Building the Conversational Web

In the fight against drive-by-commenting, we've come one step closer towards "It just works". The changed behavior of the coComment bookmarklet should make following your conversations on the web much more enjoyable and make the service more accessible to new users.

Beyond that honorable cause, the newest release of coComment also makes the first step towards seemlessly making the rest of the web conversational, one page at a time. The true usefullness of this might not become apparent until our next release :-)

The new Firefox extension does a beautiful job and continuously learns from its user base about pages and comment forms where it should auto-enable coCommenting. On pages where commenting is not possible, it automatically adds a commenting fascility to the page, so that coComment users can leave comments on any page on the web.

This same automatic-mode can now also be leveraged by any browser that supports user scripts . Combine that with the bookmarklet and you get almost the same functionality that the extension provides for Firefox and Flock in other browsers such as Opera , Safari (using Creammonkey ), Internet Explorer (using Trixie ) or Epiphany

ILoveJackDaniels already reports it to be working in Opera and I have tested it in Safari with Creammonkey.

Let us know how it works for you , when you use coComment as a user script!

Drosera steps in to debug Safari

The latest addition to the WebKit open source tools is Drosera, a Javascript debugger for any WebKit apps - inluding Safari.

I could certainly use it right now but it isn't quite ready yet... only able to step in... without being able to see where you are stepping in to... it's still kind of like a safari in the fog . But nice to see the fog is lifting!

Helma 1.5.0 has been released!

Helma 1.5 RC2 is ready

Addressing a bunch of "minor and medium" problems that were discovered in RC1, a fresh new Release Candidate 2 of Helma 1.5 is out. Grab it while it's hot .

Helma 1.5.0 Release Candidate 1 available for download

New features in Helma 1.5 include a flexible new way to load multiple code repositories, many low-level improvements and features such as updateable collections, additional web-based development tools that can run inside your applications and complement existing external debugging and database management tools, and a library of Javascript prototypes and methods that extend the Java based core of Helma.

Please note that Helma 1.5.0 requires a Java Runtime Environment 1.4 or later. The README.txt in the currently available RC1 packages still lists the minimum requirements as Java 1.3. Let us know if you notice anything else that needs fixing before the final Helma 1.5.0 release.

Head on over to the Download section...

Roadmap: Helma 1.5.1, Helma 1.6 and Helma 2.0

The Helma 1.5 branch will receive additional feature updates, mainly regarding improved integration of client-side and server-side Javascript code in the form of extended libraries. While Helma 1.5 still uses Rhino 1.5, Helma 1.6 will feature Rhino 1.6 and will bring E4X to Helma's server-side scripting environment.

Helma 2.0 is a parallel development branch that will lay the foundation for future versions with a reduced core, allowing for an even more flexible framework around it.

FreeBSD Jails the brand new easy way

Just had to setup a brand new box with a fresh FreeBSD 6.1 to house applications in separate Jails , from several machines that still have been running 4.11.

Coinsidence wants it, that just the same day Dirk Engling releases a beta of his new ezjail tool , that will make efficient Jail handling in FreeBSD even easier:

In the future (once it's out of beta and in the ports tree) you'll be able to do the following:

cd /usr/ports/sysutils/ezjail

    su root

    make install

    exit

    su root

    ezjail-admin install

    ezjail-admin create jail.mocha.ch 10.0.1.10

...and there you've got your jail :-) ...weighing in at only 2MB of disk space!!!

To start all the jails you create like this at startup, just add the following to /etc/rc.conf:

ezjail_enable="YES"

To prevent syslogd from the host environment to get in the way of the one inside the jail, add the following to /etc/rc.conf:

syslogd_flags="-ss"

Similarly, to bind sshd in the host environment to its IP, add the following to /etc/ssh/sshd_config:

ListenAddress 10.0.1.100 # the IP of your host environment

To automatically setup your jails the way you like them, with default user accounts and all, just create a "flavor" and apply it when you create the jail:

cp -Rp /usr/jails/flavours/default /usr/jails/flavours/myflavor

...then edit the files in there to your liking, and...

ezjail-admin create -f myflavor jail.mocha.ch 10.0.1.10

Voilà! I'm impressed!

Javascript 2 and the Future of the Web

Brendan Eich made the slides of the talk he gave on Friday at XTech 2006 in Amsterdam available. It's a revised version of the slides from the presentation at Ajax Experience two weeks ago.

46 slides well worth the time to go through!

Particularly interesting bits in my opinion for one reason or another:

• We can't make so big a spec jump again, so this is it
• No more primitive types vs. wrappers
• Function type: function (this: T, a: U, b: V): R
• let as a "better var" for block scope: for (let key in obj)
• The let variables are scoped to the expression
• Group assignments: [p, q, r] = [q, r, p] Even in for/in loops:
  for (let [key, {'Title':title, 'FileSize':size}] in dict) print(key, title, size);
• Iterators using foo.next()
• "yield" in a function makes a generator (returns an iterator)
• foo.send(value) passes value back to yield
• Sugar for initializing an Array from iterators (couldn't quite wrap my brain around that syntax, though)
• Object getters, setters, and "catch-alls"
• Standard global properties (Date, String, etc.) immutable (hmm... !?)

>>> Frodo takes on chapter 3