Real Web 2.0: Battling Web spam, Part 1
Spam on the Web is one of the biggest threats to a modern Web developer.
The "bad
guys" become more and more sophisticated every year in how to vandalize and proliferate
ads over any Web 2.0 page they can grasp. To make matters worse, spam is increasingly
used to distribute malware. The arms race is on, and Web developers need to know
what basic tools are available to battle spam on their Web sites. This two-part
installment provides a thorough guide to anti-spam techniques. This first article
explains how to assess whether a visitor is a spammer and how to organize site workflow
to discourage spam. |
Building Ajax-enabled JSP TagLib controls, Part 2: Auto-populate and field validator controls
Build Asynchronous JavaScript + XML (Ajax) controls that can be used in
business-line applications. These configurable JavaServer Pages (JSP) TagLib-based controls
leverage JavaScript Serialized Object Notation (JSON), JavaScript scripting language, and
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Because they are standard JSP TagLib controls, find out how
you can easily drop them into any application to provide more intuitive and responsive user
interfaces. |
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Implement a Facebook photo album using the Flex SDK
Adobe has released the free, open source Flex SDK framework to enable developers
to create Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). The Flex framework provides you with
a method of creating cross-browser, cross-platform Web applications that is quick and
simple. Flex applications run in the Flash player, which is installed on the majority of
Internet-connected computers, but Flex provides you with an object-oriented
user interface framework similar to Java's Swing. In this tutorial, develop a
Facebook application in Adobe Flex that displays a slideshow of a user's Facebook
photo albums. The Facebook application will contain a Profile box listing all of the
user's photo albums, each a link to a Flex slideshow of that album. The Flex application
will use the Facebook REST API to fetch the photos of the selected Facebook album and
dynamically generate the slideshow.
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Mastering Grails: Asynchronous Grails with JSON and Ajax
JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) and Asynchronous JavaScript + XML (Ajax) are staples of Web 2.0 development. In this installment of the Mastering Grails series, author Scott Davis demonstrates the native JSON and Ajax capabilities baked into the Web framework. |
The Abstract User Interface Markup Language
Web Toolkit: An AUIML renderer for JavaScript and Dojo
Get an overview of the Abstract User Interface Markup Language
(AUIML) Web Toolkit (AWT). Learn how the AWT makes it possible to develop Web 2.0 interfaces quickly and easily by
merging the ease-of-use and expressiveness of the AUIML visual designer with the versatility
of the Dojo toolkit. Rapid development of user interfaces is made possible thanks to the AUIML
visual editor and also because of the availability of a number of ready-to-use patterns.
Experience has shown that the combination of these two factors provide a significant increase
in productivity, and this is even more true considering the fact that, currently, there is no
comparable technology that targets a Dojo interface. |
Exploring WebSphere sMash with WebSphere Virtual Enterprise
Just because IBM WebSphere sMash simplifies Web 2.0 application development and
deployment doesn't mean you have to scarifice clustering and high availability.
Learn how to use your WebSphere sMash application JVMs as
a cluster in IBM WebSphere Virtual Enterprise, and how the On Demand Router
component can help you easily manage request flows to these sMash applications. (IBM WebSphere Developer Technical Journal) |
Develop mobile widgets with Yahoo! Blueprint
Developing mobile applications can be a daunting task. With hundreds of handsets
to develop against and support, mobile application development can be time consuming and
costly. Fortunately, Yahoo! Blueprint helps alleviate this pain by providing a single
way to develop mobile applications. With Blueprint, you can author a mobile application
one time that can be targeted at mobile devices with a browser (or devices that support the
Blueprint platform), allowing you to potentially reach thousands of users. In this
tutorial you will see how to develop a weather mobile widget using the Yahoo! Blueprint
platform.
