BETTER WeB

gmail is not working

2009-09-24T11:05:00.001-04:00

Again, at the time I need it...

redskin won

2009-09-21T14:22:00.000-04:00

I just can NOT believe it.

javascript speed test

2008-09-24T13:57:00.003-04:00

This is a list of javascript speed test

Deferred javascript in firefox

2008-08-07T13:50:00.003-04:00

With closing of this bug, the javascript with "defer='defer'" setting finally functions as what it should.

Best javascript chart generator

2008-08-07T10:19:00.001-04:00

Here is a list of best chart generating javascript tools.

Online Olympics program stream

2008-08-07T10:07:00.001-04:00

This one is still broadcasting Olympics games.

Dynamically generate select options in xhtml

2008-07-14T13:24:00.004-04:00

This example shows how to generate options for select tag in HTML or XHTML.

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
    lang="en-US">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
<title>Solvent</title>
<script type="text/javascript">
<![CDATA[
var xhtmlNS = "http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml";
function generateOptions( ){
//Get the select via DOM
 var vSelect1 = document.getElementById("Select1");

 var i;
 for( i = 0 ; i < 10; i ++ ){
  //Created the option element 
  var vOption = document.createElementNS(xhtmlNS, "option");
  //Set the value
  vOption.setAttributeNS( null, "value", "value" + i );
  //Create the textnode for the option
  var vText = document.createTextNode( "text"+ i );
  //Append the textnode to the option element
  vOption.appendChild( vText );
  //Append the option element to the select element
  vSelect1.appendChild( vOption );
 }
}
]]>
</script>
</head>
<body onload="generateOptions()">
<form id="selectForm">
<select id="Select1"></select>
</form>
</body>
</html>

1 million iphone 3G in 3 days

2008-07-14T09:56:00.000-04:00

News about 1 million iphone 3G sold in 3 days. This is hilarious, I am waiting to see some iphone visit to my blog.

inard of an iphone 3G

2008-07-10T12:19:00.001-04:00

From ifixit.com with love.

firefox 3.1 bug evolution chart

2008-07-08T13:02:00.001-04:00

Link.

running C/Python on the web

2008-07-07T16:40:00.002-04:00

Nice try. But to be honest, I don't really think it will attract a lot of developers. But maybe people can develop plugins for firefox.

Way to 16nm and beyond

2008-07-07T12:40:00.003-04:00

So it is clear now, finfet is the solution.

And Intel on SOI.

iphone's future in China

2008-06-26T11:30:00.001-04:00

From a Chinese Blog.

firefox acid3 progress

2008-06-23T09:29:00.000-04:00

Changes underway.

what's new in firefox 3 for webdevelopers

2008-06-14T11:51:00.002-04:00

CSS, CSS, CSS, DOM, Javascript, SVG.

An regular expression for float point numbers

2008-06-12T16:48:00.002-04:00


[-+]?[0-9]+[.]?[0-9]*([eE][-+]?[0-9]+)?

This should do the job.

Safari is getting a new Javascript engine

2008-06-03T12:45:00.001-04:00

Squirrelfish. It is fast, yeah, fast.

Regular expression for URL validation

2008-06-01T11:13:00.002-04:00


/^(?:https?|s?ftp|telnet|ssh|scp):\/\/(?:(?:[\w]+:)?\w+@)?(?:(?:(?:[\w-]+\.)*\w[\w-]{0,66}\.(?:[a-z]{2,6})(?:\.[a-z]{2})?)|(?:(?:25[0-5]\.|2[0-4][0-9]\.|1[0-9]{2}\.|[0-9]{1,2}\.)(?:(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|1[0-9]{2}|[0-9]{1,2})\.){2}(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|1[0-9]{2}|[0-9]{1,2})))(?:\:\d{1,5})?(?:\/(~[\w-_.])?)?(?:(?:\/[\w-_.]*)*)?\??(?:(?:[\w-_.]+\=[\w-_.]+&?)*)?$/i;

This will do the job.

search for government document

2008-04-16T16:09:00.002-04:00

I was trying to find some document of Dorje Shugden. Then I realized I didn't see any document from any government. Can some one in the big search engines give us some way to look into the bewildering government documents?

Wow, CNN

2008-04-10T11:12:00.002-04:00

I usually don't write any political in this blog, but I was really amazed by CNN yesterday. There was a full screen of pro-China supporter and China national flag everywhere at San Francisco, and CNN claimed those were protesters. I have been watching CNN lying by omission and manipulating for years, but this time it was unbelievable. They just didn't see what they were seeing and talked what they were supposed to say.

My salute to Anti-CNN.com.

firefox3 vs. Acid3

2008-03-11T18:07:00.000-04:00

firefox3 vs. Acid3 in a spreadsheet.

acid 3 test

2008-01-11T16:29:00.000-05:00

Acid 3 test is online. Let's see who will pass it firstly.

Safari cellIndex problem solved in 3.0

2008-01-05T13:48:00.000-05:00

Finally, Safari provide the cellIndex of a table cell properly. I think I will update some table stuff in this blog.

SVG progress in firefox

2008-01-04T18:39:00.000-05:00

With bug 389746 and bug 390379 checked in . The firefox 3.0 will support all SVG filters.

Sortable table, dynamic table cell background color in action

2008-01-03T16:05:00.001-05:00

Here. A big table of solvents properties and miscibility. Click or double click the table head to sort. The table background changes as your mouse wandering around to high light current table cell. ~~Supposed to w~~Works in IE7 too, ~~but never~~ tested. Works in Safari 3, Firefox 2, IE7, Opera 7.5. Opera has some high light problem. And the sorting works like a magic in Safari and Opera.

For mouseover event outside a tag in IE7,

is required.

SVG for 3D?

2008-01-02T18:27:00.000-05:00

I saw some people using SVG to present 3D data. I don't like this idea. First, it is slow. Second there is a thing named X3D for it.

for...in loop and nodeList in Safari

2008-01-02T17:58:00.000-05:00

Several years ago, I figured out that for...in loop doesn't work with a nodeList we got from dom functions like getElementsByTagName.

