Drew Marsh: Drew's Blog::Web Technology

RFC: RSS 2.0 and the MetaWeblog API

Mon, 13 Jan 2003 19:55:10 GMT

RFC: RSS 2.0 and the MetaWeblog API [Scripting News]

Ugh, holy hacking batman. The more XMLRPC gets put to the test, the more is shows just how weak it really is. It's only based on simple well-formed XML, so that's as far as it can go without hacking things like this:

If you wish to transmit an element that is part of a namespace include a sub-struct in the struct passed to newPost and editPost whose name is the URL that specifies the namespace. The sub-element(s) of the struct are the value(s) from the namespace that you wish to transmit.

Wow... nasty. :\

This would be an absolute XML no-brainer in SOAP. Perhaps it's time to work on a SOAP based weblogging API.

Understanding DIME and WS-Attachments

Tue, 05 Nov 2002 02:09:37 GMT

Yet another useful article from the MSDN Web Services center. The DIME specification is one that I wish was better established about two years ago when we (meaning my company) revamed our upload protocols. Come to think of it, even SOAP wasn't established enough. So we've hand rolled our own XML message format and in between there's a straight HTTP 1.1 chunked upload. The XML messages are custom schema and are used to initiate, resume, finalize and terminate uploads. Next version will be definitely be SOAP+DIME... can't wait!

Visual XSLT Comments

Tue, 05 Nov 2002 01:50:22 GMT

Visual XSLT TryOut. I've been hearing about ActiveState's Visual XSLT tool quite a bit, and I was quite intrigued by it, but never found the time to give it a through test. This weekend finally the opportunity presented itself, so I downloaded the trial version and gave it a go.

...

Although I did run into a few gotchas, I did get a feel for the power of the tool (it even works with includes and all). Most definitely, this is a tool I'd love to have on my arsenal, so I guess it's savings time so that I can afford it in a few months... not very soon, though :( [Commonality]

I agree. I tried it out back when it was originally released and was quite impressed with it's capabilities as well. I wasn't doing all that much work with XSLT at the time, so I didn't really have the need to buy it. However, we're migrating our systems over to .NET and XSLT should play a bigger role. If so, I'll definitely recommend purchasing a copy for my company.

Understanding WS-Security

Thu, 24 Oct 2002 18:30:59 GMT

A new article popped up on MSDN the other day which covers the basics of the WS-Security specification. I like the article because the author starts off by explaining why the WS-Security specification was needed and gives good real world examples of where it's applicable. The author then describes the WS-Security SOAP header and how it is intended to be processed. Finally, the author delves into the guts of the spec and gives more detail on the various forms of signing and encryption that can be used.

XQuery Preview

Thu, 17 Oct 2002 16:56:16 GMT

There's a good article up on The O'Reilly Network that contains a quick, but thorough introduction to the upcoming XQuery specification. The technology seems pretty well thought out and should certainly make working with XML documents much more robust. I'm not thrilled about the syntax of the language, but then again it's just syntax... it's the features that matter to me.

The question on my mind is: When will we see support for it in .NET?

Mozilla 1.1 Released

Tue, 27 Aug 2002 16:01:56 GMT

Mozilla 1.1 has been released and includes plenty of bug-fixes and enhancements across all platforms.

Top Ten Tips to Using XPath and XPointer

Thu, 22 Aug 2002 01:30:24 GMT

An article was just posted to The O'Reilly Network which lists some useful tips to remember when using XPath and XPointer. All ten tips are definitely worth committing to memory. I've seen the first tip alone snag so many people it's ridiculous. Everyone always seems to forget our poor friend the text node. ;) Truthfully I think it has a lot more to do with the human brain not processing whitespace as efficiently as the XML specification would like us to.

XSLT Processing with .NET

Thu, 15 Aug 2002 05:31:56 GMT

Yet another article from The O'Reilly Network. This one's all about the implementation of XSLT in .NET. The article starts off with a basic introduction to the System.Xml.Xsl namespace, the main class of course being XslTransform. Next, we're shown various ways you can "feed" the stylesheet to the XslTransform class' Load method. Then there's some light coverage of a couple of I/O approaches that can be used when calling the Transform method. Following that, the author touches on how to parameterize the transform, including how to pass all empowering extension objects. Finally the article is finshed off with a quick example of how to embed script right into the stylesheet itself.