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Standardize displays on Web portals running on Firefox3 and
Internet Explorer 7
Do Firefox3 and Internet Explorer 7 look different? What's the
best way to get these browsers to behave
the same way? Should you use pixels or em values? Regular developerWorks
author Judith M. Myerson shows you how to standardize displays on Web
portals running on Firefox and IE. She gives tricks and tips for
using em values to make the job of developing the contents of portals,
including Asynchronous
JavaScript + XML (Ajax) applications, much easier. |
An introduction to XML User Interface Language (XUL) development
XUL is a tried and true application framework. In fact, the recently released Firefox 3.0 is not only built using XUL, but provides a XUL runtime environment that enables any Firefox user to run other XUL applications. In this tutorial, you start to program in XUL and learn about some tools to help you develop XUL apps. Build a XUL-based blog editor as you enhance your Web development skills to build desktop apps with XUL. |
Real Web 2.0: The Wikipedia family
You know Wikipedia, but do you know of the dozens of related sites that
provide user-generated content that is just as valuable? Many of the related sites under
the Wikipedia umbrella are very useful to Web developers. Learn how to enrich your
information space with resources beyond Wikipedia, including examples of widgets
applying data from these sites. |
Wicket: A simplified framework for building and testing dynamic Web
pages
Wicket provides an object-oriented approach toward developing dynamic Web-based UI
applications. Because Wicket is pure Java and HTML code, you can leverage your
knowledge of
Java programming to write applications based on Wicket, dramatically reducing your development
time. This article gives you an overview of Wicket and describes how you can use
Wicket to rapidly build Web-based applications in a
non-intrusive and simplified way. |
Build a stylish image gallery using Lightbox 2 and JavaScript
The Web has increasingly become a medium for showing off art. From candid snapshots
taken by an amateur photographer to professional art galleries, Web pages are primary vehicles
for displaying images. But a beautiful image is hindered--or aided--by its frame. Using a
simple JavaScript library, you can "frame" your online images beautifully and provide an
intuitive user interface along the way. |
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Working with jQuery, Part 3: Rich Internet applications with jQuery and Ajax : JQuery: Building tomorrow's Web apps today
JQuery is emerging as the JavaScript library of choice for developers looking to
ease their creation of dynamic Rich Internet Applications. As browser-based applications
continue to replace desktop applications, the use of these libraries will only continue
to grow. Get to know jQuery in this series of articles that takes a look at JQuery and
how you can implement it in your own Web application projects. |
Unit testing Web 2.0 applications using the Dojo Objective Harness
Unit testing is an important part of quality software development, particularly
in the agile and extreme programming development methodology. Traditionally, automated
unit testing of Web 2.0 client-side user interfaces was difficult and often not
attempted. However, Dojo provides a unit testing harness that lets you evaluate both
JavaScript functionality and the visualization of the user interface. This results in
a thoroughly tested user interface that will ultimately contain significantly fewer
bugs. This article demonstrates the main features of the Dojo Objective Harness
(DOH) and describes its superior capabilities compared with other test harnesses for Web 2.0 applications. |
Intelligent agents and the Semantic Web
The Semantic Web envisioned by Berners-Lee, Hendler, and Lassila in 2001 was a
grandiose vision that involved the use of agents to book doctor appointments and to find
the best driving routes with the least hassle. The envisaged system was built upon formal
ontologies that had already achieved a large following of scientists and agent developers.
Although they raised some important issues and put forward interesting connections between
technologies, they missed one thing: the fact that the Web had turned into a web of
documents. Therefore, a middle way needed to occur between the formalism of ontologies and
the informalism of documents. This is known as Linked Data. Linked Data coupled with agent
technology is an ideal way of dealing with Semantic Web data. This article provides an
overview of the Interlinked Semantic Web, agent technologies, and an example of the two
combined. |
Dojo concepts for Java developers
Dojo is being used more and more in Web-based applications. Many developers
have strong skills in Java programming, but only limited experience in
JavaScript. They can struggle with the conceptual leap from a strongly typed, object-oriented compilation language to
a dynamic, weakly typed scripting language. This confusion can make it difficult for
developers to correctly declare Dojo classes. This article helps clear up this
confusion, shows why it may be necessary to set context, and describes how to go about it. |
JSP technology -- friend or foe?
