Stories about: Extensibility

When version 1.0 of Firefox was released in November 2004, it caused a sensation as a seemingly more secure and more feature-rich option to Microsoft's ubiquitous Internet Explorer (IE) which for years had held a market share north of 90 percent and which Microsoft had barely bothered to improve.

Users will find significant enhancements in usability, performance, extensibility, security and privacy in the upcoming test version of Firefox 1.5, the first major upgrade of the popular open source browser since the launch of Firefox 1.0 in November of last year.

It's been 10 years since the initial public offering (IPO) of ill-fated Internet pioneer Netscape Communications, and the often-told story of its rise and fall has inspired inevitable comparisons to the industry's current darling, Google.

Python is an object-oriented, open-source programming language often used for rapid application development. Python's simple syntax emphasizes readability, reducing the cost of program maintenance, while its large library of functions and calls encourages reuse and extensibility.

One of the proverbial back stories of IT operations has always been the battle between the "suits" and the "techies." From the techie point of view, the hapless but disturbingly powerful suits are the business guys who put more thought into picking out hundred-dollar silk ties at Nordstrom than they put into million-dollar IT decisions. Worse, the suits gravitate towards outsourcing and service firms that implement big-dollar solutions. Many techies start on the other end of the spectrum with free open source solutions that reflect a substantial DIY ethic. Will the twain ever meet?

There's a race on for the future of the enterprise messaging system. The contestants are backing competing protocols for IM and presence awareness. Which standard takes home the prize may depend less on technical merits than on brute force. At the head of the competition are SIMPLE (Session Initiation Protocol for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions) and the open-source, XML-based XMPP (eXtensible Messaging and Presence Protocol). Both are currently being developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) released the proposed recommendation for the SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) 1.2 specification Wednesday, saying that the protocol is cleaned up and in a strong position for final review.

The W3C (WORLD Wide Web Consortium) earlier this month released an update to its Jigsaw Web server, adding SSL support, fixing bugs, and enhancing performance.

When I ran into Slava Pestov, the core developer of Jedit, on IRC, I asked him what he thought of some of the increasingly popular Java-based Integrated Development Environments such as Eclipse and NetBeans. To paraphrase his opinion, IDEs are just bloated editors loaded down with a bunch of wizards. I might agree -- with the possible exception of Eclipse, which isn't editor-centric. Where Slava and I probably differ is that I like both; there are times when I want a lean, mean editor and times when I enjoy a good, bloated editor packed with wizards.

Faced with demand to develop more sophisticated Web services, a new working group -- formed within the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) -- is set to tackle key standards challenges, including reliable messaging and extended SOAP functionality.

Reiserfs is fast and reliable. The new ext3 is an easy upgrade. Both journal metadata, but ext3 journals data too, but at a big price. Which journaling filesystem is right for you?