[wplug-announce] The Open Pitt, Issue 37

Vance Kochenderfer vkochend at nyx.net
Fri Nov 30 22:14:47 EST 2007


PDF version: <http://www.wplug.org/top/wplug-top037.pdf>

                               THE OPEN PITT
      What's cooking in Linux and Open Source in Western Pennsylvania

===========================================================================
Issue 37                       November 2007                  www.wplug.org
===========================================================================

In this issue:
  Book Review: Ajax Construction Kit
  July/September/October Roundup
  Distribution Harvest Time

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                               Coming Events

Dec. 8:  General User Meeting, Topic: Bricolage Content Management System.
         10am to 2pm, 3002 Newell-Simon Hall, CMU
Dec. 12: Roundtable Discussion.  6:30pm to 8pm,  Panera Bread--Waterworks
         Mall
Jan. 12: General User Meeting.  (Time and location TBA, see web site for
         details)

                    The public is welcome at all events
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Book Review: Ajax Construction Kit
by Patrick Wagstrom

  Author: Michael Morrison
  Publisher: Prentice Hall
  ISBN: 0-13-235008-4
  $39.99, 312 pages, 2008

It wasn't too long ago that a web site that was just visually appealing was
considered to be a great and useful site.  Interactivity was handled
through a series of links and page refreshes--banishing all logic from the
browser and forcing the server to keep track of all information.  This
approach worked, but severely limited the potential of web applications.
Then in 2005, Google Maps stormed onto the web and the world realized how
powerful these applications could be.  By loading content asynchronously in
the background, Google Maps allows users to go from looking at the entire
globe down to a micro level without ever experiencing a browser refresh.
This all happens thanks to the magic of AJAX--asynchronous JavaScript and
XML.

The world of AJAX is nothing if not confusing.  In _Ajax Construction Kit_,
author Michael Morrison attempts to remove a lot of the confusion around
the technology and provide practical advice without having to worry about
the nitty-gritty details of the implementation.  After all, you just want
your web application to work on Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, and
Opera without worrying about the minutiae of browser-specific
implementations.  While books about CSS and HTML provide examples that run
in any browser, no server required, the interactive nature of AJAX means
that you'll need a web server at hand to run the CGI scripts.  Luckily, the
book comes with a Linux live CD that is preconfigured with all of the
software you'll need to get up and running.  Just drop it in and reboot, or
start it up in your favorite virtual machine environment.

The core of AJAX magic is the interaction between JavaScript and server
scripts.  In my own experience developing AJAX applications, much of the
complexity lies in the JavaScript, which must be tuned to deal with
multiple browsers and configurations.  The author provides a customized
toolkit with the descriptive but uninspired name of "AJAX Toolkit" to
handle the JavaScript issues.  He also provides prewritten PHP scripts to
handle the responses from the server as well as the HTML pages.
Unfortunately, in attempting to include everything, he obfuscates so much
that it can be difficult to tell which concepts the reader should be
learning.

Within the book there is little discussion of the intricacies of the
XmlHttpRequest command that is core to AJAX and how to handle responses.
Furthermore, once responses are obtained, there isn't much discussion about
the issues with various DOM implementations in modern browsers.  In
addition, the author doesn't comment on how to get around the fact that
most AJAX applications break the traditional browser interaction model by
not allowing for bookmarking or the use of browser navigation buttons.  To
his credit, however, he is very strict about using only DOM functions and
makes a note about the pitfalls surrounding the innerHTML property of nodes
when one is forced to use it.

While there isn't anything earth-shattering in _Ajax Construction Kit_, it
is an excellent set of ideas of what you can do with AJAX.  Each chapter
presents a possible application such as an XML e-book reader, rating engine
for a web site, or automatically completing text entry.  It then walks the
reader through a bit of the implementation and provides a set of tasks that
give the application an "Extreme Ajax Makeover."  These makeovers can be
fairly intense, such as modifying a shipping application to interact with
the actual United States Postal Service web APIs.

For the beginner, there's lots to learn here and the book does a fair job
of trying to cover a complicated subject.  The included AJAX Toolkit seems
to be useful for small projects, but it is probably not suitable for
something on a larger scale.  If you're an experienced developer looking to
do more with AJAX systems, this book is probably too basic and you'd be
better off looking for references on some of the more popular AJAX toolkits
on the web, such as Prototype, MochiKit, and script.aculo.us.

