The fox did it!

10 days after the release of Firefox 1.0 Preview Release, more than 2 million copies of the cutting-edge browser were downloaded.

 

That's amazing and it finally makes the future of browsers and webdevelopment look bright again.

 

Power to web standards, power to Firefox!

Een lekker kleurtje! - kleuren, emoties en ontwerp (DUTCH)

Nicoline Wouterlood has posted an article (in Dutch) on Naar Voren, the Dutch equivalent of A List Apart.

In the articel Nicoline talks about the use of colors on websites and refers to some useful resources.  Check out the links below the article if you don't understand Dutch.

Using an Access Database in your C# application

I'm currently working on 2 (.NET WinForms) projects that need a generic data provider.  I use Access while developing, but the application must also work with SQL Server, MSDE, MySQL, PostgreSQL or another database system if necessary.  With my background of web application developer, I started of by using the principle of Data Transfer Objects (DTO) Pattern.  Storing database information in a custom, dumb, database-independent object.

As the project grew and the application got heavier and heavier, the DTO principle gave me more and more trouble.

That's why I today took the decision to take another road and use the built-in data providers (that's why they were there in the very beginning of .NET) and use the Factory Pattern to allow switching databases with a setting in a configuration file.

Things go a lot easier now, and it certainly proofs that I still have a lot to learn about .NET WinForm programming.  Look like it's time to prepare for another Microsoft (WinForms) exam (70-306 or 70-316: Developing and Implementing Windows®-based Applications , they're both the same, except for the language).  That would bring the count on 3 (I've already taken exam 70-315: Developing and Implementing Web Applications with Microsoft Visual C#™ .NET and Microsoft Visual Studio .NET and exam 70-320: Developing XML Web Services and Server Components with Microsoft Visual C# and the Microsoft .NET Framework.

But now let's go and use the full power DataAdapters and DataSets!

Is Google building a browser?

According to the folks of /. (SlashDot), Google is preparing the launch of their own browser, Gbrowser. Evidence include the registration of the gbrowser.com (currently not in use) domain name by Google and the fact that they hired several developers recently.

According to evidence in Mozilla's Bugzilla, the browser might be based on the Gecko rendering engine

Update:
More information can be found here:
More evidence of a Google browser
The Google Browser
Google picks Gates' brains
Google Browser?
The Google Browser

Web Standards Planet

Your one stop to W3 news.

W3 planet tries to connect Web standards related bloggers, and web standards related sites within one website.

 

Web Standards Planet

Firefox reached 1 million downloads

Firefox PR reached the number of 1 million downloads (that's one-zero-zero-zero-zero-zero-zero) in about 4 days, 6 days earlier than aimed for.

And it's just a Preview Release!

My guess is that the number of downloads after day 10 will be something about 2 million.  You can follow the march to 1 million downloads (and further) in the Spread Firefox Campaign website.

Firefox 1.0PR Released

Today Mozilla released a Preview Release of their Mozilla Firefox 1.0.

It will be at least another month until the final version will be released, but you can already enjoy a bunch of new features and bug fixes like Live Bookmarks, the Find Bar and a brand new Plugin Installer.

 

I was already using the Release Candidate of the Preview Release (right) and it was GREAT!

 

Read more here:

MozillaZine

MozillaNews.org

 

And be sure to download your copy and gat the fox running!

Standards Resources for Beginners

Dave Shea has started to compile a list of standards resources.

Post your comment there if you have something to add to the growing list.

Web Development Mistakes

This is one for the keepers: Web Development Mistakes and Web Development Mistakes, redux.

 

It's like MovieMistakes.com, but then for the web developer.  I'm sure you never made any of them, but make sure you don't make them again!

Getting started with Mono

In SitePoints .Net Column Philip Miseldine explains how to get your .Net applications running on Linux.  As Philip is not a Linux expert, this article describes how to get the Mono package on your Linux system and how to get your applications running

Read the complete article here: "SitePoint: Getting started with Mono"