Or that means

var divs = document.getElementsByTagName("div"); var i; for( i in divs ){ divs.items(i).innerHTML = "B"; }

doesn't work in Safari. Some people may know that there is another way to access a nodeList in Firefox and IE, like

var divs = document.getElementsByTagName("div"); var i; for( i in divs ){ divs[i].innerHTML = "B"; }

However, this doesn't work in Safari too. (Actually it is wrong even in Firefox and IE.) The right way is

var divs = document.getElementsByTagName("div"); var i; for( i= 0; i < divs.length; i ++ ){ divs.items(i).innerHTML = "B"; }

The reason is that in Firefox or IE, nodeList is treated as an array, but Safari doesn't.

Dynamically create SVG with javascript

2007-12-27T13:22:00.003-05:00

Following is an example of dynamically created SVG pattern with javascript and DOM. The name space part is tricky and can be frustrating for people not familiar with it. The hard parts are high lighted in red.

=============================



<?xml version="1.0" ?>

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" 

                 xmlns:svg="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"

     xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"

     lang="en-US">

 <head>

  <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="application/xhtml+xml;charset=utf-8"/>

  <title>SVG</title>

  <style type="text/css">

   #drawingPad{

    width:100px;

    height:100px;

    overflow:hidden;

    border:1px solid black;

    position:absolute

   }
  </style>

  <script type="text/javascript">

  <![CDATA[

//________________________________

var xhtmlNS = "http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml";

var svgNS = "http://www.w3.org/2000/svg";

var xlinkNS ="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink";

function makeCircle(x, y, r){

 var vCircle = document.createElementNS(svgNS, "svg:circle")

 vCircle.setAttributeNS( null, "cx", new String( x  ) + "px" );

 vCircle.setAttributeNS( null, "cy", new String( y  ) + "px" );

 vCircle.setAttributeNS( null, "r", new String( r ) +"px");

 vCircle.setAttributeNS( null, "style", "fill:blue");

 return vCircle;

}

function makeLine(x1, y1, x2, y2){

 var vLine = document.createElementNS(svgNS, "svg:line")

 vLine.setAttributeNS( null, "x1", new String( x1  ) + "px" );

 vLine.setAttributeNS( null, "y1", new String( y1  ) + "px" );

 vLine.setAttributeNS( null, "x2", new String( x2  ) + "px" );

 vLine.setAttributeNS( null, "y2", new String( y2  ) + "px" );

 vLine.setAttributeNS( null, "style", "stroke-width:2;stroke:red");

 return vLine;

}



function drawPattern(){

 var vPad = document.getElementById( "drawingPad" );

 var vSVGElem = document.createElementNS(svgNS, "svg:svg");

 var i;

 var r = 20;

 var vAX = new Array();

 var vAY = new Array();

 for( i = 0 ; i < 7 ; i ++ ){

  var vAngle = Math.PI * 4 / 7 * i

  var vX = Math.cos(vAngle) * r + 50

  var vY = Math.sin( vAngle ) * r + 50

  var vC = makeCircle(vX, vY, 4);

  vSVGElem.appendChild( vC);

  vAX[ i ] = vX

  vAY[ i ] = vY

  if( i > 0 ){

   var vLine = makeLine(vX, vY, vAX[ i - 1 ], vAY[ i - 1 ]);

   vSVGElem.appendChild( vLine );

   

  }

 }

 vPad.appendChild(vSVGElem) 

}

 ]]>-->

</script>

</head>

<body>

<form>

 <input type="button" onclick="drawPattern(); return false;" value="Click"/>

</form>

<div id="drawingPad">

 

</div>



</body>

</html>

=============================

Firefox bookmark recovery

2007-12-21T10:17:00.000-05:00

Bookmark troubles with Firefox? Not to worry. There is a good article about lost Firefox bookmark at Mozillazine.

Firefox 3.0 beta 2

2007-12-20T17:08:00.000-05:00

Release note. The SVG performance has been improved a lot since beta 1.

IE8 passed the acid2 test

2007-12-19T20:25:00.001-05:00

IE8 passed the acid2 test. It's time for the acid3.

Dancing of the CPUs

2007-12-14T10:36:00.000-05:00

1971	Intel 4004	4bit.
1972	CTC/Intel 8008	14bit
1972	Intel 4040
1973	Intel 8080	16bit
1974	Intel 8080A	16bit
	TI TMS 1000	4bit
	AMD 9080
	Motorola 6800
1975	Mos Technology 6501/6502
1975	Microchip Technology PIC 16X
1976	Intel 8085
	Zilog Z80
	RCA 1802
1977	Motoroal 6809
1977	Intel 8048
1978	Intel 8086	AMD, Harris
1978	Zilog Z8000
1979	Intel 8088
	Motorola 68000/6809
	Zilog Z8
1980	Intel 8051
1981	NEC V20
1981	Intel 432
1983	Intel 80186
1982	Intel 80286	AMD, IBM, Harris, Siemens, Fujitsu, Kruger
1984	Intel 960
1985	ARM1
	Zilog Z800/Z80000
	MIPS R2000
1986	ARM2
	SPARK V7
	Fairchild Clipper C100
	Zilog Z280/Z180
1988	AMD AM29000
1988	Integraph Clipper C300
1987	Motorola 68030
	Intel 386
	MIPS R3000
1989	PA-7000
	Intel 486
	Intel 860
1990	Motorola 68040
	Integraph Clipper C400
	Sun SPARC
1991	MIPS R4000
	IBM 386SLC
	AM386
	ARM6
1992	DEC Alpha 21064
	PA-7100
	Cyrix 486SLC/DLC
	IBM 486SLC
1993	Intel Pentium
	MIPS R4400
	IBM/Motorola PowerPC 601
1994	AMD AM486
	PA-7150/7200
	MIPS R4600/R8000
	SUN SPARC II
	DEC Alpha 21164
	Zilog Z380
	IBM/Motorola PowerPC603
1995	AMD AM5x86
	Cyrix 5x86/6x86
	MIPS R10000
	Intel Pentium Pro
1996	Cyrix MediaGX
	PA-7300/8000
	Alpha 21264
	AMD K5
1997	Intel Pentium MMX
	PA-8200
	AMD K6
	Cyrix 6x86MX
	Cyrix MediaGX
	Intel Pentium II
1998	Intel Celeron
	PA-8500
	Alpha 21264
	MIPS R12000
	AMD K6-2
1999	Intel Pentium III
	National Semiconductor Geode
	AMD K6 III
	AMD Athlon
2000	Celeron II
	PA-8600
	VIA Cyrix III
	AMD Duron
	Pentium IV
2001	PA-8700
	MIPS R14000
	VIA C3
	Zilog eZ80
	Intel/HP Itanium
2002	Alpha 21364
	MIPS R16000
	AMD Geode
	Xscale PXA250
	Intel/HP Itanium 2
2003	PA-8800
	Intel Pentium M
	Intel Celeron M
	Intel Pentium 4EE
	AMD Athlon64/Opteron
2004	Intel Pentium 4E/4F
	VIA Isaiah
	AMD Sempron
2005	PA-8900
	Zilog eZ8
	VIA C7
	Pentium D
2006	Zilog Z16
	Intel Core Solo/Duo
	Intel Core 2 Solo/Duo
2007	Intel CE 2110

