And there’s more…

Fri Oct 14

And then this very useful list of cheat sheets appeared, as if by magic. Lovely.

The amorality of Web 2.0…

Fri Oct 14

I was just sitting here wondering what to write when this fascinating essay turned up on my screen, courtesy of Daniel. I think the writer may have a friend or two made redundant by publishing houses, or possibly it’s just him that doesn’t like amateurs, but some of the things he says bear some consideration.

After all, if something is rubbish but free, should we still praise it? I don’t believe so. Just because open source software, for example, comes with our favourite price tag, if it’s a bad piece of software then it’s still not worth the price. A sobering thought, especially when I think about my lax attitude towards Getting Things FInished Properly.

The future - the hype all over again?…

Wed Oct 12

There’s been some more discussion about the current trend towards creating more application-like websites. Of course you know what I think about it, but it’s useful to see a serious comparison of the technologies that mae these web apps happen. AJAX comes out on top, but the bottom line is that all the technologies discussed - Flash, XUL, XAML, Java etc - have their place, and all have their strengths and weaknesses.

The discussion continues over at Isolani, and tying XUL to Flash seems to be flavour of the month in some peoples minds.

I’m not so sure, to be honest. Like ReadWriteWeb, I think there is a downside as well as lots of plusses to the current hype. What I hope is that the applications that are produced, no matter what the technology, are useful and worthwhile. What I think will happen is that a single technology will rise to the surface, but it won’t necessarily be the best one for every job.

Apps vs frameworks…

Wed Oct 12

The other day I was reading this post on Ian Bickings blog which (for Python, his language of choice) recommends thinking about using little apps more and frameworks less.

I can understand why he says this. The few times when I’ve tried to use a framework for web development - normally something like Sarissa, a JavaScript framework - I’ve quickly come unstuck for several reasons.

Firstly is my very weak understanding of object oriented programming, but I’ll gloss over that quickly. Secondly it’s that a lot of these frameworks, I have noticed, are just too darn big for simple applications. Why would you want to include a 300Kb JavaScript file if all you want to do is show and hide a page element? Thirdly they can be really complex, certainly much too complex for a simpleton like me to understand.

Before you think I have some kind of hatred for frameworks, let me assure you they have their place and can be very useful. After all, .net is a framework and I’m currently falling in love with that (note to self: get Mono). However, as Ian says, little applications can be more useful and certainly easier to implement.

But, I would go further than that and say that, for me at least, the most useful functionality comes from what I’m going to call an extendable application. That’s an application that does a particular job - transferring data between databases, storing user preferences, formatting and printing invoices for example - but is extendable with regard to the data it can handle.

A nice example is the little database app I wrote last week. It does a simple job: queries a database, creates SQL from the records retrieved and posts those SQL commands to a web URL. However it uses an XML configuration file to set most of the variables in the program - the database connection string, the initial SQL query to run, the format of the output SQL to create and the URL to post the data to. Therefore it’s extendable and can be used for a variety of tasks, all within the bounds of it’s core functionality.

Some people may say that what I wrote is a simple framework, but I’m not sure I agree, as it was designed to do a single job, but is also capable of being extended. It’s certainly an area of development that I’m going to be looking into in more depth, as I think - for my needs at least - extendable applications are the way forward.

The best keeps getting better…

Tue Oct 11

I’m a fan of Open Office, the free open source office suite. Well, it’s just got better, with the addition of Base, a small database application. Base is, basically, an application for accessing databases such as dBase, Access, MySQL etc, but it also has (as far as I can make out) it’s own methods for creating XML-based database files.

The great thing about this is that finally, after so many years of hoping and waiting, we might have an alternative to Microsoft Access. The problem has been that for small websites wanting some database-driven features, such as a mailing list or simple searchable news section, it’s often not been worth going the whole hog and using MySQL or (shudder) SQL Server. Of course for larger web applications a serious database solution such as these is a prerequisite.

So we as developers have been forced to use Access, which is a file-based simple database application. But it’s not secure, doesn’t handle many users, falls over regularly (and often spectacularly), and is wholly unsuitable for storing anything but the simplest of information. That’s why this new addition to the Open Office suite could be so important.

As several people have mentioned, Base could well end up being a Very Important Development. I’m certainly going to download the new, shiny version 2.0 of OOo and try it out.