But all that may be about to change. jQuery announced that Microsoft is adopting jQuery into their Visual Studio IDE. Already jQuery is being brainwashed and talking about "existing ASP.NET AJAX capabilities". Well, they're not entirely wrong since the technology is actually named "ASP.NET AJAX".

The probably bad news is that Microsoft "will be developing additional controls, or widgets, to run on top of jQuery that will be easily deployable within your .NET applications." Let's hope they're not going to turn jQuery into the abomination that J++ became.

Did we need another browser? What's up with Google supporting Firefox and then coming out with their own Open Source browser?

I took Google Chrome for a spin as a developer and found out some interesting things.

//EDIT: Unfortunately, I never took Safari for a long enough spin as it appears that the functionality I describe below is not Chrome-specific but part of Webkit. Thanks for pointing that out, Lagaffe!

Until now, people had to rely on Firefox and Firebug to debug their web pages. IE has had a developer toolbar since not too long ago but, face it, nobody develops for IE anymore. We all build things according to standards and then check IE to see where they didn't apply the standards. Right? Well, not entirely. A lot of people still depend on IE as their sole window on the web. This article does not apply to them.

Google chrome may well be the best thing ever to happen in the last year for web developers. Loaded with Apple's Webkit, it has what is probably today's best rendering engine. Webkit/Safari is the only browser that's getting a 100% test result on ACID3. Granted, it's on a developer build and Chrome isn't currently profiting from that build and is stuck at 79% which is slightly better than Safari's current stable release test result.

But how does one take advantage of all the features Chrome has to offer?

DOM Tree Inspector

Upon right-clicking anywhere on the browser screen and selecting "inspect element", a new window opens and it shows you where in the dom tree you clicked. It takes this even further. You can simply hover over an element in the dom tree and that element will get highlighted in the actual webpage. (on a side note: As I'm typing this, I'm also taking advantage of another great Chrome feature: drag the edge of any textarea to enlarge that textarea. Really handy when blogging) You can expand and collapse parts of the DOM  tree. It does NOT react to changes in the DOM tree but it does reflect that actual current status of the DOM tree. Confused? When you open the console, you get the actual status of the DOM tree. If you have, for example, a photo gallery where people can drag their own pictures around and re-order the gallery, the console will not update to every change made to the gallery. If you however make changes, close the console and come back, it will reflect those changes. It's a bit of a workaround but it's really handy to check your AJAX and MOOtools based websites (until Dreamweaver CS4 hits the market).

The great news is that it will show you the domtree for dynamically generated content as well. If you have some Javascript lying around that dynamically displays pictures, fetches remote text and creates div's on the fly, you can use Google Chrome to keep track of all that and find that one div that doesn't get created correctly.

CSS Inspector

Google Chrome has what I find to be the best CSS inspection module available today. Firefox has a few nice ones but Chrome definitely takes the cake.

As you can see on the left, Chrome has a number of things to say on every element of you web page.

Just select an element in the DOM inspector and the corresponding style will show up. Not just THE corresponding style as the Firefox developer toolbar can, but it will show you everything you want to know.

Let's start with computed style. This are the current style modifiers applied to the selected object. This may not be what you thought it would look like. Instead, Google Chrome simply adds up all of your styles and shows you what is applied.

Beneath the Computed Style are the other style elements that are applied to the object. All the style elementes you find are what make up the computed style.

In this case, I have the #footer div highlighted. It gets the color from the #footer h2 declaration and the margins from a previous h2 declaration. What declaration? Simply click the link next to the style element and you'll be taken to the CSS that declared it.

Check out the styles that were struck out. That means you applied that style but the style got overridden somewhere else. Google Chrome makes solving these problems a breeze. If I check out the "color" part that got struck out, I can deduct that it got overridden by the color declaration in the #footer h2 element.

The properties at the bottom of the screen should be self-explanatory but I would like to draw your attention to the Metrics box. This box actually shows you how the selected object is drawn. The footer, in this case, is 760x22 pixels, has no padding, no border and a margin of 30. Actually, that is not correct. The footer has no padding declared, hence the dash.

Using this style console has saved a number of my days already by helping me pinpoint those typical problems you get when editing humongous stylesheets.

