Adobe announces that it will be opening Flex under Mozilla License

Adobe continues to impress with the direction that it is pushing with open products. Adobe Flex is being open sourced under a Mozilla-style license.

This announcement is more than a “hey, now you can peak at the source code” move. Flex has shipped with source code for quite some time, and some core members of the community have been able to find bugs themselves. Moving to an open source development model now completes the roadmap, allowing for these developers to contribute their skills.

Changing to an open source development model isn’t a trivial task. As such, it will take some time to implement everything that Adobe wants too. Putting a copyright on code is one thing, openings up a bug database and subversion is another. Cultivating the community is the hard part, and Adobe is carefully trying to do this right. I think that they understand that this will only be a true success if a rich community of contributors grows out of this. When talking to them, they often mentioned how the Flex development team will bring in outside developers who will become just as much a part of the product as the Adobe employees. I hope this happens.

Ajax-Based Control helps create navigational trees

JavaScript tree view control, dhtmlxTree v1.5, provides all functionality required for creation of navigational trees, including cross-browser compatibility, drag-n-drop operation, and in-place node editing. It also features progressive techniques for handling larger trees as well as ready-to-use solution for server-side integration.

Web 2.0, Part 2: Serious Business Tool or Silly Waste of Time?

How do you suppose a professor of computer science and engineering might use Web 2.0 tools? Assisting students to manage an intramural sports league online is probably not the first thing that would come to mind. That, though, is exactly what Yannis Papakonstantinou, a professor at the University of California, San Diego, does.

Prototype Graphic Framework

Sebastien Gruhier has created useful libraries such as the Prototype Window component.

Now, he has created the Prototype Graphic Framework (PGF) - a framework based on prototype to display vectorial shapes inside a web browser.

The framework has various renderers that sit on top of SVG, Canvas, and VML, so you can plug and play (although canvas support is limited right now).

   1:  var renderer = new SVGRenderer("whiteboard");
   2:  // Create a rectangle with some attributes like color and bounds
   3:  var rect = new Graphic.Rectangle(renderer);
   4:  rect.setFill({r: 255, g: 0, b: 0, a: 128});
   5:  rect.setStroke({r: 255, g: 255, b: 0, a: 128, w: 5});
   6:  rect.setBounds(10, 20, 200, 300);
   7:  rect.setRoundCorner(10, 10);
   8:  rect.translate(10, 20);
   9:  rect.rotate(30);
  10:  renderer.add(rect);

Hyfinity Releases MVC 2.7 and Delivers Ajax + SOA without Code

Hyfinity -- the innovative SOA technology company -- has released version 2.7 of their acclaimed MVC -- Rapid RIA Builder platform, which leverages an underlying declarative and document centric development approach that rapidly composes SOA services into Rich Internet Applications.

Open source LAMP Flash enough for Mambo

Fashion label Mambo has launched a new Web site and content management system blending a Flash-based front end with an open source back end. Mambo's previous system involved manual intervention from the consultant so the company couldn't update the site itself.

Google buys stake in Israeli start-up Maxthon

Google Inc. (Nasdaq:GOOG) has acquired a minority stake in the Israeli-Chinese start-up Maxthon International Ltd., the developer of the Maxthon Browser, for $1 million, and that the investment is part of a “much larger strategic deal” between the two companies.

Only 25% of Retail Websites Using AJAX Web Application According to Brulant Stud

A recent study of 115 leading retail websites found that only 25% currently employ AJAX web applications, a widely touted Web 2.0 technology.

Start-up Xcerion sees the Web as your OS

Sweden-based company plans to launch its Internet operating system for running ad-supported Web applications later this year.

Backbase Is Hiring AJAX Developers at AJAXWorld

Backbase, which is growing quickly, is constantly on the lookout for talented people to join its team. Right now, according to CEO Jouk Pleiter, the company is heading for AJAXWorld Conference & Expo 2007 in New York on the lookout for Senior AJAX Consultants in San Mateo and Amsterdam to deliver Backbases's consulting and training services.

AJAX Made Simple

AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is nothing new. The technologies behind AJAX have been around for quite a while. Jesse James Garrett just gave the amalgamation of XML, DOM, and JavaScript a catchy new name. Many CF developers hear buzzwords like AJAX and Web 2.0 and simply tune out because they think it's too much to comprehend.

Morfik Patents AJAX Compiler

Morfik submitted a patent application to USPTO for the "System and method for synthesizing object-oriented high-level code into browser-side javascript". Reading further, it appears that they willing to patent the compiling of high-level languages into AJAX applications. The high-level languages include "Ada, C, C++, C#, COBOL, ColdFusion, Common Lisp, Delphi, Fortran, Java, Object Pascal, SmallTalk, Visual Basic, and Visual Basic.NET". It would appear that the application date is September, 2005.

Web 2.0 is Vulnerable to Attack

Security researchers have found what they say is an entirely new kind of web-based attack, and it only targets the Ajax applications so beloved of the “Web 2.0” movement.

....

According to Fortify, 11 of the 12 Ajax frameworks it tested did not have safeguards in place against such attacks. The company did not, however, test the attack against any live applications.

Vulnerable frameworks include: Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX (aka. Atlas), XAJAX and Google Web Toolkit, Prototype, Script.aculo.us, Dojo, Moo.fx, jQuery, Yahoo! UI, Rico, and MochiKit.