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Today the JavaScript Games section is officially launched! The games have been recently created, after the model of classic games.
I’ve started the first game to show a friend that it is possible to build this kind of apps with JavaScript. And this is one of the main ideas of the section: interactivity in the browser using only HTML, CSS and of course JavaScript!
Today I make them public because is a shame to not give others the chance to waste time playing :).
The games should work cross-browser, they don’t have HTML 5 or other stuff that can lead to incompatibility. They shall prove the power of JavaScript, without any other sophisticated tools.
Many games are not well finished, but I hope that with time I’ll resolve the issues, add new features and of course new games. For suggestions and issues, please send an e-mail to claudiu@claudiupersoiu.ro.
Have fun!
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Because I needed a Romanian stemmer at a point in time for Zend Search Lucene, and it seems that there aren’t any in PHP, I’ve made one.
The page is here, and comparing the resulting PHP class with a dictionary of the algorithm developed in snowball, after which this class was made, because I tried to make class work with or without diacritics, general error has increased by about 3%, but remaining below 5% for the whole dictionary of 22,570 words.
As a note, the class file should be opened with an UTF-8 editor, otherwise diacritics will disappear from the file.
Enjoy it!
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After taking MySQL Certified Developer exam a few weeks ago, as telling in a previous blog, the moment has arrived. Is a little crooked because it was forced in the mail box, but my diploma has arrived! Surprisingly it took only two weeks, compared to that of the Zend, which took almost 8.
My name was published on the site in a few days, but I was unableto access my account until after I received the diploma. What is strange is that in the envelope is not the password of the account, but the instructions to receive it.
Beside the diploma, in the envelope there are instructions for using the logo and account, and besides that a card with my name and certification, which I do not understand what is for.
And another weird thing is that, the diploma is signed by Micheal “Monty” Widenius and Marten Mickos who no longer work at Sun MySQL. Obviously I do not know how true are the signatures, but at least Ulf Sandberg (VP Service MySQL AB) signature is real.
But diploma looks very good, and make a good pair with the Zend one. Now I hope it will be useful.
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After more than a year of using YSlow, apparently with the arrival of FireFox 3.5 this plug-in is no longer supported.
YSlow is a very interesting tool created by Steve Souders, who wrote High Performance Web Sites, and the new Even Faster Web Sites.
The plug-in, which used the FireBug extension, was a practical tool to analyze performance by the 14 rules described in the book, giving grades to pages at loading. A very useful tool, both for designers and front end developers.
But with the launch of FireFox 3.5, which brings many improvements in speed, YSlow becames incompatible. After what seemed like Yahoo! will totally give up the project a new version appeared. Unfortunately this version is not exactly functional. I do not know if is my FireBug version or just the update was made to shut the mouth of those who complain about the incompatibility.
Google has not launched any time this infra. After launching Google Speed, it seems that not late after that, appeared a substitute for YSlow, named Google PageSpeed.
PageSpeed structure is similar to YSlow, anyway optimization rules are the same for everybody, it’s just how they are approached.
What is more important PageSpeed is compatible with FireFox 3.5.
An interesting fact to know is that Steve Souders now works for Google, maybe this is one of the reasons for which these rival tools, produced by two Internet giants have reached these state.
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How does the rate of adoption of new software products and/or version influences the software development for Web and client-server type products?
From the perspective of a web developer, we are restricted by the servers for which we develop and our client’s browsers. Compromise often go very far for the sake of meeting a more broader market.PHP
Currently stable version of PHP is 5.3.0, but using this version in production would be a childish decision. The version has been out for a little while and the probability to find this version on the hosting servers is very slim.
Of course, a more appropriate version is 5.2.10. And yet, if version 5 was released almost 5 years now, why a popular framework like CakePHP yet uses the advantages brought by this version? Because until recently an important part of shared hosting servers that have support for PHP, still had version 4.
How is this translated in production? If you don’t develop internal products, or on your own servers, or servers which you can control, you should be aware that your product should be compatible with older PHP versions, and the new features of the language should not be used in production.
Ridiculous and sad but true.
PHP 5.3 brings quite a lot of new features, but until these features can be used in production few years will have to pass. And until they get in frameworks probably even more (ie namespaces are useful in frameworks).MySQL
Current stable version is 5.1.36. 5.x version, released in2005 brought many new features, some of them are: stored routines (functions and procedures), triggers, views, cursors, information schema, etc.
Stored routines is probably one of the biggest changes. They are probably most known from Oracle PL/SQL, although MySQL has implemented from the ANSI SQL 2003standard.
Because MySQL 5.0 was in beta for a long time, the rate of adoption is very low. Again, after almost 4 years since the version was released, and it is not yet sufficiently widespred.
Conclusion, simply put it is not recommended the use of the new features if you can not control the version on the server.
Browsers and JavaScrip
The browser problem affects both developers and designers.
Probably the oldest browser still used on a large enough scale is Internet Explorer 6. It was launched in 2001 and after 8 years it is still used by ~ 30% of users.
JavaScript in 2001 was still considered a scripting language infant, which was mostly used for visual effects.
After the “discovery” of AJAX in 2005 , JavaScript was reborn. JavaScript was not just a scripting language used for reduced visual effects, but was regarded as a technology of the future.
Browsers such as FireFox, Opera, Google Chrome or Safari have made progress to improve the speed of JavaScript execution. Even Internet Explorer 8 works better with JavaScript, but it is far from being as popular as version 6. And for the problem to be complete, Microsoft has a big issue with keeping the compatibility between their products.
The reason for this problem in adoption of new versions of Internet Explorer is the operating system. The most popular operating system is Microsoft Windows XP and it has pre-installed Internet Explorer 6. Given that Windows Vista had a fairly low adoption rate because of the initial bugs, drivers issues, resource consumption, and other problems, meant that Windows XP was still very popular. Of course not everyone using Windows XP use IE 6, many have updated or simply use another browser. But still many of them are using the browser that is default.
Speaking of this, Windows 7 will be distributed in Europe without IE installed. I’m very curious how will this influence the browsers market.
Lately “smart phones” and PDA devices have become increasingly popular. A lot of people use them to navigate on the Internet. So after the issues related to browsers on PCs, now there is a hole new set of issues on mobile device browsers.
For instance, my phone came with two browsers: Internet Explorer and Opera. Internet Explorer Mobile is terrible, so I’m using Opera which does a good job.
The problem is that many PDA / smart phone devices with Windows Mobile OS only have Internet Explorer in standard, and the previous problem returns.
When it comes to the famous Apple iPhone, Safari browser is used (and I believe that you can’t install another browser, but I’m not sure if that is true any longer).
So when you create an interface or a JavaScript application, you must take into account several aspects such as:- device(eg PC, PDA, smart phone etc.)
- operating system (eg Windows, Linux, Mac, Symbian etc.)
- browsers and there versions (eg Internet Explorer 6,7,8; FireFox, Safari, Opera etc.) HTML 5 is almost here, but when it comes to browsers, I wonder when will we be able to use it on a large scale, given that the market is currently dominated by IE 6 and 7.
I give it about 5 years…