Mc-Kenna.com

I use the Javascript libraries Prototype and Script.aculo.us a good deal in my projects, but there was one feature they didn’t have between them - form validation. A quick google uncovered a super-simple solution to this problem written by an Australian - all you need to start is one Javascript file and one line of Javascript, then add one single DOM-compatible attribute to your input lines and it’ll work right out of the box. The even better part is that extending and enhancing it is very easy, just add a CSS line or two to customize your error messages, etc, easy as pie.

• http://tetlaw.id.au/view/blog/really-easy-field-validation-with-prototype/

Some people find beauty in the smallest of things, utterly common facets of life that are overlooked by almost everyone. Here is one such person’s explanation of their fascination for fonts:

• http://www.ideasonideas.com/2006/12/five_foundries/

Script.aculo.us is a wonderful library of Javascript functions for doing lots of buzzword-friendly snazzy effects. A recent schmancy JS trick is the catfish - a small, unintrusive advertisement that pops up at the bottom of the web page and can be closed without affecting the web page. Looking around I didn’t see any existing code to do catfish effects with Script.aculo.us so I decided I’d have to fill the gap.

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I picked up a review copy (review forthcoming) of O’Reilly’s new Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, 3rd edition, and so far it is a simply inspiring book. I’m only fifty-ish into its almost 500 pages but I’ve already started to brainstorm ideas for a huge improvement to the website at work, which I intend starting shortly after the holidays. Of all of the tech books I’ve read this is so far one of the best from a general knowledge point of view - the lessons to be learned in this book aren’t just for web development, they’re for anyone creating any sort of software. While I’m far from finishing it I already would have to count it as a must-read for anyone developing websites, both internal and public-facing, you won’t be disappointed!

The second edition of Agile Web Development with Rails is now available in its dead-tree version. Mine arrived yesterday, when will yours?

I’ve actually been reading this over the last few months via the in-development PDFs (through their early release program) and it is definitely a great book. The page count has gone up with this issue as both additional topics are added and existing ones have been fleshed out. Written to match Ruby on Rails v1.2, which isn’t even out yet, there are quite a number of new features to explain and, from what I’ve seen so far, it is once again easy to follow. I guess my number of active books has just gone up again, its probably back to six at this point X-)

Cygwin is a wonderful system for running UNIXy/Linuxy software on Windows. While there are many caveats it does work quite well for at least basic tasks and it has been extended so far as to be able to run X/Windows therefore KDE and Gnome all within Windows. Nifty. Anyway, while trying to get it set up for running a Subversion server I was having problems getting it to work as advertised. What I ended up having to do was tell the svnserve program to run as a service/daemon in the foreground rather than splitting off to run in the background as normal, e.g.:

$ cygrunsrv.exe --install svnserve --disp "CYGWIN svnserve" --path /bin/svnserve --args "--daemon --foreground --root=/home/svn"

Cascading Style Sheets are ten years old this week. Does your site use them? If not, why not?

Microsoft’s upcoming Windows Vista operating system is a perfect example of why people should stop supporting this useless company: it doesn’t have most of the new features it was supposed to have, it is more expensive than it needs to be (the feature-complete version costs $400, versus $130 for Mac OS X), and will cause a great deal of headaches both short-term and long-term due to its poor design. Here’s a great article which explains why the public needs to realize this is the second time Microsoft have done this and they shouldn’t be let get away with it:

• http://roughlydrafted.com/RD/Q4.06/4E2A8848-5738-45B1-A659-AD7473899D7D.html

So, learn from history, stop taking the garbage that you’re been spoon-fed and don’t upgrade to Vista! Do yourself a favor, buy a Mac!