XHTML 2.0: The Latest Trick

Fri, 09 Aug 2002 17:21:46 GMT

There's a brief, two page article over on The O'Reilly Network that covers some of the upcoming changes in XHTML 2.0. I especially like the Common Attribute Collection which basically defines an XML attribute group that all XHTML elements use. The article discusses one in particular: href. Basically every XHTML element can now be a link without having to wrap it in an anchor element.

RE: Usability and Font Sizes

Thu, 25 Jul 2002 16:21:29 GMT

Please, whatever you do, don't use small, large, x-large, etc.! The actual sizes vary from browser to browser what looks normally sized in IE looks microscopic in Mozilla, or vice versa. [The .NET Guy]

Hmm... I just did a quick test. Using the em measurement is identical in both browsers as expected and while the named sizes are not exact, they are very close and are indeed still relative to the browsers text size:

Usability and Font Sizes

Thu, 25 Jul 2002 03:30:28 GMT

All I can say is: Guilty as charged! This is one issue I'm working on, as well as making both the MC++ FAQ and this weblog pages be XHTML compliant, but it's not as easy as I thought it would be. The fact that dealing with relative font sizes in IE is a pain in the butt doesn't help, specially with Verdana as the font... [Commonality]

The font-family should not matter. Just make sure to use the em length unit in your font-size attribute and you should be all set. Either that or use the relative-size keywords (i.e. small, large, x-large, etc.).

New MSDN XML Web Services Site Goes Live

Sat, 13 Jul 2002 02:06:22 GMT

New MSDN XML Web Services site goes live!. Tim Ewald ships before Don does... [Don Box's Spoutlet]

Here's a direct link.

XML Shell

Thu, 11 Jul 2002 17:01:52 GMT

XSH - XML Shell XSH, An XML Editing Shell. In this month's Perl and XML column, Kip Hampton introduces XSH, an XML editing shell, which Kip suggests should become a part of your XML tool kit. [Meerkat: An Open Wire Service][via Bright Eyed Mister Zen]

Pretty neat tool. [Justin Rudd's Radio Weblog]

Woah, that is pretty neat. Here's a direct link to the article. For those interested in tinkering, you can even download the source via a link at the end of the article.

Understanding GXA

Wed, 10 Jul 2002 22:01:35 GMT

Don has published an article on understanding GXA. I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but it's on my todo list for tonight! ;)

W3C XML Schema Design Patterns: Dealing With Change

Mon, 08 Jul 2002 22:00:12 GMT

An article by Dare Obasanjo via the O'Reilly Network on designing XML schemas. It's an excellent article which addresses a topic that most people probably aren't thinking about when they first start defining XML schemas: versioning.

Visual XSLT 1.5

Mon, 08 Jul 2002 17:37:04 GMT

ActiveState just released the beta of Visual XSLT 1.5. It's got a couple of neat new features like support for .NET extension objects and an XPath expression evaluator. Sign up for the beta here. [Peter Drayton's Radio Weblog]

Cool, I'll have to check this out. XSLT and XPath aren't that difficult to work with, but their syntaxes tend to be long winded. If this product can save me keystrokes without having to sacrifice any features of the two technologies, then I'm all for it.

Sorting in XSLT

Mon, 08 Jul 2002 16:54:02 GMT

An article on sorting in XSLT via the O'Reilly Network.

Enforcing Association Cardinality

Tue, 02 Jul 2002 21:07:02 GMT

There's a great little article over on the O'Reilly network entitled Enforcing Association Cardinality. It's a good read for any UML followers out there looking to apply their knowledge within the realm of XML.

O'Reilly Publishes Book on W3C XML Schema

Tue, 02 Jul 2002 20:13:48 GMT

O'Reilly publish book on W3C XML Schema. O'Reilly and Associates have published XML Schema: The W3C's Object-Oriented Descriptions for XML, written by XMLhack's own Eric van der Vlist. [xmlhack]

Great! I hope more and more people get on board with schema based XML development. As I've mentioned before, I totally see the benefits in simple well-formed XML documents, but there's so much more power in terms of describing and consuming documents when using schemas.

