Entries from April 2008 ↓

NetBeans version 6.1 has been released! Features include performance improvements, Ruby/JRuby support, better JavaScript editing support, and MySQL support in the Database Explorer.

Here are links to the release notes and a feature list. Roman Strobl has some more regarding the performance improvements. The Reg Developer weighs in with their impression of the release as well.

Ext has released version 2.1 of their JavaScript framework. Changes include performance improvements, a new slider control, and a new status bar component. Another major change is the move from an LGPL license to a GPLv3 license. The licensing change has quite a few people up in arms, but personally, I think it is a good move. I like the GPL and its viral nature. If you look at it from the Ext developers point of view, it guarantees that the same freedoms they give to users in their free version are in turn passed along to the users of your software. If you don’t like it, buy a license

Six Revisions has a post today enumerating seven analytics tools for web developers. Use of these tools will help you determine which parts of the site your users are going to and how they are getting there. Conversely, they can also tell you which parts of the site your users aren’t going to and what you need to work on.

Version 1.5.5 of Groovy has been released. This is a bug fix release with no major new functionality, however, improvements made to Groovyc (the groovy compiler) for 1.6 have been backported to the 1.5.x branch resulting in a compiler that is now three to five times faster. Check out the release notes for more information.

Boxy Systems has released a Java library for tracking application usage via Google Analytics (appropriately named jGoogleAnalytics). This enables you to track which features of your application your users are using the most. The app posts data to Google via an asynchronous, low-priority thread, so the tracking should be transparent to the end user.

via The Java Posse 

John Reynolds has some tips on Iterative Development on his blog. He goes into what exactly iterative development is and points out how it differs from incremental development. It is easy (especially for managers) to get the two confused and fall into the incremental development trap. Good read and something you may want to forward on to your team lead or boss.

Klaus Komenda has an excellent collection of in-browser tools for web developers on his blog. The obvious ones, Firebug and WebDeveloper, are there, but the article also lists tools for Internet Explorer, Opera, and Safari too.

scienceoss.com has a nice little tutorial today showing how to read in an excel file in Python using the xlrd package. This approach allows you to manipulate excel files on any platform without having to export to a CSV file first. Very handy!

Spket IDE version 1.6.11 has been released. Looks like a bug-fix-mostly release with the addition of a new Theme Builder for Ext. Rey Bango, of Ext, has more information about this new feature on the Ext Blog. This should make integration of Ext-based widgets into your website much easier now that you can skin it easily to match your design.

via Ajaxian.

If you’ve ever been asked “but why is a CSS-based layout better?” and didn’t have a good answer ready, this is a post you have to read. Matt Jurmann on Chromatic Sites gives us Thirteen Reasons Why CSS is Superior to Tables in Website Design. Excellent post with thirteen concrete reasons why you should design your next site using CSS.