Tales of GUIs and OSes

2007-10-24T12:07:00.000-04:00

January 1983	Lisa Office System	Cooperative multitasking, virtual memory.
January 1984	System 1.0 (Mac OS 1)	A simplified version of Lisa system. Icons were designed by Dr. Susan Kare, the designer dogcow, Happy Mac and Command Key. She also designed the icon of Notepad.exe and many other icons in Windows and the cards in solitaire game. 255 characters long file name, finder support 63 characters. Single task, menu on top.
May 1984	System 1.1 (Mac OS 1.1, System Software 0.1)	Performance improvement. Ability to start certain programs at the time system startup.
June 1984	X1	X1 was originated from "W".
January 1985	X6
April 1985	System 2.0 (Mac OS 2.0, System Software 0.3)	"New Folder" command. "List" view. Shutdown command. Eject disks by dragging them to trash. "MiniFinder" introduced.
September 1985	System 2.1 (Mac OS 2.1)	HFS introduced. 31 characters file name.
September 1985	X9	Color. MIT License.
November 1985	Windows 1.01	Support multitasking from the beginning, thus menus on each windows.
January 1986	System3.0 (Mac OS 3.0, System Software 0.7)	Disck Cache was introduced.
January 1986	System 3.3 (Mac OS 3.3, System Software 2.0)	Introduced AppleShare.
March 1987	System 4.0 (Mac OS 4.0, System Software 2.01)	AppleTalk was introduced.
September 1987	X11	The contemporary protocol of X.
October 1987	System 4.2 (Mac OS 4.2, System Software 5.0 )	Color menu! Cooperative multitasking.
November 1987	Windows 2.0	Windows can be overlapped. "Plug n play" function in school version. Minimize and maximize idea.
April 1988	System 6 (Mac OS 6, System Software 6.0)	Last Mac OS written in assembly. 24 bits memory access.
May 1988	Windows 2.1 286/386	Dos programs running in a window.
October 1988	NEXTSTEP 0.8
October 1988	OS/2 1.1
September 1989	NEXTSTEP 1.0	Mach 2.5, BSD 4.3. Objective C, Interface builder. Display Postscript based GUI.
May 1990	Windows 3.0	Redesigned control panel with Mac style.
September 1990	NEXTSTEP 2.0	CD ROM support. Color monitor. Spell checker.
May 1991	System 7 (Mac OS 7, System Software 7.0)	32bit. Built in cooperative multitasking. Desktop folder. Applescript. TrueType. Trash won't be automatically emptied. File sharing via AppleTalk. Alias. Solid multiscreen support.
March 1992	Windows 3.1	TrueType.
March 1992	OS/2 2.0
September 1992	XFree86 1.0	First version of XFree86. X11R5.
September 1992	NEXTSTEP 3.0	Base of OS X.
July 1993	Windows NT 3.1	32bit. Unicode support. Supported X86, Alpha and MIPS.
August 1994	XFree86 3.0	X11R6.
September 1994	Windows NT 3.5	Added PowerPC support.
October 1994	OS/2 Warp 3.0
May 1995	Windows NT 3.51	NTFS 1.2.
August 1995	Windows 95	32/16bit hybrid. Long file name. New user interface. "Plug n Play". Extensive use of right key click.
July 1996	Windows NT 4.0	Windows 95 style GUI.
July 1996	OpenSTEP 4.0	Runs on SunOS, HP-UX, Windows NT.
September 1996	OS/2 Warp 4.0
November 1996	Windows CE 1.0
November 1996	Windows 95 SR2.1	USB and AGP support.
May 1997	XFree86 3.3	XFree86 Acceleration Architecture.
July 1997	System 8 (Mac OS 8, System Software 8.0)	HFS+ file system. 255 UTF-16 characters file name in system, Finder only support 31 characters. Multi threaded finder.
September 1997	Windows CE 2.0
December 1997	Windows 95 SR2.5	Better USB/AGP support. IE4 and DirectX 5. Active Desktop.
January 1998	System 8.1	Support for USB.
June 1998	Windows 98	FAT32.
July 1998	KDE 1.0	KOM/OpenParts, kdm, KMail, krn.
February 1999	KDE 1.1
March 1999	GNOME 1.0
May 1999	Windows 98SE	IE5, DirectX6.1.
February 2000	Windows2000	Solid Windows NT kernel, new interface. NTFS 3.0
March 2000	Freedesktop.org launched.
June 2000	Windows CE 3.0
September 2000	Windows Me	IE5.5, Mediaplayer 7. Windows 2000 style interface.
October 2000	KDE 2.0	KParts, aRts, Sycoca.
March 2001	Mac OS X 10.0	Quartz/PDF support. Cocoa. Aqua. Drop shadows. Services menu. 255 characters file name in Finder. Extensive use of unicode.
February 2001	KDE 2.1
August 2001	KDE 2.2
September 2001	Mac OS X 10.1	Better CD/DVD burning. DVD playback. Better printer support. Became useful.
October 2001	Windows XP	NTFS 3.1, new interface. Icons designed by iconfactory.
January 2002	Windows CE 4.0
April 2002	KDE3.0	Audits, Xinerama.
June 2002	GNOME 2.0	GTK2.
August 2002	Mac OS X 10.2	Windows networks support. Quartz Extreme. Rendezvous (Bonjour). CUPS. Happy Mac was replaced.
November 2002	Mac OS X 10.2.2	Journaling in HFS+.
January 2003	KDE3.1.
September 2003	GNOME 2.4
October 2003	Mac OS X 10.3	Brushed metal. Exposé. Fax. X11. *.doc support. Fast User Switching. Automatic file defragmentation and hotfile clustering. HFSX. FileVault.
January 2004	X.Org Foundation formed
February 2004	KDE3.2
March 2004	GNOME 2.6.	Nautilus update.
April 2004	X11R6.7.	First X.org release.
August 2004	KDE 3.3
August 2004	Windows XP SP2	Better security features.
March 2005	KDE 3.4
April 2005	Mac OS X 10.4	ACL. Spotlight. Automator. Smart Folders. Sync Services. VoiceOver. Core Image. Core Video.
November 2005	KDE 3.5
December 2005	X11R6.9/7.0	EXA.
January 2006	xgl	Open to public.
February 2006	Compiz	Initial release.
May 2006	X11R7.1	KDrive, AIGLX.
Semptember 2006	Beryl	Beryl forked from Compiz.
January 2007	Windows Vista	Windows Aero. Windows Flip 3D. Windows Shell. Instant Search. Windows Sidebar. IE7. Media Player 11. Backup and Restore center. Windows Mail. Windows Calendar. Windows Photo Gallery. Windows DVD maker/movie maker. Shadow Copy. Parental Control. Windows sideshow. Speech recognition. DX10.
February 2007	X11R7.2	XCB.
March 2007	Beryl and Compiz merge	Compiz Fusion.
September 2007	X11R7.3	DTrace, input hogplug, output hotplug.
October 2007	Mac OS X 10.5	Updated Finder. Dock with Stack. Time Machine. Spaces. Quick Look. Boot Camp. Core Animation. DTrace.
January 2008	KDE 4.0