Javascript console

At the bottom of the console is a small button. Hover the button and it'll say "console". It's a Javascript console in which you can type actual Javascript. Not just the alert as I've demonstrated, but also calling functions in your webpage so you can debug them in the Javascript debugger (alt+`).

Resource console

Last is the resources console. You can access this by simply clicking the "Resources" button on top of the console window. It may happen to you that this window is empty. You can fill this by simply going to the webpage you wanted to check and reloading it. The resource console only shows the resources that are loaded when the console is active. The blue bar is the HTML page. The green bar is the CSS. The purple bar are "other" resources such as flash files or images. The orange bar represents Javascript files and the grey bar is the garbage can.

For each resource, you can see the start of the request, the time it took for the server to start returning data and the time it took to receive the data and render it on screen. It's not useful all the time but it can tell you which files are slow to load and might by holding up your web page. You can also use it to track server response times. Don't rely on this too much when dynamically loading information from the web page. Each additional load, through AJAX or simply loading in a new image will expand the "loading time" from your web page.

Conclusion

Aside from the wondrous interface and the incredible speed at which Chrome handles or helps to handle complicated pages (like the Wordpress admin interface), Google Chrome is mana from the heavens for developers. It may take a few hours to get used to the new interface and to understand all the information you're getting but once you'll have mastered the information, you'll wonder how you ever managed without them.

Google Chrome already made me look good and other developers I talked to have also switched to Google Chrome - even if only for debugging the heavier parts of their website.

So, did we need another browser? I guess we did.

Just over a year ago, I was burglared. They took the usual: portable game computers, mobile phones, wallets and digital cameras. Oh, and my leather pants that were sitting in a bag they also took - probably to carry the stuff they just took.

I of course neglected to write down important information such as serial numbers, IMEI numbers and distinctive properties of the items.

That's why I decided to launch serialkeep.com. It's a simple website where you can enter freeform information on serial numbers, IMEI numbers, software serials. You can also abuse it by entering telephone numbers, contact information or license plates.

It's very freeform but it's available wherever you are. If your telephone gets stolen why you're away from home, you can look up the IMEI number and have it blocked. If your car is stolen but you can't remember the license plate, you can look it up and have it reported stolen.

Even better: when an item is stolen, you can report it. Reporting an item as stolen will flag that item. When someone buys a second hand product, they can enter the serial number into the database and they will be informed if the item is stolen. No, the owner of the allegedly stolen item will not be informed.

Please register and check it out. I've been using it for a while now and all the bugs seem to have been cleared. Registration is free.

Your data is secure and private - I only want an e-mail address so we can reset your password should you lose it. There is no connection between you as a physical person and the items you register.

On a technical note: this is my first site in PHP/MySQL. It's also the first site in which I used Ajax techniques and fooled around with MooTools. Comments are welcome.

I could repeat all of that in this blog, or you could simply check out the interesting comic Google just launched.

I'll be downloading Google Chrome tonight!

I like the way it feels and like most of how it handles - and how it worked right out of the bo ... Hold on, it didn't work right out of the box!

I spent the first few minutes trying to figure out how to get my SIM card into the iPhone. There were no apparent openings. In fact, it looked like it wasn't meant to be opened - ever. Of course, I was intrigued by the little slot on top of the iPhone that LOOKED like it could be pried open with a paperclip. It wasn't until 2 hours later that I noticed the illustration on the packaging the iPhone's documentation came in. And then I also noticed that the small bit of iron(y) that was stuck to the inside of the documentation's packaging was actually intended to open the SIM tray with. Ah well.

Anyway, once the SIM card was in I turned the iPhone on! Me and my wife huddled together to savour this moment. Meanwhile, House M.D. was talking down to someone on the television. I pushed the button on top of the iPhone and behold! Nothing much happened. I got the startup screen and nothing else happened.

It took me a while to realise that I needed to synch the iPhone rightaway. So I plugged the iPhone in the Powerbook, downloaded a new iPhone firmware and a new iTunes version and was all set - only 15 minutes later. ^sarcasm The iPhone started synching and I wasall set. Woohoo!