As a side-note, if you don't already own a copy of Essential XML Quick Reference, I suggest you pick it up. It covers all of the major XML technologies in a concise, well indexed format.

Update: Thanks to John St. Clair who pointed out that the content for the quick reference is actually available for download at the DevelopMentor website. You'll need to sign up for a DM account, but it's painless and well worth it if you want the content.

Disclaimer: I could be considered biased because I reviewed the book, but honestly I use it almost any time I'm working with XML to look stuff up.

Don Box: XML & Inclusion

Tue, 25 Jun 2002 17:28:36 GMT

XML & Inclusion. "I just read your 'Object vs. XML' post on the spout and I'd be pleased if you would allow me to respond with my own personal spoutlet. Here goes:" [sellsbrothers.com: Windows Developer News]

Personally, I'm in the XML Schema camp. I totally see the value in having loosely formed XML documents as well, but having a schema enables much richer integration with other environments.

XHTML 1.1. DTD Invalid Include Follow-Up

Tue, 25 Jun 2002 05:21:13 GMT

Following up on today's earlier discovery of what appeared to be the a bad URL to an include in the XHTML 1.1 DTD I came across this post in the W3 archives. Essentially it points out that relative DTD linking is not properly supported by some DTD parsers and it appears that .NET's is one of them. ;) From the looks of it, only the one module I discussed earlier today, xhtml11-model-1.mod, is declared relative to the XHTML DTD.

Therefore, to remedy this situation one would need to make a local copy of the XHTML 1.1 DTD, modify the relative reference, "xhtml11-model-1.mod", to be an absolute one, like so "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11-model-1.mod" and then write a custom XmlResolver which detects requests for the W3 online version of the XHTML 1.1 DTD and redirects them to the local copy instead.

Google Labs: Keyboard Shortcuts Project

Tue, 25 Jun 2002 04:47:31 GMT

Saw a referrer link today that directed me to the Google Labs: Keyboard Shortcuts. It's pretty cool. Basically it enables a keyboard based approach to working your way through a standard Google search results page. Simple really. It's stuff you take for granted in your OS of choice, but that you don't usually find in a standard web UI these days... despite the fact that browsers have supported basic keyboard event handling since the 4.0 days.

Flash (.NET) Remoting Layer

Thu, 20 Jun 2002 18:14:44 GMT

Having done some further research into the previously mentioned Macromedia Pet Market demo, I came across the Flash Remoting Layer which I hadn't seen yet. The features that stuck out most were:

Parses and translates ActionScript XML objects on the server into an org.w3c.xml DOM, making any remote service (a CFC, a page, an EJB, a Java class, a .NET DLL, etc.) that accepts and/or returns XML documents seamlessly accessible to Macromedia Flash.
Enables objects to be passed to remote services by reference and by value.
Access SOAP-based web services directly from Macromedia Flash using built-in SOAP Proxy Adaptor.

Macromedia certainly seems to be positioning itself well...

Macromedia Pet Market Front End

Thu, 20 Jun 2002 16:37:41 GMT

Yesterday Macromedia realeased a Pet Market demo application to demostrate what they mean with "Rich Internet Application". The site comes in different version with support for .NET and J2EE backends. Even if I'm not sure if I like the graphical design and I don't like Flash as a format, the idea of these kind of front ends are interesting. Hopefully, browsers will soon be stable enough to build these kind of applications easily while still using open, accessible standards such as XHTML, CSS and SVG. [protocol7]

I bet you could build it today using just IE5+ or Mozilla and Adobe's SVG viewer. IMHO, the major thing that Flash has going for it right now, over these standard technologies, is the fact that it has an rich set of tools to create the content. Flash has a full on RAD enviroment. Right now, all SVG has is your favorite XML editor (VS.NET, XMLSpy, TextPad, emacs, etc.) followed by a browser refresh.

SVG.NET Viewer Details and Unit Testing results

Thu, 20 Jun 2002 04:16:34 GMT

I finally got time to add a page with a minimalistic info on the SVG.NET Viewer. The most important info there now is the test suite result table. [protocol7]

Wow, looks like you've made some good headway so far. Keep up the good work!