Firefox misses second page of content when printing or print previewing

2007-10-03T10:40:00.000-04:00

With check in of Bug 154892, this long time printing bug has been solved. This bug annoyed me a lot actually.

document.elementFromPoint support in mozilla/firefox

2007-08-30T14:52:00.000-04:00

Bug 199692 has been fixed on the trunk of firefox 3.0. So all 4 major browsers are supporting elementFromPoint now. Though Opera's support is a little bit different with others.

Free paint replacement on OS X again

2007-08-15T14:52:00.000-04:00

OK, here we goes the free MS Paint replacement on OS X again. There are Tux Paint, Pixen, Seashore, InkScape and Expression.

IMHO, Expression is the best, and it is from Microsoft. My only problem with Inkscape is X11. I don't like X11 programs.

There are two painting programs came with the OS X 10.4 install CD, but you can only get them if you install the developer kit. One is at /Developer/Examples/AppKit/Sketch and the other one is at /Developer/Examples/Quartz/CarbonSketch. Enjoy your compiling.

firefox enterprise msi info

2007-08-15T10:49:00.001-04:00

Follow this thread at mozillazine will give you a lot of useful information.

Tesla Roadster vs. Equinox Fuel Cell vs Honda FCX

2007-08-14T18:06:00.000-04:00

In this fall, Tesla Roadster and Equinox Fuel Cell will be delivered to the market. Let's make a comparison here.

	Tesla Roadster	Equinox Fuel Cell	Honda FCX
Seating	2	5	4
0-60 mph	4s	12s	?
Top Speed	130 mph	100 mph	100mph
Range	200 Miles	200Miles	350 Miles
Operating temperature	-20° C~?	13~113° F -25~+45° C	-30° C~?
Curb weight	2690 subject to change	about 4000	?

To be continued

How much energy can crops store?

2007-08-12T17:29:00.000-04:00

Based on this article, sugar cane store"1% of the incident visible radiation over a period of one year", while "corn, wheat, rice, potatoes, and soybeans typically ranges from 0.1% to 0.4%".

SVG ability in Safari 3beta and Firefox 3 Alpha

2007-08-06T11:47:00.000-04:00

I tried to run both through the W3 SVG test suite. Of course both of them can't render all of the tests, their ability is IMHO on par. But I can't get focus on the URL bar after I run some tests in Firefox.

Full zooming function in firefox

2007-07-26T10:13:00.000-04:00

Full zooming function has been checked in and it will appear in firefox 3. See Bugzilla for more detail. So Opera and firefox can do this trick now, and Safari, IE are left behind.

Firefox 3.0 drops SOAP

2007-07-19T11:18:00.000-04:00

Mozilla.org dropped SOAP support today, with little objection. So it looks SOAP is not important anymore. Ah... The one I loved and cared and forgot.

major svg browser status

2007-06-28T11:34:00.000-04:00

Mozilla http://www.mozilla.org/projects/svg/status.html Webkit/Safari http://webkit.org/projects/svg/status.xml Opera http://www.opera.com/docs/specs/opera9/svg/

online maps

2006-11-29T18:10:00.000-05:00

No online maps service is changing their satellite pictures to reflect season changing yet. It should be interesting to see a green north atmosphere and a yellow south atmosphere at July.

google scholar search

2006-11-07T11:34:00.000-05:00

Why don't google put the scholar search on their front page while I am searching from a edu or ac domain name?

free mspaint replacement on OS X

2006-10-14T20:32:00.000-04:00

Many people just switched to OS X think they need a replacement for the "paint".

While there are two of them, Pixen and Tux paint.

a jscript that cut txt files for ipod notes

2006-08-02T10:10:00.000-04:00

After painfully looking for a program that can cut txt for my ipod, I wrote a small piece of jscript code that works in Windows Script Host.

The place you see a blue "NEXT" should be < a h r e f = \ " " + strFileNameShorter + nFile + "." + strSuffix +"\">NEXT< / a >. Remove the unwanted empty space before you insert code.

var oWShell = new ActiveXObject( "WScript.Shell" );
var oFS = new ActiveXObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject");
var oDialog = new ActiveXObject("UserAccounts.CommonDialog");

var strCurrentDirectory = oWShell.CurrentDirectory 
var forReading = 1, forWriting = 2;
var asUnicode = -1
var nFile = 0;

oDialog.Filter = "All Files|*.*"
oDialog.InitialDir = strCurrentDirectory

var dialogResult = oDialog.ShowOpen()
if( dialogResult == 0 ) {
 oWShell.Quit()
}

var strFileName = oDialog.FileName
var vDotPos = strFileName.lastIndexOf(".")
var strSuffix = "", strFileNameShort = strFileName;
if( -1 != vDotPos ){
 strSuffix = strFileName.substring( vDotPos + 1, strFileName.length )
 strFileNameShort = strFileName.substring( 0, vDotPos  )
}

var vAntiSlashPos = strFileNameShort.lastIndexOf("\\")
var strFileNameShorter = strFileNameShort.substring( vAntiSlashPos + 1, strFileNameShort.length )

var inFile = oFS.OpenTextFile(strFileName, forReading, false, asUnicode)

do{
 var outFile = oFS.CreateTextFile(strFileNameShort + nFile + "." + strSuffix, true, asUnicode)

 var iCharacter = 0
 var temp = ""
 while( ! inFile.AtEndOfStream && iCharacter ++ < 100 ){
  temp += inFile.Read( 20 );
 }
 outFile.Write( temp )
 nFile ++;
 if( ! inFile.AtEndOfStream ){
  outFile.Write( "NEXT")
 }
 outFile.Close()
 
}while( ! inFile.AtEndOfStream )

inFile.Close()

Why CSS sucks?

