Theora is a free and open video compression format from the
Xiph.org Foundation. Like all our
multimedia technology it can be used to distribute film and
video online and on disc without the licensing and royalty
fees or vendor lock-in associated with other formats.

Theora scales from postage stamp to HD resolution, and is
considered particularly competitive at low bitrates.
It is in the same class as MPEG-4/DiVX, and like
the Vorbis audio codec
it has lots of room for improvement as encoder technology
develops.

Theora is in full public release as of November 3, 2008.
The bitstream format for Theora I was frozen Thursday, 2004
July 1. All bitstreams encoded since that date will remain compatible
with future releases.

Web development blogs you should read

The web is filled with blogs about web development. I’m always looking for good blogs to add to my feed reader and I thought some of you might do that too. So let me list the webdev blogs I subscribe to right now (in alphabetic order):

• 456 Berea St - Roger Johansson is one of the most well known web developers out there, and it’s for a reason. He posts almost daily about things happening in the webdev field. Everything from short comments with links to things to full blown articles.
• Creating passionate users - Simply one of the best blogs there is, all categories. Deals with usability and making users happy. The posts are everything from hilarious to spectacular and I often get the motivation to write from here. Read an article or just look at one of the wonderful graphs. You’ll love it.
• Future of the web - Jesse Skinner writes for all skill levels. Articles vary from basic markup to advanced javascript tutorials. Often with a twist of humour added in the middle of an article. Nice read.
• Monday By Noon - Jon posts articles weekly (as reflected in the name) about all things related to web development. His friendly tone and ability to explain things makes this site ideal for people starting out. The good thing is that the same style works for more experienced people too. Try one of the articles, I’m sure you’ll like it.
• Pixel Acres - Jonathan Nicol combines webdev articles with thoughts on how to deal with clients and co-workers. Well written and qualitative, what else do you need?
• Robert’s talk - Robert Nyman’s blog, mixing personal posts with those that have to do with all kinds of interfaces. Entertaining read that feels balanced and well thought-out.
• Rund kvadrat - Blog in Swedish about making money on the web. While this isn’t the primary concern for many interface developers we should certainly keep it in mind. Does moving a certain link upwards increase the client’s sales?

Exposing XPCOM components in JavaScript, part one

Several months ago, I wrote about my solution for sending messages from content to chrome. Today, I'm starting a three-part follow-up, talking about how component authors can provide their components to web pages. This first part is about letting users touch your component. Part two will focus on nsIClassInfo, which eliminates the need for QueryInterface or the instanceof operator by web pages. Part three will focus on nsISecurityCheckedComponent, which regulates what users can do with your component.

Normally, of course, this isn't done; most XPCOM components should work behind-the-scenes and not be available to web pages. There are exceptions. For instance, the chromeMessenger above is explicitly for web pages to send messages where it normally wouldn't be able to (but the application still needs someone to listen for that message). Another is my XPathGenerator code, which I thought had to be C++-based. Fortunately, I discovered earlier this week that isn't the case.

This document describes some of the issues concerning the use of CSS to reformat Web documents for printing (using the media type "print"). We also discuss those aspects that CSS is not able to control or even influence. We assume a good knowledge of CSS and concentrate on practical issues, given the current deficiencies in browsers in implementing print-related CSS. For more basic tutorials and theory see "Other Sources" below. See also MediaStylesheets for practical media stylesheet strategies.

Two of the most common problems with printing occur when positioning other than static is used (e.g. position: absolute) or when there are floats. See the section below "Suggested strategy for page breaks".

Native Client

Stripes-Reload is a set of Stripes extensions that reload some of your Stripes-associated classes, including new classes, without having to restart the server so that you see your changes immediately. Stripes-Reload detects changes and reloads the following:




• Action Beans
• Type Converters
• Formatters
• Resource bundles





See http://www.stripesbook.org/stripes-reload.html for more details.

Ant Jetty plugin

There is a new plugin available in the /extras/ant location, which makes it possible to start Jetty web server directly from the Ant build script, and, actually, to embed the Jetty web server inside your build process.

It's purpose is to provide almost the same functionality as Jetty plugin for Maven, e.g. dynamic application reloading, working directly on web application sources, tight integration with build system, etc.

Stripes-Quickstart










<script type="text/javascript">var dzone_url = 'http://www.stripesbook.com/blog/index.php?/archives/19-Stripes-Quickstart.html';</script>
<script type="text/javascript">var dzone_title = 'Stripes-Quickstart';</script>
<script type="text/javascript">var dzone_blurb = 'Stripes-Quickstart is an Ant script that speeds up the process of creating a new Stripes project.';</script>
<script type="text/javascript">var dzone_style = '2';</script>
<script src="http://widgets.dzone.com/widgets/zoneit.js" language="javascript"></script>





Stripes-Quickstart is an Ant script that speeds up the process of creating a
new Stripes project. Here is a summary of its features:



• Creates the project directory structure
  
• Downloads and copies the appropriate JAR files
  
• Generates a basic web.xml file
  
• Generates an action bean, a layout, and a simple page as a starting point
  
• Supports JSP/JSTL
  and FreeMarker
  
• Creates an Ant build.xml file for compiling and packaging the web application
  
• Creates a run target to run the web application in Jetty
  
• Creates an xml file that you can use to run the web application in Tomcat
  
• Creates ready-to-import Eclipse and NetBeans
  projects
  

• Colorado Software Summit 2008 (abstracts):
  
  • Building Rich Applications with Appcelerator
  • What's Coming in Spring 3.0
  • OSCON 2008 (abstract):
    • Web Frameworks of the Future: Flex, GWT, Rails and Grails
    • ApacheCon US 2007:
      
      • Comparing JSF, Spring MVC, Stripes, Struts 2, Tapestry and Wicket
      • Comparing Flex, Grails, GWT, Seam, Struts 2 and Wicket
      • Choosing a JVM Web Framework (October 2007)
      • Apache Roller, Acegi Security and Single Sign-on (October 2007)
      • Comparing Java Web Frameworks: ApacheCon EU 07, OSCON 07, JavaZone 07
      • Introduction to Apache Roller (June 2007)
      • What's New in AppFuse 2.0 (December 2006)
      • 7 Simple Reasons to use AppFuse (November 2006)
      • Migrating from Struts 1 to Struts 2 (November 2006)
      • Java Web Framework Sweet Spots (March 2006)
      • Developing Web Applications
        with Spring and Laszlo (December 2005)
      • Introduction to the Spring Framework (May 2005)

LinkedIn was created in March of 2003. Today there's close to 30M
members. In the first 6 months, there was 60,000 members that signed
up. Now, 1 million sign up every 2-3 weeks. LinkedIn is profitable with
5 revenue lines and there's 400 employees in Mountain View.

Technologies: 2 datacenters (~600 machines). SOA with Java, Tomcat,
Spring Framework, Oracle, MySQL, Servlets, JSP, Cloud/Graph, OSGi.
Development is done on Mac OS X, production is on Solaris.

The biggest challenges for LinkedIn are: