outaTiME

Steve Souders gave a talk at OSCON yesterday where he demonstrated the new Firebug Lite 1.2.

Today Firebug Lite 1.2 was released. This new version was built by Azer Koçulu, creator of pi.debugger. Azer joined the Firebug Working Group, morphed the GUI to look Firebug, and added it to the Firebug code base.

Firebug Lite is a subset of Firebug that can be used in IE, Opera, and Safari. The previous version provided console.log functionality. In Firebug Lite 1.2, Azer added the ability to inspect DOM elements, track XHRs, and navigate HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. You can embed it in your pages and enable debugging. I prefer creating a Firebug Lite bookmarklet that I can launch on any web page. Instructions and more information are available on the main Firebug Lite page.

If you like a little Firebug love when you debug non-Firefox browsers, check out the very much improved version!

(Via Ajaxian » Front Page.)

In accordance with the Django 1.0 release roadmap, tonight we’ve released the first “alpha” testing version of Django 1.0. This release includes all of the major features due for inclusion in the final Django 1.0, though some lower-priority items are still scheduled to be included before the 1.0 feature freeze, which will occur with the first beta release next month.

To grab a copy of the 1.0 alpha, head over to the Django downloads page, and be sure to read the release notes. Please keep in mind, though, that this release is not meant for production use, and is intended primarily for developers who are interested in checking out the new features in 1.0 and helping to identify and resolve bugs prior to the final release. The 1.0 alpha will not receive long-term support and will not be updated with security fixes, since its main purpose is to serve as a stepping-stone on the path to the final Django 1.0 release.

The next step on that path will be the first Django 1.0 beta release, currently scheduled for August 5. If you’d like to help out, please review our documentation for contributors and feel free to join in one of the development sprints scheduled for the run up to 1.0; the full schedule is available in the Django 1.0 release roadmap.

(Via The Django weblog.)

Ah the age old IEPNGFix solution to the problem that we had with IE 5.5 / 6.0 not supporting alpha transparency. The first IEPNGFix solved the problem:

This script adds near-native PNG support with alpha opacity to IE 5.5 and 6. Now you can have full translucency and no more ugly grey borders! It requires only one line in your CSS file, and no changes to your website HTML. <IMG> tags and background images are both supported.

Now we have a new version that adds the ability to use CSS1 compatible background position and repeat.

(Via Ajaxian » Front Page.)

About 4 days ago, many have noticed that we had uploaded another minor bugfix release to our Google Code account. While there’s, again, no new API introduced, more than 30 issues have been cleared and the codebase is growing more stable every day.

The full changelog is available here if you want to find out if a specific issue has been addressed. As with 1.5.1, updating to this version is highly recommended and likely not to break anything in your written code.

You can grab the latest release as always via the downloader or as developer package at http://ui.jquery.com/download or if you prefer, get it as latest tag from Subversion.

As a last comment, this is probably the last minor release before 1.6, which we will announce before the end of July, so watch out for a couple of awesome new components and enhancements soon!

Have a nice day,

Paul Bakaus & the jQuery UI Team

(Via jQuery Blog.)

The new point release of moo.rd, the 1.3.2 version, is here!

It doesn’t represent only a “small revision”, but adds more flexibility to the code and a lot of internal enanchements: better performances (speed and structure), less lines of code, more components. I highly recommend to update the previous version with this more powerful and complete last one.

Now let’s see the major changesets and new features:

• new Fx.Cycles effects: inOutLeft and inOutRight
• new Fx.Cycle tranistion, linear, to change the slides without a particular animation
• new internal engine of Fx.Cycle and Fx.Cycles to allow to create thumbnail based and timed animations
• new Virtual transition: fold and new Virtual option: adjustStyles to allow the boxes to appear in the correct positions on window resizing
• new Plug-In: Tutorial, which allows to create professional step-by-step presentations (cycled or not)
• new Plug-In: Tabs, which allows to create professional tab based presentations
• new Overlay rendering: performance improved especially for IE6
• new internal structures to make the whole result more robust and flexible

As for the code, the examples section is now updated and you will find some new demos:

• Tutorial
• Tabs
• Tabs Fixed
• Cycles Extra

As for the previous releases, the blog and the forum are always opened and tips, suggestions, bug reports and responses are highly welcomed.

Now do stop talking and try moo.rd 1.3.2 out!

(Via moo.rd – Blog.)

Con tan solo 2 dias de nueva ya le di murra. Vamos a ver cuan silenciosa es andando a 12x el lector.

Ahora si, estamos en condiciones de arrancar un nuevo torneo a cuatro controles. Vamos a ver si la muchachada se prende al PES 2008 de la 360.

Me cansé, basta de perder tiempo con la otra consola, me calze el modelo económico, un par de mods y va como piña.

Since this is supposed to be the “Midterm Evaluation Period” and “Coding Phase II” starts on Tuesday, I’ve been taking it easy this past week. However, I haven’t completely stopped working on my project; there are two new effects. Nothing to spectacular, just a wipe version of the previous “shear” effect (“pinwheel” was the best name I could think of; suggestions are welcome), and an effect where pieces simply fade out. The demo page is here.

My mentor suggested working on text effects, where each character in a block of text could be animated individually, much like the “pieces” of a whole element are handled in the effects I’ve created so far. He also suggested implementing text-replacement in which the current text disappears while new text appears. I think this is a great idea and plan to create a set of effects similar to those that I’ve been working on.

I’ve also been considering creating a simple non-linear slide effect that moves an element along a user-defined curve. This would allow even more complex effects, such as an “explode” effect in which the pieces travel in parabolas as if affected by gravity, or an effect where pieces spiral into place. This is my second priority, my first being the previously-mentioned text effects.

(Via The Dojo Toolkit blogs.)

Posted by Shawn Shen, Developer Programs

Do you use popular JavaScript frameworks like Prototype or jQuery in your OpenSocial applications? Do you share the pain your users might feel when they have to download a popular library like prototype.js yet another time even though it’s been already fetched 33 times? Wouldn’t it be nice if you don’t have to worry about gzipping or minifying these libraries and paying to have them cached on some expensive content delivery network in order to speed up your apps?

If your answer to any these questions is “yes,” you are in luck because Google’s AJAX Libraries API precisely addresses these common pain points that many app developers have.

For example, to load Prototype version 1.6.0.2 you would place the following in your HTML:

<script src=”http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/prototype/1.6.0.2/prototype.js”></script>

Another way to load these libraries is with the Google AJAX API Loader’s google.load() method.

By loading popular JavaScript libraries from Google’s free content delivery network, you get:

• A faster user experience (for those that already have fetched the files)
• Automatic gzipping and minification, so the files themselves are really small

In short, while the AJAX Libraries API is geared toward all web apps using standard JavaScript frameworks, it is particularly handy for OpenSocial apps because they are rendered in iframes, often multiple times (e.g. on user profiles). The steps involved in optimizing your apps can be tricky (See the latency best practices article). By using AJAX Libraries API, app developers can spend more time building out functionality and less time worrying about latency.

(Via OpenSocial API Blog.)