2006-07-30T21:35:00.000-04:00

CSS is separated from reality, so it sucks.

The CSS recommendation makers simply don't really understand what web designers need.

For example, open a shiny colorful tour book. I bet every photo inside has a shadow. Well, make a shadow via CSS is a complicated work still.

A second example, look at the road signs, they have round corners. Look at your windows XP windows, they have round corners. There are round corners all around OS X. Look at my car windows, they have effectively round corners. But we don't get round corner in CSS.

So CSS sucks.

erica's joys :): Firefox Sidebar + Google IG = Useful on any platform

2006-07-18T10:45:00.000-04:00

erica's joys :): Firefox Sidebar + Google IG = Useful on any platform

Bloody smart idea, perfect for 16:9 screens!

In-Cider Knowledge: WiX-ing lyrically, more about firefox automation and msi

2006-07-14T14:22:00.000-04:00

In-Cider Knowledge: WiX-ing lyrically Yeah, this guy is really working on the firefox msi install package that can be installd via Active Directory. Great news.

Worldmapper: The world as you've never seen it before

2006-07-14T11:17:00.000-04:00

Worldmapper: The world as you've never seen it before. Right, some of them are really unbelievable.

Cross-platform Portable Firefox |

2006-07-14T08:51:00.000-04:00

Cross-platform Portable Firefox | ThePlaceforitAll.com Sweet!

CAD software on Mac

2006-07-11T16:40:00.000-04:00

BRL CAD Open source, free
Concepts XXX Free demo.
McCAD Free.
TurboCAD Free trial. And available in Apple retail store.
Archicad
Argon
ArtlantisR
Cadintosh $33
Design Intuition $1xx
DigiCad 3D
DoodleCAD $54.95
form?Z
HighDesign
PowerCADD
QCad I am using a GPL version.
RealCADD $95 for standard version and $135 for pro version.
Google SketchUp (free), from google and free...
versacad

New in JavaScript 1.7, one more step beyond the C legacy

2006-07-07T12:06:00.000-04:00

New in JavaScript 1.7 - MDC

One more step beyond the C legacy. I really enjoy returning several values from a function at one time.

Browser Fun, one browser bug a day in July

2006-07-07T09:09:00.000-04:00

Browser Fun.

Funny? a little bit. Interesting, a little bit. Helpful, a little bit.

PLANNED BENEFIT SYSTEMS, INC.

2006-07-03T11:43:00.000-04:00

PLANNED BENEFIT SYSTEMS, INC.'s FAX number is 303-221-2785.

Check your number and stop sending fax to my cell phone please.

Monitor a folder for change in Windows, OS X, and Linux/Unix?

2006-06-12T08:58:00.001-04:00

Whant to monitor changes in Windows, Mac OS X and *NIX?

Here are examples.

Windows

Mac

*nix-fam and *nix-gamin

Monitor a folder for change in Windows, OS X, and ...

2006-06-12T08:58:00.000-04:00

Whant to monitor changes in Windows, Mac OS X and *NIX?

Here are examples.

Windows

Mac

*nix

Linux still trumps OSX

2006-05-28T19:20:00.000-04:00

Linux still trumps OSX. From the title, I've got a feeling that the performance of OS X is very close to Linux on computing now, after reading the article, I found they are really close now.

Adobe should get involved with other venders' SVG implementation

2006-05-27T08:53:00.000-04:00

I think Adobe should do something to help Mozilla, KSVG or even Opera to improve their SVG implementation. Why, because after SVG have been widely adopted, Adobe could make profit from 1st, illustrator, 2nd, SVG plugin for IE.

Cars

2006-05-26T22:40:00.000-04:00

The movie Cars is not there yet. But I saw Cars candy in Costco today, what a commercial world!

Environment friendly building

2006-05-19T16:27:00.000-04:00

My office is in a new building, which is designed to be an open classroom, and have no cellphone signal. So after my cell phone desperately searched for signal for a whole day, it run out of power.

So I did some calculation, in my old office, I recharge my phone maybe every 5 days, now I need to recharge my phone very the other day. If I could use the same battery in my old office for 3 years, I can only use it in my new office for about 1 year. Then I need to dispose the useless battery. By shielding the cell phone signal, the architect actually more than doubled waste battery at least from me.

Shall we call this building environment aware and environmental friendly? I think not.

Official Google Blog: Writely so

2006-03-09T21:39:00.000-05:00

Official Google Blog: Writely so

So google is acting. The Writely, a openDocument compatible online word processor.

Now let's wait for the news of s5 and others.

Google and SUN

2006-03-08T05:17:00.000-05:00

I just read this. An article about sun, google and openoffice. But nobody is mentioning what the openoffice is doing. Could google working on something like thinkfree office online? Maybe. Google can link a web based office suit with the storage space at gmail, and google pages.

I fill MS will try to slowdown the development of its dominating web browser, IE. In case the web based office suit could replace their office. However, their action may resulted in a higher firefox and Opera adoption. But if I am the Bill at Redmond, I will make it happen quicker and have people attracted to MSN and "Metro".

Well, where is the Yahoo?

Google adsense

2006-03-08T05:15:00.000-05:00

There should be more colorful choice for google adsense. If my website has a background of black, I won't be happy to have a white block around.

The iTunes Media Store

2006-03-08T05:06:00.000-05:00

So there are some rumor about apple is going to sell long movies via iTMS. Why not? And they may also going to sell eBook, eBook enhanced movie, VH1 style enhanced movie. Also they could sell electronic version of papers, news... You may ask what's the difference between the websites of those papers and TV the iTMS version? We can read it directly on the iPod. So why not we call the iTMS the iTunes Media Store?

google desktop search for gmail

2006-02-27T03:53:00.000-05:00

google desktop search can search gmail, but have two google accounts. There are many people have several gmail accounts. It is the reality. Why don't Mr. Sergey make google desktop search become more powerful and search several gmail accounts?

