Giant Geek Blog

On June 30th, 2008, President Bush signed the new GI Bill into law, marking the end of a year and a half long struggle to ensure today’s veterans get the benefits they have earned.

Being a veteran of the first Gulf War, my benefits were much smaller. To compare, here are the benefits I received:

• $1200 buy in, this amounted to $100/month for the first 12 months of my enlistment in the Navy. (As an E-1 or E-2, this was a fairly large amount of the monthly paycheck).

In 1995-1998 while I was in college, I received the following:

• 10 years to use benefits from time of separation from service.
• 36 months receiving $340-430/month as a check (it raised each year as “Cost of Living” increases, the most significant only 2 months before completing school).
• No Housing Allowance, though rent in Chicago area was apx. $700/month
• No additional amount for books.
• No ability to transfer unused benefits to spouse and siblings. (especially as I used every cent).

The new bill represents a significant change in benefits, I applaud all groups and individuals that made it happen, I’m only saddened that I could not take advantage of this new plan as school left me with lots of debt that took years to repay.

Cheers!

After months of anticipation and three Release Candidates, the new version of Firefox is now available for download. (Due to demand, servers are still a bit slow, so just keep trying and you will eventually get it!).

http://www.getfirefox.com/

Most common developer plugins were updated to support FF3 in the last week or so:

• YSlow! was finally updated on launch day
• Unfortunately, Google’s discontinued support for their “Google Browser Sync” and does not plan to update it to support FF3.

Cheers!

I found a few references to this lately and just had to look into it. This is similar to the FAVICON approach used in browsers, but supports a (60×60), officially a 57×57 pixel icon.

The code is simple:

<link rel="apple-touch-icon" type="image/jpeg" href="/example.jpg" />

References:

• http://www.hicksdesign.co.uk/journal/custom-webclip-icon-on-the-iphoneipod-touch
• http://playgroundblues.com/posts/2008/jan/15/iphone-bookmark-iconage/

Old Reference (no longer works):

• http://developer.apple.com/iphone/devcenter/designingcontent.html

Cheers

Okay, so this is a little odd. This does not effect the language or direction of the website, but instead is a measure to ensure proper encoding of the CSS file itself.

The browser will generally rely on the HTTP Headers to determine this value, but in cases where the server or application configuration does not, you can provide the equivalent in the file itself.

WARNING: This needs to be the first line of the .css file, before any spaces or comments.

Example:
@charset “UTF-8″;

Other common value:
@charset “ISO-8859-1″;

Reference:
http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-css-charset

Cheers!

I was recently looking back at some websites I’d created years ago and realized just how much of a hastle the HTML FORM tag used to be for page layouts.   This generally resulted in non-valid markup where the FORM tags themselves were improperly nested in TABLE, TR and TD tags.

Other than the obvious accessibility and semantic markup issues, there are two specific items that must be realized about the layout when working with a FORM.

The following examples assume the following source:

Hello<form>Again</form>World

FORM is a block element, forcing content around it to be separated:

Example displays as:
Hello
Again
World

• FORM generally has a bottom margin to push content down below it.

Example displays as:
Hello
Again

World

• CSS can fix both of these cases depending upon your specific problem:

<style type=”text/css”>
form { margin-bottom:0; display:inline; }
</style>

Example displays as:
HelloAgainWorld

 Cheers!

I’ve got my “Java Yellow Belt”

While this website does not give out official certifications, it’s a decent measure of individuals knowledge and provides a great way to test what you know (and may have forgotten over the years).

http://www.javablackbelt.com/

Cheers!

Over the past few years, JavaScript has evolved from a website ‘add-on’ (primarily for non-critical features like animations) to a requirement for use. Many sites still rely on the tried and true ‘noscript’ tag for this purpose, unfortunately, it’s not always practical or accessible to do so.

A better way would be to use standard markup in the page, but use the scripting to ‘hide’ the content you don’t want users with JavaScript enabled to see.

This can be taken to great lengths, but here’s a very simplified example:
<div id=”noscript”>Please enable JavaScript to use this feature.</div>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
var obj = document.getElementById(’noscript’);
obj.style.display=’none’;
</script>

REFERENCES:

• http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/replacing-noscript-with-accessible-un/
• http://www.robertnyman.com/2005/07/01/no-noscript-mkay/

Cheers!

Often you want to use Apache HTTP for static content, yet use Tomcat for JSP and other Java type work.  This is a very common infrastructure for enterprise applications, particularly when using ‘pools’ of servers for performance, redundancy and security.  

In order to accomplish this, all connections need to be handled by the Apache webserver, which will delegate appropriate requests to Tomcat for it to process.

Here’s a simple setup to get you started:

• First you need to get the connector appropriate to your installation:
  

  http://tomcat.apache.org/connectors-doc/

• Next make sure the connector file is in the /conf folder of your Apache installation.
  

  NOTE: I prefer to use this path and leave the version name to make maintenance and backups easier.