An old Java technology hand and new Enhydra partisan, the author urges developers to consider alternatives to JavaServer Pages (JSP) servlets when choosing an approach to coding Web applications. JSP technology, part of Sun's J2EE platform and programming model, serves as a solution to the common dilemma of how to turn drab content into a visually appealing presentation layer. The fact is, Web developers aren't uniformly happy with JSP technology. Since many variations on the Sun technology are now available, you can choose from a number of presentation technologies. This article takes an in-depth look at JSP coding and explores some attractive alternatives. |
sMash your library
Learn how to construct your own library cataloging
system for your home using IBM WebSphere sMash to create a dynamic user interface
and REpresentational State Transfer (RESTful) interface to a Derby database of
books. You'll be able to do the usual list, create, retrieve, update, and delete
(LCRUD) operations, but most of all you'll have fun exploring this fantastic new
software. (IBM WebSphere Developer Technical Journal) |
Develop a dynamic location-based mashup
Mashups are a new, highly interactive Web development methodology. Essentially a mix
of related content put together from disparate sources, mashups provide rich dynamic content
for a superb user experience. Getting Asynchronous
JavaScript + XML (Ajax) and mashup chops into your development toolbox will
benefit you with high demand in the evolving Web 2.0
workspace. |
Real Web 2.0: Mastering the Creative Commons
The Creative Commons (CC) initiative develops popular licenses for content, including Web
content. Some people think using these licenses means giving up all your rights to content,
but this is just one of many misconceptions. Learn how to choose and use CC licenses for your
Web sites and applications and how to process these licenses in
code. |
High-performance Ajax with Tomcat Advanced I/O
Using Non-Blocking I/O (NIO) improves server performance drastically because of its
efficient use of system resources (threads). The gain in performance is noticeable in Asynchronous
JavaScript + XML (Ajax)
applications with long polling mechanisms. It also lets you control system-resource usage on a
server under pressure. This article explains how to optimize your server for
performance during the handling of both Ajax and regular requests. |
Real Web 2.0: Open, geographic information systems at Geonames.org
One of the best sources for geographical information for users and
developers is a shining example of the power of open data. GeoNames is a database, Web service, and destination site for all things geographical. It has a rich, RESTful API and offers Semantic Web features using Linking Open Data conventions. Learn how to use GeoNames, as a user and as a developer. |
Get started with Project Zero, WebSphere sMash, and PHP
Project Zero provides an environment for the rapid development of interactive Web applications based on popular Web technologies such as PHP.
This exercise demonstrates how easy it is to get started with Project Zero, from
installing the development tools to constructing an Ajax Web 2.0 sample using
PHP as the back-end scripting language. Exporting an application is covered on the way,
together with examples of extending a Web 2.0 application.
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Working with jQuery, Part 2: Building tomorrow's Web applications today
This second article in the jQuery series looks at how to add more
interaction to any Web site to create a dynamic Rich Internet Application. Learn
how jQuery utilizes a combination of events produced by user interaction,
information gathered from the Web site itself, and the ability to change the look and feel of the application without reloading to create these RIAs quickly and easily. |
Java theory and practice: Are all stateful Web applications broken?
The session state management mechanism provided by the Servlets framework, HttpSession, makes it easy to
create stateful applications, but it is also quite easy to
misuse. Many Web applications that use HttpSession
for mutable data (such as JavaBeans classes) do so with
insufficient coordination, exposing themselves to a host of
potential concurrency hazards. |
Learn and share your skills with the developerWorks community
Pass It Along is a stand-alone Web application built internally at IBM
that combines various Web 2.0 features to facilitate learning and sharing among
participants. The application has been available on alphaWorks, IBM's premier site
for emerging technologies, since June, and now we at developerWorks want to
introduce it to you. This article explains the high-level concepts of Pass It
Along as a segue into the application itself, where you'll find step-by-step
tutorials on how to use Pass It Along to learn from others and share your
expertise. So think about what you know -- and what you'd like to know -- and
explore how Pass It Along can help you with both. (You might just earn some money
along the way -- virtually, that is!) And don't forget to tell us what you think.
Your feedback is valuable to us as we roll out new, interactive features on
developerWorks
now and in 2009.
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Creating modular interactive user interfaces with JavaScript
Discover a technique that lets you move sections of a Web page using
drag-and-drop functions. Different aspects of the interactivity are implemented separately and
then composed into a unified whole, allowing for flexible customization that can make
your Web users very happy. |
Make your graphical text semantic and searchable
Web designers have long used graphical text to display unusual fonts, scripts, or
other typefaces not available on most users' computers. With image-based text, color, kerning,
line height, and font are completely at the control of the Web designer, not users' system
fonts. However, without actual text on a page, search engines like Google and Yahoo, as well
as ad services like Google Ads, are hampered in identifying and classifying a site. This
article explains how to get the beauty and elegance of image-based text, without sacrificing
semantic meaning on a Web page. |
Mastering Grails: RESTful Grails
We live in the era of mashups. Creating Web pages that give users the information they
want is a good start, but offering a source of raw data that other Web developers can
easily mix in with their own applications is better. In this installment of Mastering Grails, Scott Davis introduces various ways to get Grails to produce XML instead of the usual HTML. |
Develop PHP applications with Picasa Web Albums
Search, retrieve, add, modify, and delete photos in a Google Picasa web album with Picasa Web Albums REST-based Data API, the SimpleXML extension in PHP, and Zend's GData Library. In this article, find practical examples using ATOM feeds from the API along with PHP programs to process your photos and photo metadata. |
Build a simple WYSIWYG Web page editor
Explore a simple Asynchronous JavaScript + XML (Ajax) system that lets your users assemble pages
by adding and arranging pre-made widgets. Many sites provide this kind of functionality,
but this easy-to-use system lets you do it on your own site and provides a simple
library for creating new widgets. |
Tivoli Federated Identity Manager Business Gateway and ASP.NET authentication
In this article we show you how to enable your ASP.NET applications for federated single sign-on utilizing the Tivoli Federated Identity Manager Business Gateway (FIM-BG) and the plug-in it provides for Microsoft® Internet Information Server Version 6 (IIS). Your existing forms-based authentication mechanism can be expanded to include support for participating in a federated single sign-on using the SAML 1.0, 1.1 or 2.0 protocols. Here, we take a sample ASP.NET application through the process of federated single sign-on enablement using FIM-BG and the plug-in for IIS.