And so, to this day, I run around with the iPhone, showing it off to everyone I know and being generally happy with it. Except for a few things that bug me.

It bothers me that I have to slide to answer a call when I can simply press a "button" to end that same call. It bothers me that I can't simply delete a few text messages from a person but instead have to either throw out all of the text messages that person sent me or keep them all. It's ridiculous! Of course I want to keep the little confessions and indecencies my wife texts me - but I can do without the "Leek or cauliflower" messages.

And I could do with a slightly more enabled calendar. As it is right now, I can download the information from iCal - oh don't get me started on iCal which doesn't automatically refresh my Google Calendars - but I can't edit the information. I can't move or delete appointments that synched from iCal. I'm guessing MobileMe would solve that problem but I don't want MobileMe at 149 something a year when I only want to synch between my MBP and my iPhone. And suppose I didn't have iCal - then I still would've liked to import my Google Calendar.

And the iPhone doesn't have a Flash - although the 2MP camera is doing a rather decent job at taking indoor pictures but it sucks at taking pictures at night or in badly lit environments - like a club. So, while I'm the light of the party with my iPhone strobe app, I'm still left in the dark because all the pictures I take that night will be ... blurry at least.

And perhaps the biggest thing I miss is a "running applications", eh ... application. Something that will show me which applications are currently running. Like a cmd-tab or alt-tab function.

Despite all the little annoyances I wrote down above, it is still a great piece of technology. Best 19.96 EURO I ever spent.

Overall rating: 9!

PS: Adobe, HURRY UP getting that iPhone Flash version out there.

This website is pure marketing. There is no experiment or at least none that you can see from the videos. The "users" don't actually use the computer - from all you can see it's someone actually using the computer and making the "user" look what's happening. That's like trying to decide if the Ford Ka or the Toyota Aygo has the best handling by watching them on TV.

There is no-one showing what Mojave actually looks like. There is no explanation on how they know these people never used Vista. And there's the other thing: have you taken a look at the people that are in this experiment? If you stood outside any building and picked off 30 persons, what would the odds be of them all being well groomed, looking good.

I'm afraid we're looking at a video production rather than a real experiment. Still, interesting how Microsoft releases Silverlight and then subsequently continues to use Flash to make sure their message gets across to as many people as possible.

Edit: it looks like Microsoft came around and replaced the Flash by Silverlight.

Google changed the way people searched. Google Calendar is a fantastic app with functionality and an ease-of-use that a lot of desktop applications miss. GMail is incredibly useful and Google Docs offer a perfect solution for editing documents online.

And then, there's YouTube. This weekend, spent a few hours learning some extra ropes in Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 and did a special title for a live video of my band. It's an explosion that flashes across the bottom of the screen and then the titles come up from behind the explosion. The video actually has a lot of blue in it because of the lighting on stage. Youtube, using the old Sorenson Spark coded that was used in Flash 7, made my video look like it was composed of lego bricks, rather than single pixels and the title I spent the last few hours on was completely illegible. I experimented with a multitude of quality and codes settings but still ran into the Sorenson Spark conversion. I switched to Vimeo but still wasn't pleased with the quality and especially not with the 500 MB upload limit - especially since I have a pile of HD footage lying around that I'm determined to use someday.

Blip.tv came to me while looking for something completely different. I never really paid much attention to blip.tv since the site says "BETA" and I wouldn't want to waste my time on something that may be history later today. I uploaded my latest effort and lo and behold Blip.tv did an excellent job on the video. In addition, Blip.tv has an excellent player. Blip.tv has my vote!

Still, it's a pity that YouTube, despite being Google, lacks proper encoding and has no HD support.

I had a fuel barrel explosion clip, the shape for my title bar and I had created a matte out of that title bar. For some reason or other, I couldn't get the matte to work. It worked on the main line, but it wouldn't work on the sequence I had created for the explosion.

After a lot of cursing I found the solution. It turns out track mattes are actually tied into your original movieclip. Since I scaled my clip to because the clip was a little too small, it also scaled my matte to 200%.

The solution was to create a sequence out of the explosion, then load that sequence into a second sequence that had the matte. Piece of cake - if you know what to do.