Ajax

TestSwarm Retrospective

Yow-Hann Lee — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 10:42:54 GMT

Back in March, I came across John Resig's articulate post about the pain of frontend testing in general. Unvealing the dirty "secret" that no one likes to talk about but everyone has to deal with at some point in development. But unlike other folks' rants on this topic, he proposed a solution that would tackle this and take advantage of the internet audience. I was very much looking forward to his architecture diagram coming to fruition.

The TestSwarm source is now available on GitHub. The interesting parts are here and repositories for libraries under test are here. By the way, GitHub is awesome; albeit, it would be cool if it had permalink for generating friendly url for linking purposes.

Granted, this is still in fairly early stage, but there is great potential for a distributed testing environment. Having said that, testswarm.com itself may have a harder time getting the entire spectrum of users/browsers as its audience will most likely be developer/techie folks. However, perhaps the spirit of this effort can live on in public sites that are highly trafficked?

For example, if a user with a specific browser agent comes in, you could either display a link to TestSwarm and politely ask them to participate in these efforts OR ask them to participate in a local "TestSwarm" instance that will also run through your own js aside from shared js.

Back during the myspace days, I would come across all sorts of user agents. Some were obviously bots whereas others were legit but unexpected scenarios. Who would've thought at the time that there'd be decent # of users accessing myspace on their PS3? Not that a dev shop would want to be in a reactive mode of fixing things post-production push, but this could fill the niche of covering environments that shops simply don't have available. The hope is that this is a win-win situation for both the user and the site (and potentially rest of the internet community). Lots of exciting stuff coming out from Mozilla with this and Bespin. Outside Mozilla, looking forward to seeing the latest mobile results from QuirksBlog.

Hiring Services and Web Developers at ArenaNet

Yow-Hann Lee — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 21:06:24 GMT

Recently, I wrapped up my duties as a lead developer at myspace and headed to ArenaNet over in Bellevue, Washington. My team is hiring and we’re looking for awesome services and web developers. If you’re looking for a new challenge and would like to be part of the next Guild Wars gaming experience, check out the descriptions at:

Services Programmer

Web Developer

And you can hit me up at yow-hann at arena dot net. Hope to see some of the GWB community folks out there!

IE8 Release Candidate

Yow-Hann Lee — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 10:53:58 GMT

Been playing around with IE8 RC for the last couple days and am pleased with the upgrade from IE8 Beta.

The features are well publicized on IEBlog: Overview of Platform Improvements in IE8 RC1; it’s not really the web slices and accelerators that are of interest.

Two favorites thus far:

1. Debugger/Profiler

You no longer need Visual Studio or to download a script debugger separately. It has all the features you know and love from IE Dev Toolbar along with a decent script debugger/profiler.

2. XDomainRequest

Will be interesting to see how this pans out.

Other notable include the security and performance improvements since Beta. Perhaps this will help recover some of IE's lost market share?

Seattle Code Camp v4.0

Yow-Hann Lee — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 21:06:19 GMT

Seattle Code Camp 2008 is once again held at the DigiPen campus. I never got around to recapping the one held earlier this year (v3.0) but have recaps of v2.0 here and here.

Check it out at: https://seattle.codecamp.us/default.aspx.

Marking the One Year Anniversary of Script#

Yow-Hann Lee — Wed, 23 May 2007 10:45:07 GMT

On the first anniversary of the initial release of Script# by Nikhilk Kothari, he releases Script# support for ASP.NET AJAX. I still recall initially reading about Script# on his blog last year and wondering why it hadn't been married with what was then known as Atlas. But I quickly realized that this was sprouted as a personal venture. Aside from asp.net and tools he's involved in, there is a reason why this guy is a heavyweight in the .NET world.

Windows Live Search Mashup Day V3 Summary: Live Search Web Service API & Exposure to MS Knowledge Network

Yow-Hann Lee — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 11:19:00 GMT

I took part in the first ever Search Mashup event last year in Q4 and enjoyed it. The event is an internal event open to everyone who works for/at Microsoft. In the first ever Mashup event, I was fortunate enough to catch the tail end of Tina Wood's (on10 host) appearance. You can catch snippets of the first ever Mashup event on10.net. So the traditional rule of thumb in software is that it generally takes a few releases (3?) before a product has matured and stabilized. Does it apply to events? Well, the V3 has definitely evolved and was "feature rich".

