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webmonkey

Your source for daily web development news

Webmonkey Turns Another PageDecember 3 2008

We don’t have to tell you there’s some sort of economic troubles affecting our industry. We at Webmonkey knew it was only a matter of time before it would affect monkey_bites. Unfortunately, we were right and that time was this week.

Henceforth, Webmonkey has updated from 2.0 beta to 2.1 beta. In this update, the site will be streamlined in order to bring a little more focus towards our primary goal: being the web developer’s resource.

Unfortunately, it comes at a loss for what was the Webmonkey team. Michael Calore, Scott Gilbertson and Adam DuVander have taken their brilliant software and business news coverage over to Wired’s Epicenter blog. Scott Loganbill (that’s me) is left to maintain Webmonkey part time and continue to make the wiki the web-dev-opedia it is and was always meant to be.

With three less monkey_bites writers, the blog will change its direction slightly to cover less web software news and more web development community coverage. Also, all contributions to the wiki will be considered for promotion on the front page even more seriously. Webmonkey is all about sharing ideas and knowledge. The wiki is dedicated to putting out some of the most accessible web tutorials and resources. We think everyone should know how to build their own corner of the web, and we’re excited to provide a place

Fedora 10 Arrives with Better Audio, GNOME Updates and a new IM ClientNovember 26 2008

The Fedora Project has announced the release of Fedora 10, the next generation of Fedora Linux. Fedora 10 brings many of the same improvements we saw in the latest version of Ubuntu — a better network manager and updated versions of GNOME and GIMP among others — but also packs in some unique new features.

The big news for Fedora fans in version 10 is the new “glitch-free” version of PulseAudio, which improves sound in Fedora 10, and, as the name implies, gets rid of the annoying latency and dropped audio problems that plagued early release of PulseAudio.

Fedora 10 is also notable for opting to using GNOME’s new Empathy instant messaging framework. Ubuntu passed on Empathy, and having tested Empathy in the Fedora 10 RC1, we can see why. While Empathy works well enough, the interface is a bit simplistic next to other GNOME IM apps like Pidgin.

Our favorite part of Fedora, PackageKit, remains largely unchanged in this release. If you’ve never encountered PackageKit, it’s worth taking the live CD for a spin to see how well PackageKit “just works.”

PackageKit will automatically search for and install any software you need to open a file. For example, say you download a ODF file, but don’t have

Google Maps Redesign Puts ‘Street View’ Front and CenterNovember 26 2008

Google has revamped its popular Maps tool with a new interface that puts the emphasis on its Street View tool.

A new set of controls — looking very much like those you’ll find in Google Earth — highlights a new “Pegman” icon at the top of the zoom controls. Whenever Street View is available the pegman icon will turn orange. Dragging the icon onto the map then triggers the familiar blue lines of Street View and dropping the pegman icon onto the map will cause Street View to fill the map window.

Once Street View takes over, you can navigate using the Street View arrows or via a small thumbnail map that resides in the lower right corner of the map. There’s also a split pane view that shows Street View just above the regular map view.

Another very nice, and easy to overlook feature: zooming down past the lowest level of detail will automatically switch to Street View.

Although the changes are very slick, recognizing all the new options available isn’t immediately obvious. To help you out, Google has put together this goofy little video which shows the new features in action:

Mozilla Mulls Adding a Third Beta to Firefox 3.1 ScheduleNovember 26 2008

The second Firefox 3.1 beta release is past due, but already Mozilla says that working out the remaining kinks in the next revision of Firefox will likely require a third beta before the final release arrives.

In a message to the Mozilla developer planning list, Mike Beltzner, Mozilla’s “Phenomenologist,” says that the new features set to arrive in beta 2 — Private Browsing Mode, TraceMonkey and more — “will benefit from multiple beta releases.”

Mozilla ended up with a very similar plan for Firefox 3.0, adding a fourth beta at the last minute to ensure that all the bugs were squashed before the final release.

The good news is that Mozilla plans to make Firefox 3.1 beta 2 a stable enough release for add-on developers to start testing their code against. Mozilla has already called on add-on developers to pick up the pace when it comes to making extensions Firefox 3.1 compatible, but the addition of a third beta will give developers a bit more time to catch up.

If accepted, Beltszner’s plan calls for a beta 3 release later this year, though

Processing Hits 1.0: Create Stunning Animations the Easy WayNovember 26 2008

Lookout Flash, the increasingly popular Processing language, which was designed in part to turn visual artists into programmers, has announced its long-awaited 1.0 release.

Processing has long been a favorite of animators — the language has been used for everything from animation in Radiohead videos, to web-based tools that can extract a color scheme from your photographs.

Processing is also widely used in academia where even those not naturally inclined to the technical side of programming (that would be us liberal arts majors) have latched on to processing’s ease-of-use and ability to create complex visualizations (for some examples, check out Complexification.net).

Because it’s open source, Processing has also been rolled into a number of other languages like Python, Rails, Javascript and many more.

Given that the new version is a 1.0 release, the focus is naturally on stability. But, while the focus may be stability, there are some new features as well, including an optimized 2D graphics engine, better tools for working with vecto