Weevil Genius

The HTML 5 initiative contains a draft spec for WebSockets which allow a browser to establish a full-duplex, bi-directional communication channel over a single TCP socket. This allows web developers to establish real time two way communications with a server using simple javascript without resorting to Flash, Java, ajax long polling, comet, forever iframe, or other current workarounds. Here I’ve written a simple browser chat using WebSockets for the client and PHP for the server.

This is another weekly summary of the live video class HTML 5 Mobile Web Development. I have already written a summary of week 2. This week we are going to use ajax to request live Twitter updates, use some CSS3 transitions, and explore web fonts.

I am way overdue upgrading my primary work machine to the latest Ubuntu release. The biggest thing that has been holding me back (besides finding the time) is the fear of losing some file or system config which will take ages to recreate. Often when I upgrade a system like this, I simply install a new hard drive and keep the old drive around in case I need to dig up some file I don’t have handy in any other location. But this is a laptop and I am already nearly out of free space. What I’m going to do this time is use Squashfs to create a compressed, read-only filesystem inside a file which can be placed on an external drive.

I am currently attending a live video class HTML 5 Mobile Web Development, and am summarizing the second lesson here in order to digest the material better and help some friends who got a late start. If you want to follow along, go to the class download page linked at the end and download the code.

This week starts our construction of “Tweetstr”, a mobile web twitter client. We create and edit the basic HTML and CSS files to display the home screen while exploring some new HTML 5 and CSS 3 tags as well as some settings specific to Apple devices such as the iPhone.

Vim is my editor of choice for any file that doesn’t need a full IDE, and I generally have multiple files open in various windows at any point in time. In its default configuration, for each file you have open, vim creates a hidden swap file in the same directory with the extension “.swp”. Unfortunately, if any of those files reside inside my Dropbox folder, the Dropbox program notices the swap files and syncs them up to the cloud. Read on to see how to change that behavior without losing the advantages that swap files give.