Patrick Wagstrom is a Ph.D. candidate at Carnegie Mellon University
researching communication and collaboration in Open Source development.  He
has been using Linux since 1994.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

July/September/October Roundup

Jul. 14 General User Meeting: Todd Blumer, Aric Blumer, and Ben Friedberg
of SDG Systems spoke about their company's work porting Linux to embedded
systems.  They described their initial effort developing for the Sharp
Zaurus handheld and subsequent projects with GPS devices, limited-function
touchscreen PCs for students, and a specialized device for uploading photos
to a server.  They detailed some of the steps involved in embedded
development such as gathering hardware information, properly installing the
boot loader, and setting up cross-compilation tools.

Sep. 8 General User Meeting: Some issues surrounding setting up enterprise
Linux systems were covered by Bryan Smith.  He went into directory
services, network filesystems, mail and calendaring, the domain name
system, and backups.

Sep. 15 Special Event: Six WPLUGers celebrated the international Software
Freedom Day by handing out pamphlets promoting Free Software and copies of
TheOpenCD and Ubuntu in Oakland.  Well over 200 CDs were distributed to the
public.

Oct. 20 General User Meeting: Patrick Wagstrom gave an overview of the
capabilities of MythTV, a personal video recording system that runs on
Linux and is a TiVo replacement.  He described hardware requirements and
basic setup suggestions and showed off features like skipping commercials
and scheduling recordings.  Also covered were issues surrounding capturing
and handling high-definition video.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Distribution Harvest Time

Autumn has rolled around--leaves are falling from the trees, there's a
chill in the air, and we're seeing a new crop of Free and Open Source
operating systems come in.  If you're stuck in a rut, why not try one (or
two, or three) of these for a change of pace?  They're all well-established
and have a community base to help you get started.

PC-BSD
PC-BSD aims to break BSD out of the data center by providing a great
desktop user experience including simplified application installation. 
Based on FreeBSD 6, the 1.4 release features improved support for Flash
media while browsing the web and includes new versions of the KDE desktop
environment and X Window System.  <http://www.pcbsd.org/>

openSUSE
The community version of Novell's popular SUSE Linux distribution, it is
coming along nicely with the 10.3 release.  Major changes include built-in
MP3 playing codecs, improvements to the YaST program for system
configuration, and dramatically reduced boot time.
<http://www.opensuse.org/>

Mandriva
For the 2008 version, Mandriva Linux comes in three varieties: One, a live
CD with either the KDE or GNOME desktop that can also be installed to the
hard drive; Free, a three-CD or single-DVD install containing no
proprietary software; and Powerpack, a commercial-only edition available
for purchase from the Mandriva store.  <http://www.mandriva.com/>

Ubuntu
Version 7.10 of this massively popular Linux distribution, code-named
"Gutsy Gibbon," is now available in its many variants.  Notable features
new to this release are convenient desktop search, Compiz Fusion 3-D
effects, and AppArmor security protection.  <http://www.ubuntu.com/>

OpenBSD
The BSD for the heavily security-minded person, 4.2 provides expanded
hardware support, a new installable ISO image, and an improved filesystem.
<http://www.openbsd.org/>

Fedora
Not to be outdone by Ubuntu, Fedora 8 makes building derivatives easier and
enhances the multimedia experience with the PulseAudio sound framework and
automated installation of video and audio codecs.  Network and firewall
setup are also easier.  <http://fedoraproject.org/>

Linux Mint
A newcomer, this Ubuntu-based distribution customizes the desktop and menus
and features unique configuration and installation tools to provide a
slick, easy desktop system.  The developers focus strongly on user input.
<http://www.linuxmint.com/>

===========================================================================
The Open Pitt is published by the Western Pennsylvania Linux Users Group
<http://www.wplug.org/top/>

Editor: Vance Kochenderfer

Copyright 2007 Western Pennsylvania Linux Users Group.  Any article in
this newsletter may be reprinted elsewhere in any medium, provided it is
not changed and attribution is given to the author and WPLUG.


More information about the wplug-announce mailing list