Brandon Frohs

Today is the day. No, not the 20th anniversary of the birth of Elizabeth Kampwerth. Well, yes, but that’s not what this article is about. Today is the release of Ubuntu 9.10, Karmic Koala. For those of you that have not had the pleasure of having personal relations with Ubuntu, I apologize and encourage you to abandon Windows on the curb. Or at least send Windows to the other room while you gaze upon Ubuntu in all of its glory.

If you haven’t used any of the nightly builds (aka you’ve been using Ubuntu 9.04 until today), you’re bound to notice some major changes. The first change you’ll notice is the faster boot time, thanks to Upstart. Then, of course, the upgrade to the new GNOME release (which uses Empathy instead of Pidgin by default). On top of that, Ubuntu also ships with a new Linux kernel. With the expected changes out of the way, I’ll introduce a few things that you may not have been expecting.

Read more…

Have you ever visited a website with the intent of reading an article, only to see a full page ad? After clicking ‘continue’, or waiting fifteen to thirty seconds, you finally reach the page of the article. But wait, what’s this? A banner ad, a skyscraper ad, and a huge square advertisement smack-dab in the middle of the article itself. Just when you think you’ve seen it all, you notice a new window has opened under your current window with an ad in it. After closing that, another window pops up with another ad. If you hadn’t closed the article already, you probably will now. This example may seem extreme, but it really has happened. Luckily, it is not nearly as common as it used to be.

I mentioned unobtrusive advertising last year when I was ranting about copyright complaints by blog owners, but I believe a bit more of an explanation (and rant) is needed. Let the world know how you feel about advertising by leaving a comment or three below Maybe we can get the word out about unobtrusive advertising (or at least get into a debate with someone who has no class whatsoever).

Read more…

Most every web developer has asked himself (or herself) this question at least once. While some applications only need one method of parsing, many should support at least two. There is rarely a need to include support for more than two methods on any single part of an application though.

In this article, several parsing techniques will be covered, including Textile, BBCode, and HTML. WYSIWYG editors will also be discussed. Pros and Cons of each technique will be examined to provide you with facts and my own opinion.

Read more…