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Working with jQuery, Part 1: Bringing desktop applications to the browser
jQuery is emerging as the JavaScript library of choice for developers looking
to ease their creation of dynamic Rich Internet Applications. As browser-based
applications continue to replace desktop applications, the use of these libraries will
only continue to grow. Get to know jQuery in this series of articles and learn how
you can implement it in your own Web application projects. |
Overlay data on maps using XSLT, KML, and the Google Maps API, Part 2: Transform and use the data
In this two-part article series, you'll develop an application for a real
estate brokerage to display all available apartment listings as clickable
Placemarks on Google Maps. In Part 1, you created the first half of the
application that collects the apartment listing information from the user, uses
the Google Geocoder Web service to turn the street address into its geographical
coordinates (longitude and latitude), and stores the coordinates in the database
along with the address information. In Part 2, you will use this data to produce a
KML overlay document and display it in Google Maps and Google Earth. First, you'll use stored procedures to produce XML from MySQL. Then with XSLT and a technique called Muenchian grouping, you'll transform the XML data into a KML document containing the overlay information -- one Placemark for each apartment building. The pop-up balloon for each Placemark displays the available apartment listings in that building. Finally, you'll use the Google Maps API to display the KML overlay in a Google Map embedded within your own Web site. |
Building Ajax-enabled auto-complete and cascading drop-down controls
Build Asynchronous JavaScript + XML (Ajax) controls that can be used in
business-line applications. These configurable JSP TagLib-based controls leverage
JavaScript Serialized Object Notation (JSON), JavaScript, and CSS. Because they are standard JSP TagLib controls, find out
how you can easily drop them into any application to provide more intuitive and responsive user interfaces. |
Build Ajax-based Web sites with PHP
Learn the process of writing Asynchronous JavaScript + XML
(Ajax) applications using native JavaScript code and PHP. This article introduces a few different
frameworks and application program interfaces (APIs) that reduce the amount of code you need
to write to achieve a complete Ajax-based Web application. |
Introducing IBM WebSphere sMash, Part 1: Build RESTful services for your Web application
In this series, learn all about IBM WebSphere sMash, a simple
environment for creating, assembling, and executing applications based on
current Web technologies. In this first article, get a
hands-on tour of the innovations that let you create, assemble, and
deploy powerful Web applications. Learn how
WebSphere sMash is community driven, and about its conventions for creating RESTful Web
services. Using a step-by-step example, you set up the environment, create a
project, build a RESTful service to expose data, test your application, and
import a sample application to consume the RESTful services. |
Overlay data on maps using XSLT, KML, and the Google Maps API, Part 1: Tap into the Google Geocoder Web service
Explore the Google Geocoder Web service that takes a street address and
returns data about that address including its longitude and latitude. In this two-part article series, you will combine it with the Google Maps API and XSLT to create data overlays for display in Google Maps and Google Earth. You will create an example application for a real-estate brokerage that lets a broker enter listings for apartments through an HTML form, uses Google's Geocoder Web service to translate those addresses into longitudes and latitude, and then creates KML overlays from the database of apartment listings. In Part 1, you build the first half of the application to collect the apartment listing information from the user, uses the Google Geocoder Web service to turn the street address into its geographical coordinates (longitude and latitude), and stores those coordinates in the database along with the address information. |
Configure IBM Informix Web DataBlade Module 4.13 with Apache (2) Web server
on UNIX or Linux
The IBM Informix Web DataBlade module is a collection of tools and functions
with components installed in both the Informix database server and the third-party Web server to ease development of intelligent, interactive, and dynamic Web-enabled Informix database applications. In this tutorial, walk through the steps to set up an Apache (2) compatible Web server, such as IBM HTTP Server 2.0.47, to work with the IBM Informix Web DataBlade Module version 4.13.UC3 on UNIX or Linux platforms. |
Build Ajax applications using the first real Ajax server: Aptana
Jaxer
Get acquainted with Jaxer, the first true Asynchronous JavaScript + XML (Ajax)
server. Jaxer makes it possible to execute JavaScript code, Document Object Model (DOM), and HTML on
the server side as well as giving you the ability to access server-side functions
asynchronously from the client side. This article describes the features of Jaxer and
