What does this mean? This means you can access the preferences of other toolbars. You can even check to see if the value is available before you use it (using a getPrefType call). This seems like a really big problem giving the open-source nature of the plugins and the security used for Yahoo!, Facebook or StumbleUpon toolbars. I don’t plan on hacking them anytime soon, but it sounds feasible given this architecture.

http://www.regextester.com/

Gotta love it.

1. Connects to web based version control
2. Has functional reference for PHP
3. Runs on multiple platforms (PC/Mac)
4. Easily manipulates and assists with CSS/JavaScript/(X)HTML

And the good news is, I have finally found a solution… I recommend any team doing distributed development on multiple development and deployment platforms use the following setup:

Eclipse 3.1.1
Subclipse 1.0.0
Aptana 0.2.5
PHPEclipse 1.1.8

Using Aptana, you can be FTP’ing into the website. With Subversion, you have version/source control. With PHPEclipse you have reference, templates and with Eclipse you have a distributed platform. Its a dream come true. Why couldn’t I find someone recommending this setup on a website before I invested dozens of hours in research? I think that people are either satisfied with the Zend Framework, or they simply don’t have the cross-platform needs that we have. And frankly, most designers we work with are completely satisfied with Dreamweaver MX/8 and the check-in/check-out process it affords. For the time being, when I work with those developers, I will have Dreamweaver running concurrently in order to make sure I don’t stomp (or overwrite) the designer’s updates. Until we get to point where we are solely a development shop, and can ease off design, we’ll run this setup…or maybe we can develop an Eclipse plugin that will allow us to simulate DW check-in/check-out while using Eclipse…hmm…

Is it really as scratch free as they claim?

Its a hot topic – security and how it relates to AJAX. Should we be worried? I mean, its a relative young technology – and most young technologies have security problems. Is it disconcerting that Microsoft is using it all over their new apps/os’s? Should we fret because Google uses it across their website? We’ve never had a problem with Microsoft and security before, right? *sarcasm* Lets break it down.

Historically, when you loaded a webpage, you had one connection and only had to worry about validating server side input once. Now, when you load a page in the browser, you need to validate input, and then anytime AJAX connects to your server, you need to revalidate that input and then handle the results correctly. You have now multiplied the potential leaks, by 2. Now, what if the response you are returning is Javascript code (I return XML most of the time, but its possible to return JS), now are you going to blindly run the JS you returned? Why wouldn’t you, I mean it came from your script. But if someone found a leak to get garbage into your AJAX, how do you know what is returned is not garbage? So now we have opened up potential security leaks by an order of 3.

Have you seen those new Mac commercials? I own a few Macs, and love ‘em. But c’mon guys – you are challenging the community to find flaws and hacks with the Mac OS. Why do this? They are not invincible. And with AJAX running on every platform that has a JS enabled Browser, what are we in for? Remember Robert Morris – 1988?

Sources:
http://www.it-observer.com/articles/1062/ajax_security/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_Worm
http://www.securityfocus.com/infocus/1868
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technology/2006-08-04-ajax-attack-usat_x.htm

On a recent project, one of the checkout pages required some simple math calculations for different extras and additions you could apply to each product. The client wanted it calculated in realtime, so I whipped together some functions that in a wonderful world should have been quite seamless. I send up the page to test it out….nothing. Not even a slight bit of javascript activity. I pull up my source code, all the functions are there so I know I’m viewing the right version. Naturally, I blame Internet Explorer and head over to Firefox who has the same story to tell – nothing. I proceed to spend a half hour trying the living daylights to even get a Javascript error, the one thing we all hate and dread and inevitably see 90% of the time…I couldn’t even try to get to that point!?! Is Javascript disabled? The world is crashing down around me. Humbled I call one of my colleagues to take a look at my code. He goes through for 5-10 minutes…thinks he finds it (finds other problems of course…I hadn’t been able to test it yet – give me a break!), and finally discovers my little problem. Can you see it below?

input name=”num_colors” type=”radio” value=”1″ onClick”colorChange();” checked

Moral of the story: forgetting your =’s make you feel like you = crap.