As noted before, the Deer Park Alpha version of Firefox has some really cool features worth considering. But I haven’t been able to utilize Greasemonkey – until now.
I decided to spend some time digging around Technrati to see if there was a resolution to my Deer Park / Greasemonkey challenges. Bingo. I ran across John Mora’s blog and his post outlining the Greasemonkey resolution. His post highlights the problem as being resolved by code in the Greasemonkey CVS. Fair enough. So I got the code from CVS and installed it into my Deer Park browser. Voila, problem solved!
Thanks, John. Book Burro is now working again – as are all my other scripts. W00t!
-CyclingRoo-

As noted before, the Deer Park Alpha version of Firefox has some really cool features worth considering. But I haven’t been able to utilize Greasemonkey – until now.

I decided to spend some time digging around Technrati to see if there was a resolution to my Deer Park / Greasemonkey challenges. Bingo. I ran across John Mora’s blog and his post outlining the Greasemonkey resolution. His post highlights the problem as being resolved by code in the Greasemonkey CVS. Fair enough. So I got the code from CVS and installed it into my Deer Park browser. Voila, problem solved!

Thanks, John. Book Burro is now working again – as are all my other scripts. W00t!

-CyclingRoo-

The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) has been a standard for many years. But since LDAP had its genesis in the old X.400 and X.500 days, LDAP has always been a protocol that invited corporate (rather than community) involvement. Consequently, the most visible LDAP implementations were commercial offerings from infrastructure providers. Commercial providers included: Microsoft (Active Directory), Siemens (DirX), IBM (Notes), Banyan (Vines), Zoomit (Via), and Netscape (Enterprise Directory Server). Some of these products are gone. Many remain.
But the days of commercial LDAP are numbered, I hope. Last year, Red Hat acquired the Netscape directory source code from AOL. It was widely rumored that the product would be released under an open source license. Well, that time has come. Red Hat has released the product under a GPL (with exceptions for certain sub-components). The new product is known as the Fedora Directory Server. While I expect many new implementations to arise, I am personally looking for some great certificate systems to folllow.
All in all, it is amazing to see the march of technology commodization reaching higher and higher levels of the OSI stack!
-CyclingRoo-

Apple has been a swell sweetheart for IBM. Over the past few years, Apple has been using the IBM POWER architecture (and the PowerPC chip) in the heart of its desktops and servers. This was not always the case. When Apple first began, Steve and Woz used the MOS 6502 chip. [Note: this was not a Motorola chipset, although it was designed by former Motorola engineers.] When the Macintosh appeared on the scene, Apple moved to Motorola as its chip foundry and the 68000 as its chip. And the Power architecture is a direct descendant of the Motorola 68000 product family.
So IBM has been supplying chips for Apple for a very long time. But now, Apple may be changing its foundry once again. Everyone (including Ziff Davis) is now reporting that Apple will abandon the IBM PowerPC in favor of Intel chips. While IBM will supply chips throughout 2005, that relationship will end when new Apple systems are released in 2006.
Is this “a good thing” or is it something else? I’m voting for this being a “very good thing.” First competition is always good. And I love to see competition in the desktop. So come 2006, we can buy an Intel based desktop and we can (hopefully) choose whether we want Windows, Linux or Mac OSX. Wow. Maybe we’ll see some real pressure on the desktop OS. While Linux is cool (and I’ve been using it as a desktop for seven years), bringing the kitch of Apple to the household desktop (and the living room digital entertainment experience) will really force Microsoft to do some new and daring things. This could be a lot of fun – and a real spark in functionality for the general user! 🙂
-CyclingRoo-
=====
Update 6/6/05 12:30 CDT
=====
Boy, the net is running on overdrive on this story. BroadbandReports is positively humming. One of the best summary articles is Daniel Drew Turner’s article at eWeek. Not everyone is buying this as a legtimate story. Boy, if this isn’t real, Apple really is the master of spin!
=====
Update 6/6/05 1:30 CDT
=====
It’s confirmed. Here’s the Apple announcement.

