Posts Tagged ‘Tools’

Design

// December 23rd, 2007 // No Comments » // Applications

design logo

Heres a little app which will sit nicely alongside Firebug and Web Developer, it’s called Design. It features tools such as Grid which will place an overlay over any web page, Rule displays rulers on a page and has guides which can be snapped in place (useful for displaying elements on a page), Unit allows measurements between any two points on a page, and finally there is a crosshair function which will assist you in layout alignment.

“Design is a suite of web-design and development assistive tools which can be utilised on any web-page. Encompassing utilities for grid layout, measurement and alignment, Design is a uniquely powerful JavaScript bookmarklet.” Allan Jardine (Creator Of Design)

It supports the following browsers:

  • IE 7
  • Firefox 2+
  • Safari 2.0.4+
  • Opera 9.2+

Note* There is no support for IE6

Find Out More About: Design

Adobe AIR

// December 15th, 2007 // 1 Comment » // Applications, Flash, development

adobe air logo

Adobe has released it’s new development tool AIR (formally called Apollo) which is in Beta as we speak. This little app allows you to create rich desktop applications such as widgets or gadgets. It’s a tool that blurrs the boundaries between the desktop and the web.

Adobe AIR allows you to use your existing Flash, HTML, CSS, and AJAX skills to create packages that can run from your desktop and the web. It can also read and write files on the computer’s OS directory structure. This is something Flash could not do on it’s own as it could only communicate with the web and not the directory. Using AIR creates a catalyst to merge the two together enabling us to create some interesting mash-ups all without learning a new language or new tools just your existing ones.

I am currently working on an app using AIR that will be able to pull in RSS feeds from different websites to your desktop. I hope to make this customizable so that you can pick and choose what feeds you want, and it will be available for both Mac and PC. As soon as it is ready, I will make it available to all to download from this site.

Visit: Adobe Labs

Firefox 3 Beta 1 Launches For Developers

// November 23rd, 2007 // No Comments » // browsers

Firefox 3 Beta 1 has launched for testers to poke and prod at the code, which boasts 2 million lines of changes! Web developers can now download Firefox 3 Beta 1 to test more than 30 new features in the popular open-source browser which was released from Mozilla on Nov. 19.

Security Issues

Security, ease of use and performance typically top users’ wish lists. Firefox 3 employs a button in the location bar that lets users see who owns the site. This is crucial at a time when bogus sites serve as pitfalls for unsuspecting Web users.

New malware protection warns users when they arrive at sites that are known to install viruses, spyware, Trojans or other bad code. Moreover, Firefox will inform anti-virus software when downloading executables.

The browser beta boasts clearer and stricter error pages when Firefox encounters an invalid SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate. Extended validation SSL certificate information will be displayed in later versions.

Firefox also now automatically checks and disables older, unsecure software versions, and add-ons that are unsecure will be disabled. Also, Firefox now respects the Vista systemwide parental control setting for disabling file downloads.

Development

Firefox 3 Beta 1, based on the Gecko 1.9 platform, has been under development for the past 27 months and includes nearly 2 million lines of code changes to remedy more than 11,000 issues.

The software, which rivals Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Opera’s browsers, comes at a time when users are demanding secure, reliable browsers to access blogs, wikis, RSS feeds and other user-generated Web 2.0 technologies.

Read the official release notes from Mozilla