What W3C should do something for web developer.

2006-02-05T04:30:00.000-05:00

W3C should do more for web developers. They should give web developers an official method to support different browsers in a single CSS file.

I have spent several hours looking through the comments at "IE Blog". I am not a Microsoft lover or a hater. I am kind of web developer. So I only concerned the view points from web developers. To sum up, the world of IE is going to consisted of three members again, while the new comer, IE7, still behave different from other standard compliant browsers. So a web developer should consider four groups of browsers, IE5, IE6, IE7 and the last group including all of the "alternative" browsers.

This is complicated. A nightmare for the web developers.

There have been some "CSS hacking". But I think there should be something better.

W3C should do something. It's the reallity of the web. There are two coexisting standards on the web. The first one is set by the W3C. And the second one is set by the grid of web browsers. None of these browsers support a full set of W3C standard. Each of these browsers has their own bugs.

So it is nice to have a tag to isolate CSS code for different browsers. Just as the "@media ..." tag, we can have "@browser ..."

The current choices can be "IE5, IE6, IE7, Gecko1_8, Gecko1_9, khtml..."

Oops, if W3C do so, we are going to get a new standard and a bunch of new browsers will get into the already condusing browser grid.

iTunes Music Store?

2006-02-01T08:18:00.000-05:00

It should be called iTune Media Store now.

email notification of froogle

2005-09-22T17:47:00.000-04:00

hi, if I want to buy something at certain price, but this price is not available right now, I really would like have something like froogle remeber this and notify me whenever it is available.

email notification of google scholar search

2005-09-22T17:46:00.000-04:00

I think I need one of this, if google scholar found something interesting to me, it should tell me.

Patent Search

2005-08-18T15:57:00.000-04:00

Yes, I know there is a uspto.gov, but I want to search the patents in a better way. The search function at uspto.gov is really lame.

Also, I want to search the patents in the world. US, Europe, Japan, China, Russia, Singapore...

Let's wait and see who will do it.

Firefox turned on SVG

2005-04-27T10:05:00.000-04:00

SVG has been turned on in firefox trunk builds. But it needs to be enabled by about:config

sortable table with HTML and javascript

2005-04-14T17:21:00.000-04:00

Is table should be sortable? Yes, of course.

I had a boring and frustrated afternoon, to kill my time, I wrote some code to do this.

<html>
<head>
<script>
function initiateTableSort(){
 var vTables = document.getElementsByTagName("table");
 var i;
 for( i in vTables ){
  var vFirstRow = vTables[ i ].rows[ 0 ];
  var j;
  for( j in vFirstRow.cells ){
   vFirstRow.cells[ j ].onclick=doTableSort;
   vFirstRow.cells[ j ].ondblclick=doTableSort;
  }
 }
}

var iTeBeCompared = 0;
function doTableSort( e ){
 var vTargetTable = e.target;
 while( vTargetTable.nodeName != "TABLE"  ) vTargetTable = vTargetTable.parentNode;
 var vTR = vTargetTable.rows[ 0 ];
 var i = e.target.cellIndex;
 var j;
 iToBeCompared = i;
 var vTRs = new Array();
 for( i = 1; i < vTargetTable.rows.length; i ++ ){
  var vRowData = new Array();
  var cells = vTargetTable.rows[ i ].cells;
  for( j = 0; j < cells.length; j++ ){vRowData[ j ] = cells[ j ].innerHTML;}
  vTRs[ i - 1 ] = vRowData;
 }
 if( e.type=="click") vTRs.sort( sortRoutineDes );
 else vTRs.sort( sortRoutineAs );
 for( i = 0 ; i < vTRs.length; i ++ ){
  for(j = 0 ; j < vTRs[ 0 ].length; j ++ ) 
   vTargetTable.rows[ i + 1 ].cells[ j ].innerHTML = vTRs[ i ][ j ];
 }

}

function sortRoutineDes( a, b ){
 return (a[iToBeCompared] > b[iToBeCompared])? -1:1;
}

function sortRoutineAs( a, b ){
 return (a[iToBeCompared] < b[iToBeCompared])? -1:1;
}

</script>
</head>
<body onload="initiateTableSort()">
<table border= "1">
 <tr>
  <th>a</th><th>b</th><th>c</th>
 </tr>
 <tr>
  <td>x1</td><td>3</td><td>1</td>
 </tr>
 <tr>
  <td>a2</td><td>2</td><td>2</td>
 </tr>
 <tr>
  <td>a3</td><td>4</td><td>3</td>
 </tr>
<tr>
  <td>a3</td><td>1</td><td>3</td>
 </tr>
<tr>
  <td>a3</td><td>7</td><td>3</td>
 </tr>
<tr>
  <td>a3</td><td>8</td><td>3</td>
 </tr>
<tr>
  <td>a3</td><td>0</td><td>3</td>
 </tr>
<tr>
  <td>a3</td><td>9</td><td>3</td>
 </tr>

</table>
</body>
</html>

change the background color of a table cell by javascript code

2005-04-09T22:35:00.000-04:00

There are some javascript about changing the background color of a table cell around the web. I don't know why people post that, but I made one with my code that access table cell.

getTableCell( "aTable", 1, 2 )
 .style.backgroundColor="blue";

McMaster-Carr

2005-04-07T16:43:00.000-04:00

As a lome time customer of McMaster-Carr, I really enjoy shopping at their website. If everybody make their website as effective as McMaster-Carr, our lives will become much better.

video ipod

2005-04-06T11:52:00.000-04:00

Based on this piece of rumor, the Video iPod is coming. I guess apple will provide music video download firstly and then the short movies and long movies.

access table cell via javascript 2

2005-04-05T16:52:00.000-04:00

Actually, from what I have tested,

 TableId.rows[ i ].cells[ j ]

works fine.

But some people say there are some problems with Safari. I didn't see problems yet.

One method to prevent advertisement annoy web client

2005-03-31T11:56:00.000-05:00

Hi, there,

You have jumping advertisement on your website, and it looks more attractive than your content or simply annoying. At last your client get tired and blocked your advertisement. That's hurt, yeah, hurt.

So why don't you lower the opacity of your advertisement and increase the contrast of your content, which makes your client happier.