Can anybody resist the sweet smell of chocolate chip cookies baking in the kitchen? I know that I can’t. And that smell is unmistakable – as well as compelling.
Well, our friends at Microsoft are baking some interesting cookies for Office 12. Specifically, Microsoft has announced that Office 12 document (Excel spreadsheets, Word documents and PowerPoint presentations) will be stored in XML format. W00t!
This _could_ mark the beginning of the the end of proprietary file formats. Of course, it might also mean that Microsoft will simply store Office 12 docs in some blob (or encrypted object) embedded within an XML document.
Right now, it’s hard to tell what will be open and what will be proprietary. Information Week (and everyone else) is reporting (via Dan Leach, a Microsoft spokesmodel) that Open XML formats will be royalty-free. But I am going to play it safe and wait for the file formats and schemas to be released. And it may well be that the formats will be licensed as “royalty-free” but copyright-encumbered. In this way, Microsoft could preclude people from using (or extending) the file formats themselves.
Again, I’m going to wait and see.
But in the meantime, I want Robert Scoble to know that Microsoft’s announcement is “a very good thing.” And I want Robert Scoble to report that Microsoft would score a bigger win if the formats were not only royalty-free but license-free and open for modification and extension. [Please excuse the obvious ‘link-whoring’ effort to sieze Robert’s attention.]
If Microsoft wants their Office suite to live on, they should fully open the file formats themselves. Yes, they might take a hit from the wannabees that will release products that exploit the open formats. But they would also extend the life of the product line by re-invigoring competition. More importantly, Microsoft might be able to cherry-pick the best features from competing and emerging products. In a way, a license-free file format would allow Microsoft to utilize other people/organizations to “test the market” for them. Other people could determine just what customers really want in the next generation of office products. Then Microsoft can “embrace and extend” their current products to include the _best_ new features.
And between now and then, there will be a lot more cool things coming from Redmond. I wonder how Microsoft is going to integrate RSS into the complete desktop experience? While I want to see a “full-on” assault with RSS capabilities being folded into everything (Office, browser, collaboration suites, etc), I fear that Microsoft may try and embed RSS into the Office suite alone. I want to see XML and RSS everywhere. And Microsoft can make this happen. Don’t limit the “open vision” to the Office products alone!
Again, I am going to wait and see. But I’m also going to hope and pray. After all, Jiminy Cricket noted that “When you wish upon a star your dreams come true.” Most people remember that line. But a later line is even more prescient. “If your heart is in your dreams, no request is too extreme.” Well Jiminy, I am requesting a completely open file format for all to use.
-CyclingRoo-

… at least, some folks think so. In a newsbite referenced at BBR, W3Schools lauds Firefox as a browser held in high regard for its security strengths – despite recent (and notable) security flaws. In this article, the unnamed author notes that

…Firefox reached a market share of 25%, while Internet Explorer plummeted to 64.8%. If we take into consideration the entire browsing solutions suite, Mozilla Foundation now owns a market share of almost 30%.

These kinds of articles are always quite interesting. But BBR coupled this reference with a reference to Internet Explorer 7 and its status. In the referred article (which itself refers to the Microsoft IEBlog), TechWeb’s Gregg Keizer references Tony Schreiner’s statement that Microsoft is playing “catch-up” to other browsers with tabbed interfaces.
So, here I am. I am quoting a site that references another site that links to another blog by another person. Hardly a strong source. But it does prove one thing: Firefox is unstoppable – at least for now. I have rarely seen a product achieve so much buzz in such a short time. As long as this kind of gratuitious cross-linking keeps up, the buzz will remain.
But the good news is that Firefox is worth the buzz. And Firefox is making real headway. Even Microsoft is paying attention. And Microsoft is changing its plans. How many of us ever thought that IE 7 would ever ship w/o Longhorn? Well, Firefox is making that happen. How many of us thought that security would remain a key focus for Microsoft? Well Firefox is making that happen. Firefox may be the best thing that ever happened to Microsoft!
-CyclingRoo-

Ever since my wife switched to FrontPage for her web pages, I have forgotten just how much tedium there is in properly coding web pages. It is always fabulous to know just how far we’ve come. I built my first public web page over a decade ago. And I used a text editor to do it. But that was then.
And this is now. I’ve been using the Mozilla Deer Park Alpha browser (or its predecessors from the Mozilla nightlies) for about two weeks. This product is the developer preview of the next version of Firefox (dubbed FF 1.1). And almost everything works fine. Emphasis must be placed upon the “almost” adjective. I have two big and continuing problems with this build.
First, the new extension management system doesn’t work quite right with Greasemonkey (or vice-versa). So cool Ajax apps like Book Burro are not available when I use Deer Park. And after noting the importance of AJAX, I hate to abandon enhanced Javascript tools. Fortunately, the latest code drop does include some interesting extensions to current Javascript functionality. So I think I’ll fiddle with Deer Park some more.
Second, I can’t create/edit posts in Blogger while in the Compose view. Instead, I must use the Edit HTML tab. And this is visibly reminding me of the simple HTML tags used for everyday tasks (even italicizing or bolding text). Man, we have come a long way in a short time. Now if we can only hide the complexities of XML from the average user… Oh, wait. Isn’t that what Microsoft did with Office 2003? How many people really see the complexities of the XML embedded within these apps?
I sure am glad for progress. It’s so… progressive. 😉
-CyclingRoo-

