I spend my days building web applications using plain old HTML, CSS, JavaScript with a tiny bit of XML, XSL in the mix. On the server side use ColdFusion MX 7 mainly, but I've also had my fair share of Classic ASP development.

I've been happy doing this for the past 10 years now - I love it, but there is a new way of doing things in the web world. Rich Internet Applications. These applications are flicker free, meaning that when a user requests new information from the server, the browser requests this information in the background via a XMLHttpRequest, and "re-populates" the HTML rendering in the browser without refreshing. It sounds like a lot of work (programming wise) to make this happen, but the value you add to the user experience is greater than the sum of it's parts. We don't even notice it anymore, but every time we click a link on the web, the page goes away and finally comes back with the new page we requested.

Who's playing in the RIA space
Macromedia coined the term somewhere in 2000 and developed some cool tools and products to enable the building of this new kind of Internet application, a rich one. They called it Flex 1.0. You program the application in a markup type language called MXML, and use ActionScript to do some intelligent validation etc. Flex is now in version 2 along with a brand new IDE called Adobe Flex Builder 2. I use it, I swear by it.

Microsoft just released their incarnation of it called Silverlight making use of the .NET platform. I haven't touched it so it's hard to tell how it stacks up to Flex. This past week, Sun Microsystems also got into the game with JavaFX. You'll have to Google this one since it was only an announcement, very little details as to what's involved.

The most common way to build these types of applications is with AJAX. That's Asynchronous Javascript and XML, hence the XMLHttpRequest described earlier. I'm in favour of using of using Adobe Flex since the final application renders via the Flash plug-in in the browser. Ajax renders as html and javascript, with the usual shortcoming of browser compatibility when it comes to javascript and css.

Are you building rich internet applications? Do you see any value in it?

Well this is my first blog entry ever, got a email from find-a-student and found out about this site, earning a little extra cash for airing my opinion sounds pretty good, and it sounds like fun, its only 12:20 an im the only person online, witch tells me the South African public doesnt stay awake too late. Well i figured i would tell anyone who's interested about my interests, and hopefully some or many of you would share similar interests.
My true passion in life is motorcycles, any kind, from little mini bikes to kwaka zx-14's it doesnt matter 2 wheels rule, but im a car lover too, personally i think bikes are just more exiting to ride and play around on but they also deserve more respect than anything in the world, cars arent as unforgiving.

with a car, they're forgiving if you lock up the brakes or slide a little it isnt a big deal unless you panic, now im still young but i started driving when i was 12 in a veld just outside olifantsfontein close to midrand. and i started riding when i was 15, and ive made a ton of mistakes in cars and i've never had the worst happen touch wood, and ive made 3 mistakes on bikes and all 3 have taken a little bit of me... my first accident i hit a reflector on the road while i was braking in the rain, it threw my front wheel out at 70km/h and i slid for 120m... my second i forgot to check my rear view mirror while turning right a car jumped the robot and as i was turning and i turned right infront of him, but i walked away from those 2 accidents with little damage to myself and my motorcycle.

Now when i thought about doing this blog i figured what am i going to talk about, but now i realise, if i can make even just one person be just that little bit more careful on his or her motorcycle or even car, it would be worth the effort.
My last accident was a big one, i was on a straight road and there was a golf infront of me, and the driver pulled into the right hand lane and i made a fatal motorcycling error, i assumed that he would turn into a driveway, and that was pretty much all i remember other than him turning into a street on the left hand side of the road, now i broke many bones in my body, too many to list. so im not going to bore everyone, but my message is, be carefull on the roads, you might just be going about your day and your life could change in a flash, i lost my job because i couldnt work and i lost my motorcycle, witch was the most important material possetion i had in my life, that little accident on a sunday afternoon changed my life, so keep an eye out when ever you're on the roads, it might just save your life...

 

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As of today the new Adobe CS3 product suite of products are available on Adobe's site for download. The products shipped a few weeks ago, but the downloads were only added today. Lucky me got a copy of Dreamweaver CS3 from our distributer - yeah. Very much the "old " Dreamweaver (8) apart from a few shuffled menu's and added XML, XSL support. Some of the other products for download are: Contribute CS3, Dreamweaver Developer Toolbox (NEW), Fireworks CS3, Flash CS3 Professional, Photoshop CS3.

I'm a huge Dreamweaver fan. I've been using it since version 2 way back in 1999-2000 somewhere, and it's never let me down. I even went as far as doing the Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 Certified Professional exam. Supposedly Fireworks CS3 exports files directly as MXML for use in Adobe FlexBuilder 2.

So there you go. Download and Develop, and have your boss purchase the new stuff - it's worth it.

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I firstly wanna greet everyone citing this website and want every one to know that this is an open invitation for suggestions and comments. I am doing my first year in media studies and love writing about anything that i have in mind . So feel free to write or give feed back.

heil die leser

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Yes, that is the question.

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I WAS BLOWN AWAY by yet another shocking revelation on the front page of the Sunday Times this week, which could just put Eskom out of business.

AMID REPORTS that Bedfordview and various other unfortunate areas were again without electricity last week, I have to wonder how we`re supposed to cope once winter arrives in earnest.