The Webmaster Micro-Blog

PHP: backslash (\) is the new separator for namespaces. The rfc:namespaceseparator is a result of a discussion on IRC between Lukas Smith and several code developers. Five criterias were used to select the best namespace separator: type-ability, typo-vulnerability, parse-ability, IDE compatibility, and number of chars. Backslash (\) obtained the best rating, and was agreed by the majority to be used as the new namespace separator (instead of the current ::). A patch is under development and may affect the scheduling of PHP 5.3. Announcement: http://LookAlso.com/1k RFC: http://LookAlso.com/1l IRC Log: http://LookAlso.com/1m

Scribe goes Open Source. Scribe (the Facebook Server Software) has been released as Open Source. "Scribe is a server for aggregating log data streamed in real time from a large number of servers." Scribe is hosted at Sourceforge. Announcement: http://LookAlso.com/1n Sourceforge: http://LookAlso.com/1o

Android goes Open Source. The source code for Android has been released today. The Android source is approximately 2.1GB in size. 6GB free space is needed to complete the build. Linux (Ubuntu) or Mac OS (Intel/x86 machines) are the only options for building Android. Blogged: http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2008/10/android-is-now-open-source.html Source: http://source.android.com Project layout: http://source.android.com/projects

Fennec mobile browser released. Fennec is a mobile version of Mozilla Firefox browser. The Mobile Firefox browser name is a clever choice and comes from a Fennec Fox, a small desert fox, to illustrate the Fennec Browser is a smaller version of Firefox browser and used for small devices. The first alpha release (fennec-1.0a1) is an early developer release which features a nice user interface, similar to Firefox, with touch screen support. The Smart URL bar ("awesome bar"), tabbed browsing, popup blocker, integrated Web search and password manager are some of the main features that have been ported. The goal of the first release of Fennec is to get feedback from users and web developers, as well as to engage the Mozilla community in developing for Fennec. The next releases will focus on performance. Fennec alpha 1 release is available for the OS2008 ("Maemo") software platforms that runs on the Nokia N810 Internet Tablets, and for desktop PC: http://LookAlso.com/1j

Only 4.13% of the web pages pass markup validation. MAMA is a markup validation report done by Opera in January, 2008. MAMA reveals a small increase in web pages that pass markup validation over previous validation studies done in the past. MAMA also shows that less than half of web pages with validation icons actually pass validation. MAMA used the META "Generator" syntax to compile statistics about validation for CMS and WYSIWYG HTML editors. The CMS validation rates are higher than the general URL population (except Blogger), while WYSIWYG HTML editors score very poor (except iWeb). MAMA results show that 51.0% of web pages use Doctype statement. Strict Doctype validation rates are higher than Transitional or Frameset, and XHTML validation rates are higher than HTML. MAMA illustrates that not many people seem to validate, and those who validate don't do it often. http://LookAlso.com/1i

Harmony in the JavaScript world. ECMAScript Harmony bridges the gap between ES3.1 and ES4. Ecma's Technical Committee 39, the JavaScript standards body, was divided between ES3.1 and ES4. The split committee decided, at the Ecma TC39 meeting in Oslo, to drop ES4 and unify their efforts in a new project called Harmony. http://LookAlso.com/1d http://LookAlso.com/1e

YUI 3.0 Preview Release 1. Yahoo! released YUI 3.0 Preview Release 1. An early look at a lighter, faster, more consistent, more powerful, and more securable Yahoo User Interface 3. http://LookAlso.com/1c

Text-to-song. A text-to-speech (TTS) online service that takes user inputed text and sings it. Let them sing it for you: http://LookAlso.com/1b

Why no Georgia on Google Maps? The recent conflict in Georgia prompted a lot of people to notice there is no data for Georgia on Google Maps. Google explains why there are no roads or cities showing up for Georgia on Google Maps. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/where-is-georgia-on-google-maps.html

Sweetcron official release date: August 28, 2008. Yongfook announced, via the alpha emailing list, the first release of Sweetcron. Sweetcron is a Open Source, extensible, self-hosted, customizable, and automated Lifestream blog software. In addition to acting as a traditional blog, it shows a real-time flow of user's activity across various websites. Many believe lifestreaming is the future of blogging. An excerpt from Yongfook's email: "Our digital lives are becoming increasingly more fragmented as we spread what precious little time we have spare across more and more web services - we need a way of pulling that all together automatically, displaying it intuitively and in a way that encourages interaction. That's what a lifestream should do, and that's what you'll be able to do on your own site on 28.8.8." Developers who can't wait and want to play around: http://LookAlso.com/1a Sweetcron: http://www.sweetcron.com/ Related articles: http://LookAlso.com/17 http://LookAlso.com/18 http://LookAlso.com/19 Another nice website by Yongfook: http://www.opensourcefood.com/

Raphaël is a JavaScript library for vector graphics. The Raphaël JavaScript library is small (18Kb packed, 62Kb uncompressed), Open Source (MIT License), and simple to use. Raphaël uses SVG and VLM to create graphics. Possible uses for Raphaël are creating custom specific charts or image crop-n-rotate widgets. http://dmitry.baranovskiy.com/raphael/

Google News added Tamil. Tamil is a 2,000-year-old language spoken by 70 million people. From 22 official languages in India, Tamil is the most-widely spoken. Tamil also has official status in Sri Lanka and Singapore. http://googlenewsblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/google-news-now-in-tamil.html

Snowl is a prototype messaging center Firefox add-on from Mozilla Labs. Snowl aims to provide true two-way communication in the Firefox browser. The current experimental version supports just two sources of messages, RSS/Atom feeds and Twitter, with many more to be added in the future (email, web discussion forums, social networks). http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/08/introducing-snowl/

Antiweb is a free HTTP server. The Antiweb webserver is written in LISP. Antiweb is released under GNU GPL version 3. http://hoytech.com/antiweb/

Vim 7.2 released, with support for floating point. The new Vim 7.2 release has many bug fixes and updated runtime files. http://www.vim.org/?7.2