Category Archives: programming
Using WebP to Reduce Native iOS App Size
Last year Google released WebM as an alternative to h264 encoded video. They followed that up with the release of WebP as an alternative to JPG. Ever since the release I've been thinking about giving it a try on iOS to see how well it might work to reduce application size. As a bonus to [...]
Using the Google Closure Compiler in Java
I recently had a chance to try out Google's closure compiler. The closure compiler is similar to the YUI compressor except that along with minimizing it may rewrite the JavaScript. If you want to understand more about what it does start at the overview documentation and then go from there. What I needed was a [...]
Google OAuth for Installed Apps PHP Example
I have been working on a long needed update to the Google analytics dashboard plugin for WordPress and one of the items I had on my TODO list was using Google's OAuth login instead of the old ClientLogin. Setting OAuth up for a WordPress plugin is complicated because it isn't a hosted application and as [...]
Browser Based Push Notifications with Mongrel2 and EventSource
One of the interesting things about Mongrel2 is its ability to send output to multiple clients with a single handler message. This has a lot of potential for push applications and while I was investigating Mongrel2 a new version of iOS came out that included changes to Safari. While looking at the list of Safari [...]
Example Mongrel2 Handler in Ruby
Right before I went to Rubyconf I started looking at Mongrel2 so I had something to hack on while I was there. I grabbed the two Ruby handlers listed on the main site, Ruby Mongrel2 and Rack Mongrel2, to get started. I noticed right away that I couldn't kill the handler process once it started [...]
Using Modernizr – Simple Guide and Examples
Modernizr is a Javascript library that detects the presence of browser functionality. This makes life a lot easier when using more modern features on your website by encapsulating all the feature tests into a library you don't have to worry about. You can use Modernizr either in your own Javascript or you can use the [...]
Getting Started with JRuby Webapps using Rack and Sinatra
Going to JRubyConf inspired me enough to expand my knowledge of JRuby. This is a quick guide for anyone looking to see what can be done with JRuby and Sinatra. Of course the first step is to install the Java JDK. Download, install and then set it up in your path. I'm using JDK 6 [...]
Using a HTTP Proxy to Debug JAX-WS and SOAP Over HTTPS
Every once in a while I run into something I need to debug from the network up. Most of the time I can do this using Wireshark but there are a few instances where what I'm really looking for is a man in the middle proxy. I usually find an alternative way to debug what [...]
Faceted Search With Sphinx
I decided to use the Sphinx search engine for the GeeQe iPhone app I build last year because it was fast and had a very small memory footprint. Recently I wanted to experiment with a search interface that had facets and wondered if I would need to move away from Sphinx to something like Solr. [...]
GitHub
Twitter
LinkedIn
Stack Overflow
Range Requests with Ajax