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Entries from April 2008
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Monday, April 28. 2008
Denormalization Patterns
A denormalized database is one that has been meticulously normalized to eliminate redundancies, only to have redundancies deliberately put back in to meet other needs. That is the kind of database we are going to talk about today.By contrast, a database is "non-normalized" if nobody ever bothered to normalize it. This is what you get when the programmer says, "I'm not concerned with the table structure yet, I'm working on the code first." In my experience this is something like saying, "I'm not worried about the plan for this work bench I'm building, I'm just going to throw the wood on the table saw and start cutting." We are not interested in non-normalized databases.
Friday, April 25. 2008
Stop using Ajax!
Ajax is a sound and useful idea. But every idea comes down to a practical implementation - a technology that makes it happen - and in this case the technology is immature, because it leaves groups of users behind. Most notable and greatly affected are those using assistive technologies, but also those using less capable browsers that don't support the necessary scripting objects, or don't support scripting at all.Javascript testing you'll actually use
Automated testing has well-known advantages, but JavaScript developers rarely write test code. In fact, JavaScript developers cite testing as their second biggest pain point in making web sites. Clearly, JavaScript testing sucks. It sucks because most applications are event driven, and although libraries exist that simulate some events, none are complete. Also, existing test libraries are complicated to set up and use. The Test plugin solves these problems.Thursday, April 24. 2008
WebKit GTK+ port passes Acid3 on Linux
The GTK+ port of WebKit is the first open source HTML render to fully pass the Acid3 test on the Linux platform. WebKit, which is Apple's increasingly popular fork of KDE's KHTML rendering engine, is used by Apple's Safari web browser and the iPhone. The GNOME desktop environment's Epiphany web browser has also adopted WebKit and will be using it instead of Firefox's Gecko rendering engine in a future release.Ubuntu 8.04 / Hardy Heron Released
Ubuntu has released their latest long term support (LTS) release, Hardy Heron. You can grab a copy for yourself here, or read FOSSwire's review of the latest version.Wednesday, April 23. 2008
IE CSS Bugs That’ll Get You Every Time
IE 6 actually had the best CSS support of any browser when it first came out… SEVEN YEARS AGO. The little bugs in it’s CSS support still haunt us to this day. I still get comments from people who roundly reject any technique that doesn’t work in IE 6. While I generally refuse to pander to IE 6’s limitations, I still feel it is important to make things look right in it whenever possible. Here are that major bugs in IE that’ll get you every time.Monday, April 21. 2008
Making a Javascript Video Player
Another afternoon wasted, another semi-useless yet also fun experiment. This time the topic is making Javascript do video. The goal was simple, make a video player using just Javascript, the DOM and a bit of XHR.Sunday, April 20. 2008
The Norway OOXML Vote - What really happened
I was the Chairman of the Norwegian mirror committee for SC34 (K185) for 13 years until resigning a couple of weeks ago in protest against Standard Norway’s decision to vote Yes. On the other hand, I was present throughout the whole process and have more first-hand knowledge of what went on than anyone (excepting two employees of Standard Norway). Here I describe the fateful meeting on Friday March 28. More background will follow.via Slashdot