shows the great potential that Jaxer has to offer, even in its infancy. |
Getting started with CodeIgniter
Creating a CodeIgniter application is easier than you might think. Take a guided tour
through your first project: a simple Web page with a contact form. |
Developing software on an open source stack
Web developers are enjoying a renaissance. After spending much of the previous
decade toiling on server-centric code, programmers are now putting code
front-and-center, turning the Web browser into its own computing platform. Much of the
renaissance must be attributed to ingenuity. The newest generation of tools and
application frameworks automate and simplify the drudgery of building, deploying, and
maintaining a Web site. There are also more tools than ever, and all the most
innovative tools are open source. This tutorial provides an expansive survey of the free
software available to developers to create and deploy Web applications. |
Mastering Grails: The Grails event model
Everything in Grails, from build scripts to individual artifacts such as domain classes and controllers, throw events at key points during an application's life cycle. In this Mastering Grails installment, you'll learn how to set up listeners to catch these events and react to them with custom behavior. |
Get Nagios for your Ajax applications
Bottlenecks with hosts, services, and networks can be costly. To ensure Service
Level Agreement (SLA) guarantees, Ajax applications must be monitored remotely over the
networks. In this article, learn how to quickly install and start Nagios, an open source
host, service, and network monitoring program, and discover how it can help. Learn how
to monitor redundancy and failover, and get some Nagios-based products you can use to
solve environmental and network problems. |
Google Code baseball hacks: Display batting stats in a Google Gadget
This article demonstrates how to use several Google Code APIs using a baseball
hack as an example. We will create a Google Gadget that displays Major League Baseball batting statistics. You will learn about Google Gadgets, the Google Spreadsheet API, and the Google Chart API. After
reading this article, you'll have a good idea of the sorts of applications
you can build using these APIs, know enough to get started writing your own applications,
and know where to get more detailed information. |
Develop XML-driven Ajax applications fast with Data Studio
Web services are a popular way to communicate data over the Internet in XML format; databases have long since been an integral part of any Web application. With Data Studio, developers can integrate the two by defining SQL and SQL/XML queries that you can automatically build and deploy as a Web service. In this tutorial, you'll develop a data-driven Web service using Data Studio and craft an Ajax application for the gaming industry where users can browse games they want to play, search for them by title, and even add, edit, and delete games. The Ajax application running on the client communicates with the gaming Web service in XML format, both of which are served on WebSphere Application Server. |
Internationalizing Web applications using Dojo
The Dojo toolkit is getting more and more popular in many Web applications. One of its
strongest features is its support for different locales. In this article, get a
short and simple guide on how to use this important part of
Dojo. |
Develop AJAX applications like the pros, Part 3: Use DWR, Java, and the Dojo Toolkit to integrate Java and JavaScript
Quick, how many Java Web development frameworks, libraries, and toolkits can you name? The are so many out there that it can be overwhelming just trying to figure out what does what and which one can actually help you solve your problems. However, if you are doing Ajax development, there is one library that you absolutely need to know: Direct Web Remoting (DWR). This library leverages the Java language and Java Web technologies to greatly simplify Ajax development. It has set the standard for how to integrate Ajax seamlessly into a Java web application. In fact, DWR joined the Dojo foundation, a broad coalition of popular, open source Ajax technologies. In this article, see just how easy Ajax can be using DWR. |
Employ the DB2 for z/OS common SQL API in your tooling applications
Get the details on how to use the common SQL API (CSA), a set of stored
procedures that exist across all IBM data servers. Learn to employ the common
SQL API and integrate it in an application. Explore a small J2EE Web
application, based on the common SQL API, that compares the subsystem
parameters of two IBM DB2 for z/OS subsystems by employing the GET_CONFIG CSA stored procedure.
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Ajax and Java development made simpler, Part 4: Create JSF-like components, using JSP tag files
JavaServer Pages (JSP) and JavaServer Faces (JSF) used to have different variants
of the Expression Language (EL). Their unification in JSP 2.1 opened new possibilities,
allowing you to use deferred values and deferred method attributes in your custom JSP
tags. This article shows how to develop Java Web components based on JSP tag files,
which are much simpler and easier to build than the JSF components. |
