Tobi Waves

by Yared

ActiveGrid is a IDE for building WebApplications. It is written in python, but it supports not only Python as a language but also PHP and Perl (in progress).

ActiveGrid has support for different databases and graphical representations for database structures, page flows. It uses stadard xml formats (mostly from w3c and oasis) for the representation of all the things you edit graphically. In contrast to other tools ActiveGrid is not a code generator, it works by looking at the structure of tables and processes and works out what todo at runtime. This allows to adapt to the browser that is using the app.

There is built-in support for web services. Web services can be accessed like databases. Or rather databases can be accessed like web services.

The server side runs on in python (currently), php (soon), perl (soon). There is also a special apache module called mod_activegrid. The server side has an elaborate caching architecture to minimize processing at every stage.

(www.activegrid.com ...)

by Aron Boodman

Greasmonkey grew out of bookmarklets where bookmarks contain little bits of javascript instead of webpage urls.

GM is a Firefox extension that lets users alter webpages as they come in. Since you can not really control what the website providers do, this whole website adaption process is a very fluid process. Sort of shell scripting for websites.

Greasemonkey scripts are just normal javascript with a special header section added that gives greasemonkey additional information about where to use the script.

// =UserScript=
// @name	 User Script Template
// @namespace	 (younpup ...)
// @description Test script
// @include     google.com
// @exclude     mail.gmail.com*
alert('Hello World')

Read more on Greasemonkey in (diveintogreasemonkey.org ...)

Get greasemonkey from (greasemonkey.mozdev.org ...)

Web site providers seem to like Greasemonkey since it gives them higher user loyalty. Some websites have eve integrated features that were pioneered by greasemonkey scripts.

Greasemonkey has had several security issues in June, these were fixed with Greasemonkey 0.5. On top of that special changes made to Firefox Deer Park to further improve the security by protecting document and windows globals. Also in FF 1.5, Greasemonkey will be executed in a Sandbox that even better separates it from the influence of malicious documents.

The ultimate book on Javascript "JavaScript: The definitive Guide" (www.amazon.com ...)

Miguel de Icaza about Linux on the Desktop

Novel (5500 people) is moving itself away from Windows. The first stage with a move from MS Office to OpenOffice is already complete. The OS migration has progressed to 50% and should be at 80% by November. This dog food approach gives them a lot of insight into the linux on the desktop problem.

Major tasks are: Making Hardware work and implementing missing functionality in the OS.

All the new Applications Novel does for Linux are implemented in MONO this makes porting from Windows much simpler. MONO currently supports the following CPUs Itanium, Sparc, StringARM, x86-64, s390 and runs on Linux, Solaris, OS X.

Gnome is being migrated to Cairo based vector rendering and to further accelerate things, the X11 display is moved into running on top of OpenGL meaning all rendering is becoming hardware accelerated.

Miguel shows a number of neat demos of the new desktop. Like for example a mplayer windows wrapping around the edge of a 3d box shaped desktop (each side of the box is a desktop) as the mplayer window is moved from one desktop to another. The new desktop stuff will debut in SuSE 10 due in October.

Novell will start something called OpenSuSE in the next few weeks where you can download ISOs of the running system as it is being developed.