One of the more interesting events in blogging is the tendency to “make news” via cross-linking referrals. Well, that may be happening between Scoble and Gilmor. In a recent Gilmor posting, Steve gently chides Robert (and other Microsoft notables) for their late start in the RSS game. At the same time, he applauds them for the fabulous OneNote product (with some props for the TablePC as well).
But the intereesting exchanges highlight a curious discussion about who should be fired. Steve thinks that someone on the Office team should be fired (for missing the boat on RSS and collaboration technologies). Scoble responds that such a thing is ridiculous.
Personally, I think they are both right. Scoble is clearly correct that you can’t fire someone for being in charge of one of the most succesful product lines in software history. At the same time Steve and Robert must agree that Microsoft must make some new steps to challenge folks in the collaboration business – lest Microsoft exchange its market leadership for technological mediocrity.
In a lot of ways, I would love for Microsoft to pull off the FrontPage coup once more. For those who don’t remember, FrontPage was originally created by Vermeer Technologies. To see this for yourself, take a look at the filenames used by Frontpage. Ever wonder where the _vti stuff comes from? Try Vermeer Technologies Incorporate! Microsft could have built their own tools. But they acquired a good product as a starting point. From that start, Microsoft has built a fine product.
But my point is not to note history. Instead I want Microsoft to repeat the feat. Microsoft has a sizable war chest. And it could buy a whole lot of good technology. Could Microsoft build it from scratch? Of course. But it might make sense to “jump start” its RSS and collaboration features with a bosst from outside Redmund. After all, isn’t that what was done with Giant and the anti-spyware tools? And isn’t that what they did when they brought Robert Scoble on board? 😉
-CyclingRoo-

How many of us have heard of AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript and XML)? It’s the hottest web design tech right now. You can’t go very far in tech these days without hearing about AJAX (and the Google implementations of AJAX). But what is it?
According to JJ Garrett, AJAX can be described as follows:

Ajax isn’t a technology. It’s really several technologies, each flourishing in its own right, coming together in powerful new ways. Ajax incorporates:
* standards-based presentation using XHTML and CSS;
* dynamic display and interaction using the Document Object Model;
* data interchange and manipulation using XML and XSLT;
* asynchronous data retrieval using XMLHttpRequest;
* and JavaScript binding everything together.

OK. That helps a little. But I like to think of it as a means of transferring even more compute authority to the customer/client. AJAX applications rely upon a compute engine (usually a scripting engine and not a JVM) located on the client computer. The client initiates a transaction. But the more complex interactions between the client and the remote server are conducted on the client’s behalf by the local compute engine. And the interaction between the local and remote compute engines takes the form XMLHttpRequest packets sent between the two compute agents.
Blah, blah, blah. Let’s set aside the jargon. An example will help. Recently, I posted an entry about Tom Friedman’s most recent book The World is Flat. If you click on the link, you’ll see the Amazon.com info on the book.
But wouldn’t you like to know what some of the other retailers are selling this book for? You could check Half.com and Barnes & Noble by opening up a new tab (or a new browser instance). You could then bounce to the home page and get to the pages for this title. That’s three or four clicks with some wait time per site. Most of us can bear this. But you could also write some scripts that would check it out for you.
In comes Greasemonkey and AJAX to the rescue. Since I use Firefox, I have loaded Greasemonkey. I found a script that takes the ISBN number of the book (from the Amazon page) and searches the other major book retail sites. Each site is queried for its price. Then the composite information is assembled and presented on a transparent page that floats above the Amazon page. Now Amazon is not incented to give me its competitors rates. But I can check them out if I have the time or if I have a script. BTW, there are other scripts that will check out whether your local library has the book on its shelves as well.
So how can you get this kind of thing. First, you need a browser that interacts with a local scritping engine. IE does some of this. Using DHTML and VBScript, some of this is possible today. But I wouldn’t work too hard at it. You’ll see robust implementations in IE7. In the meantime. Go get Firefox. Then get Greasemonkey. Finally, go get the Book Burro script.
As I’ve noted before, this is the future of the web. The complex interactions will be driven by automation – not fingers. This kind of thing is the BPM of ecommerce. But in this case, the power is in the customer’s hands. You can build your own scripts. But you can also get scripts from a whole lot of places. But it’s up to you – not some nameless developer in the northwestern United States. You have the power.
-CyclingRoo-

Well, it looks like the march towards the next version of Firefox is now well underway. Asa has announced that the nightly trunk now represents code bits that will find their way into the Deer Park Alpha. What is Deer Park? Well, its the code name for the Firefox 1.1 product. According to the roadmap, the beta for Firefox 1.1 will arrive in June.
So what’s in the build? Well, it includes the latest security bits. It also includes inline SVG support. Finally, it includes new bits for the Gecko rendering engine. This is good stuff. But some of the really cool stuff is still “in the wings.” In particular, per site options for the browser should be available in the 1.1 -> 2.0 timeframe (think July or later). In the meantime, I’m loving the new bits…
-CyclingRoo-