Javascript code to access table cell via id

2005-03-30T12:35:00.000-05:00

function getTableCell(id, row, cell){
    var vRow = document.getElementById( id ).rows[ row ];
    var i=0, j=0;
    for(;i < vRow.childNodes.length; i ++ ){
     if( "TD" == vRow.childNodes[ i ].nodeName ){
      if( j == cell ) return vRow.childNodes[ i ];
      j ++;
     }
    }
    return null;
   }

Tested on Firefox 1.02, IE6, Safari 1.2

would google make a word processor in browser, or SUN will do this?

2005-03-16T11:13:00.000-05:00

Saw an intersting article at Good-bye, computer; hello, world!. The most interesting phase in this article is "Every computer is your computer. Onward to the universal terminal!"

google hired ben!

2005-01-24T14:02:00.000-05:00

link

So will there be a google browser again?

a good example to learn how to write firefox extension

2005-01-15T16:34:00.000-05:00

http://extensions.roachfiend.com/howto.php

firefox automation

2005-01-12T09:53:00.000-05:00

This guy is making some good stuff of firefox automation.

Update 2007-09-01: read the official mozilla enterprise wiki for more information about enterprise deployment of firefox.

Apple changed the world again

2005-01-11T14:18:00.000-05:00

God!

They did this, Mac mini, they did this, iPod shuffle.

This is...I can not find a word. They changed the world again.

look beyond tabbed browsing...

2005-01-06T11:54:00.000-05:00

Aren't tabs need to be grouped?

where can we get official firefox msi?

2005-01-05T14:38:00.000-05:00

right here. And unofficials can be found at here and here.

javascript regexp email validator

2005-01-05T14:21:00.001-05:00

I have been looking for a javascript email regexp email validator. And I found one from this web site. And the code is "/^([\w-]+(?:\.[\w-]+)*)@((?:[\w-]+\.)*\w[\w-]{0,66})\.([a-z]{2,6}(?:\.[a-z]{2})?)$/i"

This code looks nice.

However, I am not totally satisfied with the code. Because there are emails addresses don't look like "abc@abc.com". For example, I used to send email to an address like "joel@192.168.100.1". So I am going to make some change to the regular expression filter.

Update 1: "/^([\w-]+(?:\.[\w-]+)*)\@((?:[\w-]+\.)*\w[\w-]{0,66})\.([a-z]{2,6}(?:\.[a-z]{2})?)$|(\[?(\d{1,3}\.){3}\d{1,3}\]?)$/i" will detect email like "abc@127.0.0.1" or "abc@[127.0.0.1]".

Update 2: /^([\w-]+(?:\.[\w-]+)*)\@((?:[\w-]+\.)*\w[\w-]{0,66})\.([a-z]{2,6}(?:\.[a-z]{2})?)$|(\[?(?:(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)\.){3}(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)\]?)$/i

Now this one won't let a.b.c@256.0.0.0 slip.

Update 3: /^(("?)[\w- ]+\1)|([\w-]+(?:\.[\w-]+)*)@((?:[\w-]+\.)*\w[\w-]{0,66})\.([a-z]{2,6}(?:\.[a-z]{2})?)$|(\[?(?:(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)\.){3}(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)\]?)$/i

Now this regular expression thinks "Guy Joel"@abc.com or "Guy Joel"guyj@abc.com are good email address.

Update 4: /^(("?)[\w-\s]+\1)|([\w-]+(?:\.[\w-]+)*)@((?:[\w-]+\.)*\w[\w-]{0,66})\.([a-z]{2,6}(?:\.[a-z]{2})?)$|(\[?(?:(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)\.){3}(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)\]?)$/i

A little bit more update on space in the regexp.

Update 5: /^("[\w-\s]+")?([\w-]+(?:\.[\w-]+)*)?@((?:[\w-]+\.)*\w[\w-]{0,66})\.([a-z]{2,6}(?:\.[a-z]{2})?)$|(\[?(?:(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)\.){3}(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)\]?)$/i

Made a big mistake in the last one. So, another update.

Update 6: /^(("[\w-\s]+")|([\w-]+(?:\.[\w-]+)*)|("[\w-\s]+")([\w-]+(?:\.[\w-]+)*))@((?:[\w-]+\.)*\w[\w-]{0,66})\.([a-z]{2,6}(?:\.[a-z]{2})?)$|(\[?((25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)\.){3}(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)\]?)$/i

It's getting longer and longer, better and better.

Update 7: /^(("[\w-\s]+")|([\w-]+(?:\.[\w-]+)*)|("[\w-\s]+")([\w-]+(?:\.[\w-]+)*))(@((?:[\w-]+\.)*\w[\w-]{0,66})\.([a-z]{2,6}(?:\.[a-z]{2})?)$)|(@\[?((25[0-5]\.|2[0-4][0-9]\.|1[0-9]{2}\.|[0-9]{1,2}\.))((25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|1[0-9]{2}|[0-9]{1,2})\.){2}(25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|1[0-9]{2}|[0-9]{1,2})\]?$)/i

The update 6 thinks 256.255.255.255 is a legal ip address, fixed in update 7.

string	result
joel@joel.com	pass
joel@joel.edu	pass
joel@joel.museum	pass
joel@joel.ac.uk	pass
joel@guy.joel.ac.uk	pass
guy.joel@guy.joel.ac.uk	pass
guy.joel@127.0.0.1	pass
guy.joel@[127.0.0.1]	pass
\"Guy Joel\"guy.joel@[127.0.0.1	pass
\"Guy Joel\"@[127.0.0.1]	pass
\"Guy Joel\"@9.999.99.25	fail
\"Guy Joel\"@999.99.99.25	fail
"\"Guy Joel\""	fail

Also, regular expression for url validation.

Browser side form check and server side form check

2005-01-04T17:11:00.000-05:00

Nowadays web developers do browser side form input check by javascript and server side form input check. Although without browser side form input check everything will be OK, we'd better do it. Because we can save some computing power on the server side. If a web user input some thing wrong, the server application need to check for mistakes, generate a page explain the error, and then the server need to check the input and process the data again.

If we have browser side form input check, the error check process will be done on the browser side computer.

But if we can do form input check at the browser side, why do we need check it again at server side? Because there are hackers, there are bad people. They can do whatever to put something wrong onto the server, to crash the application, to mess up our database. So we need to check the input on the server side again.

