Update on the canvas element

With support for the canvas element coming in Firefox 1.5, the two major alternatives to Internet Explorer (Firefox and Safari) will be one step ahead–of IE 7, that is. Some ideas are floating around how to add support for canvas to IE, however:

So here is the challenge: Write some Javascript that detects lack of support for canvas, and support for DirectAnimation. It then replaces the <canvas …/> element with an <object …/> element which invokes DirectAnimation. The Javascript will then have some wrappers that convert the <canvas …/> Javascript function into DirectAnimation calls.

Btw, the canvas element may also prove to be a great thing for Sparklines.

Be sure to wade through this presentation.

While waiting, read the docs and look at these demos (in Safari, or Firefox DP). Oh, and here’s mine.

OSCON Ruby on Rails pointers

Sean Mountcastle has put up his notes on the Extracting Rails from Basecamp OSCON session. Read and learn both about Rails’ history and how to start an Open Source project.

A lengthy report on the OSCON Rails tutorial is available from Phil Windley.

And, be sure to read David’s account of having nice shoes and winning the Google/O’Reilly 2005 Open Source “Best Hacker” award.

More automatic testing with JavaScript

As a follow up to the previous article: with the very latest SVN trunk of script.aculo.us having all sorts of nice unit testing thanks to efforts of Jon Tirsen (and some make-it-look-good additions from Michael Schuerig) a very nice framework for (more or less pragmatic) in-browser unit testing of JavaScript (and HTML!) has come in to place (it’s still to be considered quite alpha, but it basically works).

For some working examples on this fire up test/inplaceeditor_unit.html or test/test.html in Firefox (Safari/IE currently not supported, planned!) and watch the magic. Be sure to do a “view source” for the interesting part.

If you want to be a part of this and have suggestions on this (or patches…), please subscribe to the rails-spinoffs mailling list!

Apple finds Ruby on Rails has a “clean design” that you “won’t want to miss”

Besides releasing a two button mouse (whoa) today (so much for “Hell froze over”), there’s a mention of Ruby on Rails on Apple’s developer pages:

If you are considering using Ruby to write web-based applications, you won’t want to miss the Ruby on Rails project. Rails is an open source web programming framework that is rapidly gaining mindshare due to its simplicity and clean design. 

Safari Goodness Galore

The next version(s) of Safari will include all sorts of updates, like:

• Improved Javascript performance: It already runs circles around Mozilla’s implementation, so the Gecko team will have to come up with something here
• Styleable form controls (I wanted this since the days of the Safari Beta. This also means that contenteditable will be supported better!)
• DOM/JavaScript patches (yeah)
• Various other stuff (please implement dispatchEvent!)

What’s also a good thing: There’ll soon be committers from outside Apple–this will definitely speed up development. Can’t wait… 🙂