use yet powerful mechanism to customize virtually any aspect of the created front end.
GreyBox: Jazz up your Web site in 10 minutes
Want to add a couple of cool features to your Web site without delving into the world of Web programing? In this case, you might want to give GreyBox a try. It's a tiny (only 22KB) JavaScript-based tool, released under the LGPL, that allows you to add page-in-a-page and gallery features using just a few easy-to-understand lines of code (check GreyBox' Web site for some examples).
Opera contests draws attention to widget development
With the latest release of its Web browser in June, Opera Software introduced widgets -- small Web applications that run in their own windows on the desktop. Now the company is turning to programming contests to promote their creation.
Behind the scenes at GNOME's Web site revision
Like any large organisation, the GNOME Project faces a formidable challenge in maintaining an effective Web site. Trying the balance the demands of promotion, documentation, and community coordination is made all the more difficult when you only have volunteers to do the work. But over the past year the GNOME community has developed and begun to execute a well-defined process to refocus and rejuvenate its much-neglected Web presence.
A geo-located photo album in five easy pieces
Open standards, and openness in general, enables people to combine a variety of technologies in new and interesting ways. For example, using a camera with Exif support, a GPS receiver, the Google Maps API, and Perl, PHP and JavaScript, Mike Whitton created a Web-based photo album in which the photographs are automatically placed on a map at the exact location they were taken. Let's take a look at how this is done.
Choosing an open source CMS
It seems as if everyone is a Web publisher today -- from the habitual bloggers and online diarists to the companies running major news outlets, portals, and magazines -- and they're all using some kind of database-backed content management system (CMS) to do it. There are a lot of CMS choices -- Drupal, Mambo, Bricolage, WordPress, and Plone are some of the most recognizable names. While they all perform the same basic functions, you have to pick only one. How do you do it?
A first look at Google Page Creator
Google is offering free Web pages with an easy-to-use home page creator that you don't have to download, and you can use the utility even from a Linux desktop if you use Firefox. The company released Google Page Creator last week as a Google Labs project. That means you won't find it on the main directory of services because it's in an early stage of beta testing. If you're willing to be a Google guinea pig, you'll find the service functional, if limited in scope, and easy enough for a beginner to use.
Eclipse accepts OpenAJAX framework code
The Eclipse Foundation has granted initial approval to incorporate a new AJAX Toolkit Framework into its Web Tools Platform (WTP) project. The framework includes a "personality builder" that is expected to provide IDE-building tools for many specific AJAX runtime programs, including Dojo and Zimbra. IBM, the driving force behind the AJAX Toolkit Framework development effort, has launched the OpenAJAX initiative in hopes of attracting coding participation from outside IBM.
A survey of Linux Web development tools
Choice is a good thing, and Linux users have plenty of it when selecting a program for Web development. Users can choose from the basic no-frills text editors, to full-featured "what you see is what you get" (WYSIWYG) programs. Here's a survey of the best programs I've used.
Web design and administration with WordPress
Recently, a colleague and I decided to create a Web site that would serve as an online community and resource for young musicians. Though I had some Web design experience, neither of us had the experience or knowledge to create all of the features that we wanted in our site. Luckily, we were able to turn to WordPress. With its tools we could combine static pages with dynamically updated pages, categorize site content, automate formatting of site data, manage site membership accounts, incorporate RSS feeds and podcasts, and allow for community discussion of the site's content. Best of all, we could accomplish all of this with relatively little setup effort, and once the site was up and running, we could focus almost exclusively on content and let WordPress do the rest.
Free software transforms Web service business
Robert Dayton owns CheckStatus.net, a network of process servers that deliver subpoenas, summons, and other legal documents for clients. One day in 2000, Dayton shut himself in his office with a stack of books and taught himself to program in Perl and PHP. He didn't come out until he'd written a complete Web application for his court documents processing service.
LAMP made easy with XAMPP
The LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl) software stack is emerging as a popular and cost-effective Web development platform. This is understandable given that it comprises a free operating system, Web server, database, and scripting language. However, a problem with having a number of separate open source components is integration. The XAMPP project aims to eliminate this problem. With XAMPP, there is no reason for developers to skip over an open source solution when considering Web development platforms.
WebGUI works wonders for church Web site
In 2002, Portland, Ore.'s Sunset Presbyterian Church had a 200+-page Web site that contained mainly static content about the church, its ministries, and events. While many people were using the Web site and submitting content for it, the all-volunteer team maintaining it, of which I was a member, was overworked. Half of our time was spent editing existing pages and removing old content. Everything was done by hand: creating pages, uploading them to the site via FTP, and checking them against the site's style guidelines. All new volunteers required lots of training to become fully contributing members. Our team needed to find a way to become more efficient.