Since I never blogged about the first Windows Live Search Mashup Night, I am going to take this opportunity to showcase some of the Live Developer offerings. In the first Search Mashup, all the buzz was about the released Windows Live Macros (I finally blogged about it earlier this month with a comparison of Google Co-op, entry found here). So I played around with that one. However, for this entry and what most most devs focused on, I will highlight Windows Live Search Web Service API.

Windows Live Search Web Service API

The API is very simple to use and follows a thin layer web service model. You can find the API reference at: http://msdn2.Microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb266180.aspx

Your request and response is broken down into the following:

1. SearchRequest object and

2. SearchResponse object.

You can think of them as HttpWebRequest and HttpWebResponse.

The generated proxy has a MSNSearchService with one public method called Search taking in a SearchRequest object as a parameter.

The SearchRequest contains a Query property which allows you to specify your query exactly as a user would via the Live Search textbox. So while there are no properties to set where you can maintain a site specific search (or even a list of sites to search on as is available in customized search), you can essentially achieve similar behavior by providing it directly in your Query string. For example, in the scenario of a site specific search, you would just specify something like: "site:www.cs.ubc.ca robotics".

If you have also played around with an older version (MSN Search Web Service 0.60 Beta), your experience should be fairly consistent. The ease of use (although some people may want more features/granular control as mentioned above) is part of what makes it so suitable for building during a Mashup event. Generally, people will spend a couple hours at these events. Add to the time allocated for the consumption of food/desserts, and yet you are still able to create functional and creative apps.

Microsoft Knowledge Network

At tonight's Mashup, there was a table setup with an LCD Screen showcasing Microsoft Knowledge Network (Their team blog can be found here). If you haven't seen the KN tie in with Sharepoints, Outlook, Communicator, etc (other Office products).. then you should definitely check it out. It's really sexy stuff for the enterprise! I think only the Unified Communications effort edges this out in terms of what's hot in the Office Division. So yesterday, on the big screen in the cafeteria in Redmond and with Bill Gates in NYC showcasing the Vista Launch, he referenced back to Windows 95 and pointed out all the technological advances made over that time. Just go back a decade and think of the tools used in the Enterprise. What a change?

Lighting, Prizes, Aura, Music (they played one of my favorite tunes circa 2002/2003 - Motorcycle - As The Rush Comes) and Great Food/Desserts (Chocolate Fondue!). All in all, a well done event. And the main thing to get out of these events? Fun!

Calling Out AJAX CheatSheets Following ASP.NET AJAX RTM

Yow-Hann Lee — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 09:37:00 GMT

I am going to spend the next couple blog entries catching up to the latest news. As you know, ASP.NET AJAX RTMed (release to manufacture) a couple days ago. This is definitely great news for those involved in developing "web 2.0" apps. After speaking with an ex-colleague of mine from my previous workplace, they were definitely excited about this as it meant the relative lockdown of the core framework. (Reference back to the major changes involved when the product moved from CTP to Beta of Atlas). In any case...

Just a couple days after the release, The Microsoft AJAX Library Cheat Sheets from ASP.NET Resources have been updated with the latest changes from previous versions of ASP.NET AJAX. Enjoy!

Google Maps vs. Windows Live Virtual Earth - An Amusing GMap Bug & A Programmability Comparison

Yow-Hann Lee — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 10:27:00 GMT

This was brought to my attention and was quite an amusing little bug. Try Google Maps Directions from "19020" to "1579 US-1 (S), North Brunswick, NJ. 08902". U will be in for a nice sUrprise.

a. Google Maps Directions Search Result (Incorrect)

b. Windows Live Virtual Earth Map Direction Search Result (Correct)

In all fairness, hiccups like these exist in other map services as well. This one was just particularly amusing and too hard to pass up.

