I really liked getting the Ajax Language API out into developers hands as god knows we shouldn't have to worry about translations. Now we can use the API and have the Google back-end do all of the work.
I have recently had a couple of scenarios where I really wanted a quick translation. I had a few twitter messages pass through my stream in French and Spanish. I had the answer to some technical issues show up on foreign forums.
So, I decided to create a Translate bookmarklet that allows me to select any foreign text, click on the bookmark, and a little window pops up with the English translation if it can work it out. Automatic translation is far from perfect yet, but for many scenarios you can easily get the gist (e.g. you wouldn't want to automatically convert a book).
This is how I created the bookmarklet:
The source
First, I have the raw JavaScript source that will become the bookmarklet. There are a few sections of the code. First, we setup a method that will go off and call the Ajax Language API, passing in the translation and language that we want. This is where you would change the language code for non-English.
alert('No translation found for "' + text + '" guessing the language: ' + dresult.language);
}
});
}
});
}});
}
};
}
Then we setup a method that is able to display a window showing the result. I used the Prototype UI Window object if available, and good old alert() if not:
Finally, we load the Google API loader, and use the dynamic loading option with the ?callback=apiLoaded. This kicks off the main driver that we saw first, and if it is already loaded we call it directly (for multiple translations on the same page).
This is the raw form, and we need to get the bookmarklet form, which you can just use right away if you are wanting English. For this, I use John Grubber's makebookmarklet Perl script to do the conversion.
The Server
The Prototype UI code lives on the server, so I put a striped down version over there which just contains a combined Prototype + Window JavaScript file, and just the one theme CSS set.
In Action
Unsure what I am talking about? Just watch it in action:
I also saw that Mibbit, the Web based IRC application has a new "translate" function that auto translates in the chat rooms. It works two way, so you can go into a foreign channel and be seen to just be a bad speaker as you convert their words back.
Aptana took over the RadRails open source project a few months back, and now have fully integrated it with Aptana Studio with the RadRails 1.0 release.
RadRails 1.0 runs as a plug-in to Aptana Studio. So in addition to all the Ruby on Rails IDE goodies and the integrated Rails shell command-line console, developers get the great HTML, CSS, DOM, JavaScript and Ajax features in Aptana Studio, which can run stand alone or within Eclipse to that all your other Eclipse tools can be right there as well.
The new version has a slew of new and enhanced functionality such as:
Rails 2.0 support
JRuby support
Bundled auto-installing gems for rails development
A Ruby profiler for Pro users
An RDoc preview view
Extended RHTML/ERb color preferences
Code completion for ActiveRecord model fields and finders
Code completion suggesting method call arguments
Significant expansion of code warnings and analysis, including syntax changes from Ruby 1.8 to 1.9
Aptana has been known for its Eclipse based Ajax IDE Aptana Studio. Paul Colton, CEO, has impressed us at The Ajax Experience as he has shown of Studio, and how Aptana is fast to adapt and come out with support for iPhone development, Adobe AIR, and more.
But today Aptana is breaking out of the IDE world, and joining the server market with the release of Jaxer, which they are calling an "Ajax Server". Jaxer brings JavaScript, the DOM, HTML, CSS, to the server as it tries to unify the development model for developers.
You can think of the server as a Mozilla version of Tomcat. It plugs nicely into Apache (and more in the future), and handles the web application requests for you.
An example: validation
One solid way to understand Jaxer is to look at an example such as validation (screencast). Wouldn't it be nice to be able to reuse your validation logic on the client and the server? This example shows you how you do just that:
Part 1: Server Proxy
This code shows you how to use runat="server-proxy" to wrap that code in a way that the client can call it, but it gets seamlessly ran on the server:
If you don't like context switching between the Web world of HTML/CSS/JS/DOM (Ajax) and the server side language of your choice, then this could be the programming model for you.
Unobtrusive Ajax
There are some interesting benefits, such as the ability to do a good job with certain accessibility without much work. If the browser doesn't have JavaScript turned on, the server can run the code and produce the HTML for you. Obviously, the HTML interface that is returned would be less dynamic.