• Add the following line to httpd.conf
  

  LoadModule jk_module conf/mod_jk-1.2.26-httpd-2.2.4.so

• Now, add the following to http.conf
  

  <IfModule jk_module>
  Include “c:/TOMCATPATH/conf/auto/mod_jk.conf”
  JkWorkersFile conf/workers.properties
  JkLogFile “c:/LOGSPATH/tomcat55_mod_jk.log”
  </IfModule>

• Add the c:/APACHEPATH/conf/workers.properties file with the following (minimal) contents:
  

  worker.list=ajp13
  worker.ajp13.port=8009
  worker.ajp13.host=localhost
  worker.ajp13.type=ajp13

• Finally, restart both Apache and Tomcat
• The following file should have been created in c:/TOMCATPATH/conf/auto/mod_jk.conf
  

  ########## Auto generated on …some datetime… ##########

  <IfModule !mod_jk.c>
    LoadModule jk_module “C:/APACHEPATH/conf/mod_jk-1.2.26-httpd-2.2.4.so”
  </IfModule>

  JkWorkersFile “C:/TOMCATPATH/conf/jk/workers.properties”
  JkLogFile “c:/LOGSPATH/mod_jk.log”

  JkLogLevel emerg

  <VirtualHost localhost>
      ServerName localhost

      JkMount /webdav ajp13
      JkMount /webdav/* ajp13

      JkMount /servlets-examples ajp13
      JkMount /servlets-examples/* ajp13

      JkMount /jsp-examples ajp13
      JkMount /jsp-examples/* ajp13

      JkMount /balancer ajp13
      JkMount /balancer/* ajp13

      JkMount /host-manager ajp13
      JkMount /host-manager/* ajp13

      JkMount /tomcat-docs ajp13
      JkMount /tomcat-docs/* ajp13

      JkMount /manager ajp13
      JkMount /manager/* ajp13
  </VirtualHost>

If all went well, you should be able to access  your Tomcat server webapps on the regular HTTP port used by your Apache installation.

Cheers!

Here’s another simple way to optimize code and network traffic. XML… by it’s very definition is wasteful as it exchanges size for readability. JSON is a different approach that maintains readability as well as reduces the size to a minimum. This method can be used in any client-server environment, not just between a browser and server.

JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a lightweight data-interchange format that is easy for humans to and machines to read/parse and write/generate. JSON is a text format that is completely language independent but uses conventions that are familiar to most programmers familiar with OO languages.

JSON is built on two structures:

• A collection of name/value pairs. In various languages, this is realized as an object, record, struct, dictionary, hash table, keyed list, or associative array.
• An ordered list of values. In most languages, this is realized as an array, vector, list, or sequence.

Key Concepts:

• An object is an unordered set of name/value pairs. An object begins with { (left brace) and ends with } (right brace). Each name is followed by : (colon) and the name/value pairs are separated by , (comma).
• An array is an ordered collection of values. An array begins with [ (left bracket) and ends with ] (right bracket). Values are separated by , (comma).
• A value can be a string in double quotes, or a number, or true or false or null, or an object or an array. These structures can be nested.
• A string is a collection of zero or more Unicode characters, wrapped in double quotes, using backslash escapes. A character is represented as a single character string. A string is very much like a C or Java string.
• A number is very much like a C or Java number, except that the octal and hexadecimal formats are not used.

REFERENCES:

• http://www.json.org/
• http://www.json.org/fatfree.html
• http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4627.txt
• http://www.json.com/

Cheers!

I spend a lot of my time tweaking the performance of web applications, in addition to optimizing code it’s also necessary to verify that your server settings are also optimized for network performance to reduce bandwidth usage and thus client response times.

NOTE: This is a tradeoff between CPU and network performance, it works by compressing the content on the server just before it is sent over the wire…. when the client receives it, it then also spends some of it’s resources to decompress the content.

The Apache HTTP server provided mod_deflate (for 2.x) or mod_gzip (for 1.3).

Here’s a quick start as well as a few references:

In httpd.conf:

1. Uncomment the module:

LoadModule deflate_module modules/mod_deflate.so

2. Add the following (modify if required):

<IfModule deflate_module>
#AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/xml text/css text/javascript
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/*
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml
#AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript

<Location />
# Insert filter
SetOutputFilter DEFLATE

# Netscape 4.x has some problems…
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html

# Netscape 4.06-4.08 have some more problems
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip

# MSIE masquerades as Netscape, but it is fine
# BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html

# NOTE: Due to a bug in mod_setenvif up to Apache 2.0.48
# the above regex won’t work. You can use the following
# workaround to get the desired effect:
BrowserMatch \bMSI[E] !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html

# Don’t compress images or ZIP/GZ/7Z
SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \
\.(?:gif|jpe?g|png|zip|7z|gz)$ no-gzip dont-vary

# Make sure proxies don’t deliver the wrong content
Header append Vary User-Agent env=!dont-vary
</Location>
</IfModule>

REFERENCES:

• http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_deflate.html
• http://www.mozilla.org/projects/apache/gzip/
• http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html#gzip
• http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/compress/
• http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/speed-up-apache-20-web-access-or-downloads-with-mod_deflate.html
• http://howtoforge.com/apache2_mod_deflate
• http://www.devarticles.com/c/a/Apache/Compressing-Web-Output-Using-mod-deflate-and-Apache-2.0.x/
• http://www.ffnn.nl/pages/articles/linux/apache-2-mod_deflate-benchmark.php

Cheers!