Anyhow, onto more serious issues...

Google Mashup Consumers Get TeleAtlas instead of NavTeq Provider

While the following topic does not directly affect end users of both Maps sites, it does have a significant impact on mashup developers. (NOTE: one end user feature I will point out is the fact that Virtual Earth automatically readjusts to highlight your map route or center your location when you resize your browser window. Nice attention to detail)

You will notice that while Google Maps has Navteq as their provider for maps.google.com, mashups built with Google Maps API have TeleAtlas as their provider.

Meanwhile, Live Virtual Earth has Navteq as the provider for both its site and for mashup developers.

One of the most notable turnovers in the consumption of mashup services has been that of Redfin from Google Maps to Virtual Earth. It remains to be seen whether this tiered data provider approach will cause others to switch away from Google Maps API. While these may be cost driven strategies, ever since Blake Ross spoke out on "Don't Be Evil", it is difficult not to be sensitive to these user experiences or to any web security issues out of Google (today's being: Google's anti-phishing plugin leaked passwords). (reference: also see blog entry on security in software as a service.)

Newly Released IE Developer Toolbar Beta 3 Adds "View Generated Source" Feature To Match Firefox Web Developer Extension/Plugin

Yow-Hann Lee — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 13:19:00 GMT

Having been mostly immersed in the middle-tier during my work thus far on MSN, my web UI and AJAX blog entries have been somewhat limited. And while I posted a few tech book review articles on AJAX, most of these were carried over from my original http://yowhann.googlepages.com/ site.

But with the release of the latest IE Developer Toolbar (now in Beta 3) two days ago (1/12/2007), I now have an opportunity to catch up on my JavaScript entries and in particular client-side tools to play with.

Having worked on a "web 2.0" product (responsive, rich user experience in a thin client including context menus, drag 'n drop, etc) in the last release cycle at my previous company, I know that a feature I wanted in the IE Dev Toolbar was a way to quickly view the generated source vs. the original html output. This would have come in handy for all the updates to the UI made via DOM and JavaScript based on web responses from asynchronous calls. It's also handy for just regular DHTML (updating html via JavaScript). Back then (~6 months), you could still troubleshoot and debug by using the existing "View DOM" feature and drill down to your elements of interest. However, this new feature adds a quick way to reference the updated output, not to mention take snapshots of different states.

As some of you know, the Web Developer Plugin for Firefox offers a menu item to "View Source" and to "View Generated Source". And IE Developer Toolbar has caught up to this with the release of Beta 3. In the screenshot below, you can see how to "View Generated Source".

If you go to the Beta 3 Download Page, you will be able to see some of the other changes/improvements made from the previous release of IE Developer Toolbar. The "View Generated Source" feature is the one I feel that stands out the most for client-side developers building web applications these days. As with the previous release of the toolbar, it will work with IE6 and IE7.

Below is a quick and dirty example IE Dev Toolbar's View->Source->Original (aka "View Source") and View->Source->DOM (Page) (aka "View Generated Source").

IE Developer Toolbar Beta 3

View->Source->Original (aka "View Source")

View->Source->DOM (Page) (aka "View Generated Source")

Vancouver TechFest Feb 2007 (Formerly known as Vancouver Code Camp)

Yow-Hann Lee — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 11:38:00 GMT

Even though I am now located in WA, I still intend on making the drive up to Vancouver for this event. I attended the original Vancouver Code Camp last year and I am looking forward to what there is to offer. Unlike the Seattle Code Camp (which was also well done), the event is one day as opposed to two. It is held at a local technology institute and I would recommend others to make the trek up north. Also, this year, they appear to be trying something out. The main page stresses individuals "not come to this event and expect all the presentations to focus just on Microsoft technologies. We strive to balance the content." Hence the title change.

Last year featured speakers such as Shaun Walker (DNN founder) and Mike Mason (author of Pragmatic Version Control using Subversion). A lasting impression in my head from last year was in a demonstration of how CruiseControl and custom code used to trigger off portable warning lights in the room whenever the automated build ran and failed. That's continuous integration!