The execution flow looks like this:
Prototype/jQuery/Dojo/... on the server
You can use your client-side library of choice on the server (e.g. Prototype, Dojo, jQuery, etc). My screencast below in fact does just that. The aim isn't to create a totally new programming model, but to rather be part of the Web. That being said, they had to add a set of libraries to allow you to do things on the server that you can't on the client. For example, the file reading in the example above: Jaxer.File.read("name.txt").
Databases
To build server side Web applications you normally need to persist data. Database access is provided via Jaxer.DB.*, and SQLite is built in. As soon as I saw this, I pictured a wrapper for Jaxer that would bridge the Google Gears database API. There is the ability to build some simple syncing, and have the framework do the right thing depending on if you are offline or online, and shifting data between the local and remote SQLite database. Very promising.
Cross domain XHR
Since you can have XHR calls which are really coming from the server, you can talk to any domain. Again, in my example, I proxy through to Twitter, which allows me to do a Greasemonkey type solution that works in all browsers.
JavaScript 1.8
Since the latest Spidermonkey is available on the server, you can write JavaScript 1.8 using new features such as expression closures, generators, and more. You have to be careful here and remember that this will only work for code ONLY running on the server. For all other code, you have to do the usual thing and test it with the various browsers that matter to you.
Rails for JavaScript?
I hope that we do not see a lot of huge pages with runat="server" all over the shop. We did that in the ASP/PHP/JSP of old. I am sure that frameworks will pop up to do MVC nicely with Jaxer. One option would be having Jaxer work nicely with projects such as Trimpath Junction and the project that Steve Yegge often talks about.... which is Rails-like but for JavaScript (using Rhino). Integration will also be an issue for a certain class of applications. I can imagine there being a particularly strong connection for something like Java.
IDE independence
Although Aptana Studio has top notch support for Jaxer (it better!), the product does not depend on any IDE and you are free to use it with anything. To show this, I use the stand alone Jaxer server and write my code using vi.
In fact, let's check out the video that builds a Twitter proxy in a few lines of code, showing how the beast works.
(I recommend watching the video at Vimeo to make a larger window to see the type).
ECMAScript 4 White Paper - This is a broad overview of all the features that are in the language along with some trivial examples of how they should work.
Tamarin and ECMAScript 4 Presentation - This is the presentation that I’ve given a couple times now showing examples of many of the aspects of the languages. Generally, the examples shown are more complete than those shown in the white paper.
Xythos On Demand is a software as a service application that lets you share files. They have released a new version that uses YUI and various commercial components to create a desktop-like application.
Eric Preston is the team lead, and I got a chance to visit him in the Xythos San Francisco office to chat about the new launch. Eric chats with us about the new Ajax features, and then gives a full screencast of the application itself.
A tool that takes your upcoming Calendar entries and creates blog posts of the events
A code snippet that you can add to your website that enables visitors to your site to click on a link to comment on your content on their own blog
Code that allows you to search blogs on various topics, find entries, and again allow users to comment on their own blog
And finally, Blog.gears, an offline blog editor:
I tend to write a fair share of blog posts, and whenever I am writing them while offline I tend to open up Textmate to do the write-up. Wouldn't it be nice if I could open up my blog editor and do it all while I am offline?
The architecture behind the editor follows the pattern of:
The UI looks to the local DB for data
When an event happens it gets queued
When an event happens the UI tries to send it to the cloud
Events have status flags to let the system know what is happening
We interviewed Pamela Fox about the application, and she went through the architecture at a high level, and also did a screencast of the application itself.
Starting today, presentations -- whether imported from existing files or created using the new slide editor -- are listed alongside documents and spreadsheets in the Google Docs document list. They can be edited, shared, and published using the familiar Google Docs interface, with several collaborators working on a slide deck simultaneously, in real time. When it's time to present, participants can simply click a link to follow along as the presenter takes the audience through the slideshow. Participants are connected through Google Talk and can chat about the presentation as they're watching.
Building applications like these with WYSIWYG editing always pushes the limits of browsers, so it is interesting to see them at work. The key for the presentation side of things is of course the collaboration features that we are all used to from docs and spreadsheets. Oh, and you can embed them too.
TV Links DB is the site for you if you are into the telly. It will search 71548 links to your favourite TV shows in a split second using a nice live search.
, JavaScript
