https://bespin.mozilla.com/

Pretty cool concept that I hope the flesh out.

PHP.js

which is looking to recreate PHP functions in Javascript. Now while it’s better to just handle these
things with proper JS, it is nice to use when you already know the php syntax for a function. What I really want out of this is the print_r function because I’m always running into issues with trying to figure out an object in JS and there aren’t any ways I have found that are as nice as the print_r in PHP. I only use that in debugging and development and will be a great thing to have around for that.

So overall an interesting project to watch.

First, if it wasn’t for the open source development that is going on, Facebook would not be able to have this great app to start with. They would either have to write their own or purchase a solution, which from others similar ones I’ve seen advertised, never seemed cheap. Extra costs like those can easily turn an extremely profitable company into one that is barely scraping by. That doesn’t even include all the other issues of relying on closed 3rd party apps, but I’ll save that rant for another day.

Second, Facebook is willing to share the wealth and have released their source modifications for the rest of the world to have (from the talk I knew they were directly contributing back to the project but I think this is more for the real power hungry people out there.) Now while I’ll never be lucky enough to have a project that would need this kind of power, it’s nice to know that if I did run into this issue I don’t have to reinvent the wheel or pony up a ton of cash.

This is just another great example of how open source can really help the greater good. Now, if only everyone would jump on this concept.

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/videotraining/

That came across my reader the other day but I forgot about it so now it is shared.

London Talks

NYC Talks

Great things to watch when you have time though it can be a bit of an overload.

http://www.domaintools.com/reverse-ip/

I’d used similar services before but what was so cool about this one was you could get an entire list of the domains hosted at a specific IP range. Would be really easy to see all the clients a specific hosting company has with this. On top of that you can get tons more info about a specific domain which for this example I’ll a BBQ blog that I started and haven’t done much with, BBQ and the Works. Their whois tool gives you the standard stuff that most other similar services do but there is also so much more.

Looking at this run on my site you can see they find other domains registered by me, other domains on the same nameserver, and even some SEO stuff. Overall this is a great little tool you can play with and really learn some great stuff about a site.

It must be .Net that gave it the killer tracking power.

With Silverlight they could even bring this super powerful app to the web.

Got to love Hollywood Though I figure most people who program in a Microsoft language sound like this. I kid, I kid.

I’m up next after this, added examples from the last talk. Freaking out as always but it’s only 45 minutes long so should be in like flint.

More after the jump

The biggest thing I think was that Google was using an old version of webkit which had known vulnerabilities. This seems strange being there are updated builds coming out all the time for webkit that I would have thought they would have tried to keep up better then that. Lets hope this isn’t a continued pattern in the future but this is first release so we have to cut them some slack.

I didn’t notice a huge increase in speed with the AJAX apps I use but it’s nice to see that Mozilla is already “up to speed” with a faster engine. Part of the talk out there is that google releasing their own browser will help push innovation of the other browsers but I don’t believe that they were just sitting around like IE was in the recent past. News like this goes to show that the current underdogs of the market were still out there trying to be the best.

Another thing that came out that I also found funny was that there are google sites that don’t support chrome. I have to imagine Google is turning into a Microsoft type environment where people on product teams don’t really seem to talk. Not that they haven’t seemed like your standard fare company for a while just it’s sad to see things not all coming together like I feel the “other” web company has. Though I am partial to them because I love their developer community and the stuff that comes from it.

And now comes the biggest fail on Chrome. One of my biggest issues with FF is that if you leave it running over night with an AJAX app running (gmail, google reader, etc) it starts to bog down and either dog or just crash. At the same time though I have usually 10-30 windows open with 5-20 tabs in each window so it’s not like it’s doing nothing. Well as a test last night I cleaned up my Firefox session and had 4 tabs open. Opened the same identical tabs in Chrome and left it open overnight. FF went up from about 120M to 160M in total memory used and the CPU was doing nothing. Chrome started off bigger at 130M and didn’t increase much, but it had constant CPU usage anywhere from 10-30%. That’s not horrible except that I then went to use chrome and nothing would load. New pages wouldn’t load, but Google reader attempted to still work though images from other sites that were in the feeds wouldn’t load. Hopefully this gets addressed in the future but we will see.

Overall it is a neat toy to play with but with these issues and the lack of extensions (give me my Web developer plugin or give me death) it’s far fro being my browser of choice.

Plus

1. Based on Webkit which has a lot of CSS3 features so that gives us a place to play with all those cool new functions. Granted they will only work in this browser it’s still overall cool.
2. Google Gears by default. I’ve recently come to love the idea of gears to do a lot of cool things with applications in the browser. It fills a different role then AIR which I also have love for but it will be nice to also be able to just tell someone to download chrome and go to an address then to have to have them install a plugin in a browser.
3. Being able to treat applications like applications. This is where it more directly attacks AIR which is interesting. We will see how well this goes because you have a lot of control with AIR and I’m not sure what all can be done with Chrome. Only time will tell with this one.
4. Task Menu. I haven’t had to kill anything yet (I have just for fun though) so not sure how well this will work but it will be great if I can kill that rogue tab that’s acting up as opposed to having it lock up and kill my whole browser.

Neutrals
Only one at moment but haven’t seen anything on extensions yet which I’ve been interested in with Firefox and would love to see what can be done with this.

Cons

1. Bookmarks – Just don’t like how they are done. Couldn’t find a way to organize and so not really sure what this will turn into. Hopefully this gets cleaned up in some way
2. New JS engine – This could end up being a positive but for now it’s a negative. For the apps I use it hasn’t been any faster then Firefox. If it does become significantly faster that would be great but we will see. I’m hoping it doesn’t have the memory issues Firefox has but I haven’t left it open with a ton of tabs yet. My concern is that it’s another engine we have to worry about when writing code. I’m just not looking forward to having to find the little differences in another engine. But this could turn into a huge positive if all this stuff pans out to be a non-issue.

Well I’ll keep playing with it for a few weeks and we where it goes. Right now it’s not a Firefox killer but we will see. What it will probably do is become my second browser for testing things when I need to be logged into 2 different accounts on the same site for testing. IE was currently filling that role but I’m fine dumping that.