The problem feature: Be able to Cut from Microsoft Word and Paste into a browser’s RTE and have it apparently “do the right thing”. So, this means OS X, standard flavors of Win32, and Firefox, IE and Safari, running various versions of Microsoft Word. We’d like a bulleted list to appear as a bulleted list.

Each version of Word has a different Paste flavor that it prefers out of the box, and they can be further customized by the user. AARGH! So, we don’t know what we’re getting. I think the browser will take text and html though, so it will accept the two flavors of html that Word can choose to spit out.

So I implemented a paste warning, but again Firefox and IE both support different events on different elements - see this helpful chart. And, finding the YUI RTE’s iframe div was a bit convoluted..

Apparently all dhtml RTEs are thin facades over a built-in browser feature - on Firefox its Midas, the rich text editor component! So although it seems like there are a bunch of different browser based RTEs like FCK, etc. - that is mostly window dressing. I had an early hint of this before I knew about midas when I saw what the YUI editor did with tables, which was incredibly similar to what Writely (now google docs) was doing. However, the YUI editor apparently didn’t support table editing so I thought maybe I’d hit upon a “pre-release” feature..

I’m developing a new kind of hatred for the more mature javascript and dhtml.. Fifteen years later(!) I know things can be more coherent. Even though the browsers have all this cool stuff, we’re still fighting standards battles and having to do everything twice or more times to deal with various differences and brokenness. CSS is a really good step in the direction of not needing to do this to make things *look right*. However, at the end of the day I’m not sure that I’ll accept tweening effects as a payoff for all this pain. The pain/reward ratio seemed better for the multiple body color hack.

downloaded, followed instructions and got a 3d canvas element that uses OpenGL ES! Standard to come soon, and also apparently WebGL implemented in FF as well (haven’t tested that yet..)

these are some screenshots of various experiments with boxes in boxes in java opengl using jogl..

I signed up for their “Dedicated Virtual” service online and was told “we’ll send you an email..” After a few days, when I didn’t get that email, I called them to see what was going on. I had already looked through the spam traps, so I knew it wasn’t getting “junked”. After taking my information, the sales person I talked to said they’d have to get back to me since THEIR INTERNET SERVICE WAS OUT! wow.. thats not good, especially for an ISP! Anyway, they sent me another copy of my “welcome email”.. Still not getting it.. Hmm.. lets go check the Zimbra logs to see whats going on..

aha!

…snip…

Looks like their mailserver is incorrectly configured! Now, my spam settings set relatively more paranoidedly than your average bear, however this seems like a legitimate problem on their end - the dns records for hostops.mediatemple.net are not mapped correctly. So, I call them back to let them know whats up, and try to explain the situation. I asked if there were *any technical employees* who I could talk to so they could fix up their configuration, and “the only Anthony there” tells me there aren’t any available since they’re dealing with their internet outage. I was also told I can send email to sales describing my issue if I want (but I understood nobody would do anything about this). They ask if there is a gmail account they can send the welcome letter to. Sadly, I had to cancel my account instead. All would have been forgiven if they’d even tried to understand what was wrong or figure out how to fix it. Instead, they were completely unresponsive and ignored me. Spam is everyone’s problem and I’m really sad to see they’re not doing their part in the cooperative battle to fix it. I fear going with a service provider like this only to be told “we’re sorry but there’s nothing we can do” when legitimate issues come up, as they will.

Here’s a genetic algorithm for creating test cases.
And, a way to measure junit test coverage through app mutation.

More transformation and/or analysis based, this bytecode optimization framework is wicked cool.

Here are two more jvm/java-y languages with interesting names and features:
nice has more good safety features..
sleep got your perl in my java..

atif memnon a thon:
a youtube video of a google talk from google testing automation conference
I’ve not successfully used guitar testing framework, but it implements a lot of stuff that seems very useful for testing/verification, and the sourceforge version is hopefully going to be up soon, and working for modern java programs?

This is a visualization tool for java programs based around “star diagrams”.
And, finally, here is a relatively old smalltalk style refactoring browser for bytecode, which seems like a nice thing.

good stuff, about programmers and their ways.. happened across randomly, worth sitting through the hour..

Primarily, I am disappointed by the lack of tool support for “code comprehension”. Yes, IDEA (and Eclipse for that matter) both have refactoring support built in, but that doesn’t help me get a grasp on the overall application without tracing quite a few things through. And apparently my buffer is not large enough to retain enough of the application to get all of the big picture.

Refactorings are great, but only really address smaller things that add up to bigger things. Nothing seems to address software at the more macro level. UML diagrams don’t really cut it, particularly if you’re generating them from the codebase. If you have some good tool support here, let me know.

Software is basically a set of encoded requirements. How to translate those to and from english? XP/agile says - encode it a number of times, once in test. Tell stories about it. Too often in the wild the only tangible version of the requirements is the software itself.

I’ve thought, and read “java is dead” stuff for a while now. I’m not sure why I cling on, although I guess it just feels sad to go back to C++ or just terminally embrace M$. In any case, there are a bunch of new languages like groovy and scala (jython, etc..) that use the JVM that also get me excited, but fail to get me going - first of all, they seem to all lack semicolons, which is fine, except for me since I seem to be hard wired with semicolons at this point. But more importantly, I have yet to see something really compelling that’ll get me off my rump to learn them - essentially, they all seem terse and scripty, but what I’ve always dreamed of is a new programming language with some really nifty features. Maybe something more along the lines of “what” rather than “how”, and maybe not through encapsulation/hiding as much as by hinting.. Besides this, another thing that would be nice in a new higher level language is some sort of cognizance of the kinds of things that are efficient at a lower level, and figuring out how to model the more common stuff you’d want to do. So, multilevel metapatterns.

-what do optimal assembly program structures (tend to) translate into at a higher level, and not just because of compiler tendencies?
-what kinds of things are nicer at a higher level that dont/translate well at a lower level
-what are all the real tradeoffs between higher and lower? is there a high level language that can get further out on this continuum?

-could libraries be optimized with the application?
-how could libraries/frameworks provide some hintable aspects for users to be able to control tradeoffs?
the kinds of optimizations I’d like, particularly from something like Spring: a compile time configuration in addition to the run time configuration. Or, I’d like to tell the library to come to some optimal balance on its own based on my usage pattern.

In terms of reverse engineered object orientation from the ground up:
-data/class normalizer that takes all the data and all the methods and moves things around to their apropriate (most close?) places..
the star graph ast stuff, is good - however, haven’t got it working with modern tools yet.. it seems like the aspect people had all the good stuff.. where are they now?!
-when is inheritance to be used? Encapsulation? simple rules would be nice.
-what about time based stuff? There are some async type things, like waiting for a user, or db for that matter..
-how much does modeling time (or threads) mattter? A lot of the business process/rules stuff seems to take this into account.
-optimizing from various perspectives, for instance speed, memory footprint, elimination of duplication (for instance, not redrawing screen, so only looking from perspective of pixels drawn..), code understandability and conformance to common patterns..
-where is the sweet spot for method size?
-how much does app x or y differ from good encapsulation?
-should model cpu usage or other tradeoff axes..