HTMList.com, A Web Development Blog by Synapse Studios

John Resig posts a great piece on how Firebug is powering the web revolution by letting developers tap into the core of JavaScript and the DOM in general. He goes on to talk about what’s next for Firebug and the wonderful things we can do with it.

Adobe announced today that they’ve released a specialized form of their Flash player technology to Google and Yahoo! in order to allow them to completely index the dynamic content within Flash movies that, up to this point, have required user interaction in order to drill through.

Usability is an extraordinarily powerful characteristic of an application, tool or piece of equipment. (Or, for that matter, anything you “use” at all.) You can build an absolutely amazingly powerful product, but if no one can determine how to use the features you’ve built into it, you might as well not code them at all.

The development for open source software is strong and growing. Open source software is software in which the source code is publicly available for examination or contribution. If you talk to a typical person or business you’ll usually find that their computers are all running Windows and have Microsoft Office installed. Some may even have more expensive software installed like the Adobe Creative Suite applications. By buying and using such high-priced software, it is easy to shell out two or three times as much money on software than on your computer system. There is a lot of money that can be saved by utilizing free and open source software.

Let’s look at a few of the free and open source applications that can save you money.

Chris is threatening to take away my shiny new workstation if I don’t make a blog post, and while we’ve got some interesting stuff in the pipeline, it’s not quite ready yet. Instead, I will make one of those generic posts that every blogger at some point makes: the list of software I use.

Bob asked me to make weekly blog posts outlining what I learn as an intern here at at Synapse Studios, therefore, I will commence my weekly installments. Hopefully these posts will be slightly interesting to those who wish to read and the cliché title is not too much of a deterrent.

There are plenty of resources for code snippets and quick-and-dirty ways to accomplish all sorts of things in JavaScript. Back before AJAX achieved any sort of prominence, they were all form validators, alert systems, calculators and the like. Now that AJAX has hit the “Web 2.0″ scene in a big way, (in large part typifying the “Web 2.0″ application interface) more and more users are clamoring for ways to add those cheeky interface elements that they see on Flickr and elsewhere to their own attempts at the web.

A good amount of shopping these days is done online, but any developer knows that creating eCommerce websites is not a simple or mundane task. To cook up your own solution can take months of designing, coding, testing and headaches and there is no guarantee that you, your client, or your client’s customers will really benefit from your labors.