However, most of the input will be done by good customers, so with the help of browser side form input check, the server side form input check need only work onece, rather than twice or more.

open an typed url in a new tab in firefox

2005-01-04T13:45:00.000-05:00

Some people asked me this question. It's simple. Just press alt (or option on some old mac) while you hit enter.

more about firefox msi and automation

2005-01-04T13:32:00.000-05:00

Many people have been looking for msi package for firefox. And there is a little discussion going on at mozilla.org. As a result an official msi package of firefox will appear sometime in the next one or two releases. And some other unofficial msi packages are floating arround.

what we can learn from google suggest

2004-12-12T13:10:00.000-05:00

XMLHttpRequest is quicker than iframe
Don't use SOAP

google suggest

2004-12-12T13:08:00.000-05:00

The new google suggest is funny.

But can they do local?

Weird things.

2004-12-09T13:46:00.000-05:00

There are several things I found recently.

The first one is that my blog's google ranking is 5. There is barely visitor to my blog, I know. I searched via google, found out that the only links linking to my blog are from slashdot.org, actually, my sig at slashdot. Thus you can increase your google ranking by add your website as signature at a forum website like slashdot.org. Weired? Isn't it?

During my research of the mystic google ranking, I found that google now supporting searching for information about "who is linking me". Will they provide a visualized geographic related graph? Maybe. Will they show search result in pattern? who knows.

The stuff behind showing search result in pattern

2004-12-09T13:39:00.000-05:00

The stuff behind showing search result in patterns is that the search engine could understand the content and the relationship between them. People are working to make search engines to understand the query words typed by the users of search engine. But it should be equaly important for the search engine to understand the content on the web. Weired? A little bit, I admit.

showing search result in a pattern 2.

2004-11-30T10:03:00.000-05:00

There are many patterns can be used to show the relationships between topics. The one every search engine is using is list. The second interesting one is a tree. The third one may be a grid. And the fourth one may be a flower. The fifth one may be a line. And the sixth one may be a circle.

showing search result in a pattern

2004-11-29T15:48:00.000-05:00

We search the Internet for information. Those pieces of information are connected with each other. And the search engines could show us pages under one topic. But the content of those webpages change from one to another. So how about show the search result in a grid of webpages. As a result, we can not only know one topic and we could also know the related topics and how they are related.

sub key word or sub topic of search engine

2004-11-10T22:16:00.000-05:00

When we do a search online, we input a key word, I prefer to call it a topic, to the webpage of search engine, and the search engine return what ever it thinks related to us.

Search engine should have the ability to identify the sub-topics. For example, if I input Mercedes Benz, the search engine should be able to provide me some sub-topics like "buying Mercedes Benz", "Repair Mercedes Benz", "history and information of Mercedes Benz". And if I input "weather forecast", the search engine should be able to provide something like "local weather forcast", "methods used in weather forecast", "history of weather forecast". If I input "deer hunting", I could get "skill of deer hunting", "places of deer hunting", "equipment needed for deer hunting"...

And the most important is that those sub-topics should be identified by the machine, not human. There are two place to get those informaiton, firstly, direct from the web pages, by analysis of those key words, the search engine should be able to know. Secondly, from the input of people.

The reason we need this is because we are not really clear what we are looking for when we input something to the search engine in many cases, especially we are looking for something we don't know. So those sub-topics could provide a panorama of certain topic. This will help people gather knowledge.

What's the difference between local application and web application?

2004-10-23T23:15:00.000-04:00

I am looking in the future of web applications. Those applications could do something that we are doing with our local applications but running or look like running in a web browser.

But why we need those applications? There are several reasons.

We want mobility.
- We want to, most time we have to walk arround. For example, many times I have to work in my office for some time and then go to a library and then work at the library for some other time. I have a notebook, but I don't like to carry it with me all the time. And there are always some computers in the library, and there is always at least one web browser on each of those computers. I can use them.
For the mobility, we want data to be centralized.
- I hate to say, "Oh, my, I forget my data in the office." And I can put my data on the webserver and access them via web browser. But if we have the data centralized, we have to use network con retrieve the data.
We want multi-platform compatibility.
- I use different computers, and different people use different computers. No body want to write same application several times just for different platform. And as web content can be used by web browser, there problem of compatibility become no problem.
We want to have pictures, videos and more...
- All of those ability can be achieved by telnet. But we also want to use see the graphics and see the radios.
Security concerns
- And because of the security concerns, ports other than 80 has been closed in may computers. In some other case, even any application other than web browser has been shut off the net. Thus, telnet and other applications are forbidden to reach the web, we we have to use web browser. The other security concern is the encryption, the encrypt method used by browsers are well developed and we don need to concern the bugs.

And web applications are different from common applications. Those common applications retrieve data via network using what ever method and has full access to the local data. Web application has tow layers, the first layer is the web server side application. The data are stored on the web server and the server side have full access to the data. Then the server side application send the data in partially rendered form, like HTML or XML, to the web browser. The web broser render the data into understandable form.

The ability of web appliation to render the data is confined by the ability of webbroser to render HTML and the ability of web developer. The ability of web browser is limited, unfortunately. For example, by now, the round corner, which has been used on printed media for hundreds of years, has not been impleted on major browsers on a standard way.

The ability of HTTP is confined. Though we have XML now, XML can be used to transfer diferent kind of data with very complicated structure, the XML has its own problem.

XML is slow and resource demanding.

So over all, web applications have their own points. But the ability of web applications are limited. We may not be able to produce web application as powerful as common applications. But web applications do have their own points, like mobility and security.

What else a search engine could do?

2004-10-18T17:38:00.000-04:00

What else a search engine could do except search? There are many things a search engine could and should do. Basically a search engine has a large database, ah... huge. There are many data inside, it is stupid not to use that data.

One function a search engine could do is analyze the growth of a website. And website should keep adding more and more information to itself. And a search engine could provide information about how this website adding new information to itself. Or the growth curve of the website. It could be linear, square, log or square root of time.

The other thing a search engine could do is analyze the obsolete rate of a website. There are pages that people are not interested anymore, a search engine should be able to see that trend.

The third thing a seach engine is able to do is analyze the growth of other websites, especially "websites with great similarity". This sounds like a spy, but useful...

The fourth thing, to monitor the stability of a website. netcraft is running such service.

The fifth, to give information related with geographical distribution. The business of real world is done at different geographical positions. Or simplify it as provide "whois" information together with No. 1, 2, 3, 4.

The sixth... lemme think.