Bill Robertson's Blog

June Atlas CTP released

Microsoft has released the June CTP build of their Atlas Clientside Framework.  I have been using the April build for a couple months now and believe the framework has great potential. 

Check it out.

http://atlas.asp.net/default.aspx?tabid=47&subtabid=471

IE and Firefox Security Flaw

A security flaw has been identified in both IE and Firefox.  It enables a website to read the contents of another webpage you have open.  You do have to click to enable the HTA behavior to execute.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-6089817.html?tag=nl.e589

This comes when Microsoft released Beta 3 of the new Internet Explorer 7.  I'm downloading it now.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/downloads/default.mspx

Prototype javascript library and Atlas

I have nothing but positive remarks about the prototype javascript library put out by Sam Stephenson.  http://prototype.conio.net/  It is a well written client side framework.  There are several other javascript objects written that have dependencies on prototype.js.  I have one request that has been denied by the developers of it.  I wholly understand why they don't want to make the change, but it doesn't hurt trying.

They have a common function $( controlID ) that will return the control.  It is similiar to document.getElementById( controlID ), but it does some additional extending on the DOM objects, so it isn't completely the same.  Microsoft has release their own client side framework called Atlas.  They also have a method called $( controlID ), but their implementation of this method is different.

When I used any prototype dependant javascript library I must rename all the $() methods into something else.  This is a pain, and I can't imagine what it is going to be like when they release new version of the prototype dependant script library.  Anytime you Replace All on All Open Documents there is a pause of hesitation. 

Maybe I'll just stick with the current version of prototype and never upgrade, but I'm sure there will continue to be new javascript libraries built upon the next releases so at some point this will be an issue.  Does anyone have any suggestions on this?  Could everyone hammer the prototype developer to get him to change?  If he changes it will break countless "in the wild" code libraries, so that is unlikely as well.

Excellent Macintosh vs Microsoft Statistics

I was looking for statistics on Microsoft's market share and came across a great resource. 

http://www.jmusheneaux.com/O-MARKET.htm

They had more statistics that I cared to read, but some of them were interesting.  It shows historical growth and such.

See a Sql Injection attack in action

This 17 minute demo really shows what you can do with a sql injection attack.  It goes far behind just pulling private data from the database. 

Good stuff!

Workaround using Script.aculo.us script library and Atlas

I'm using a drag and drop script library for a project up at work.  http://script.aculo.us/ is where you can find more information about it.  It was real easy to set up and customize, but when I integrated it into an Atlas website I am doing, it stopped working when I called Sortable.create( ... ).  I tracked it down and logged a bug report at http://dev.rubyonrails.org/ticket/5301.

Within the day they responded, but they closed it out.

• status changed from new to closed.
• resolution set to wontfix.

This just isn't going to happen.

It is a great product, so don't be discouraged with it.  Here are the steps I used to modify their script files to get it to work.

1. Open all script.aculo.us javascript files in the draggable/dragndrop library. 
2. Do a global Find and Replace on "$(" with "_$("
3. You will need to search for "$_$(" because there is a "function $$(" that should not be modified.  (I didn't have any uses of "function $$(" so probably check for that too.)

I hope this is helpful.