The W3C validator team have just announced the release of a new RSS and Atom feed validator. It’s uses the same underlying software used at feedvalidator.org; but in addition to this, the W3C feed validator offers SOAP output as part of their API.
All posts by Lachlan Hunt
W3C Web Apps
It’s official, the W3C have finally launched their efforts to standardise APIs and formats for web application development with the announcement of two new Working Groups: The Web APIs Working Group and the Web Application Formats Working Group.
The Web APIs Working Group will work on standardising and improving upon, among other things, XmlHttpRequest() and the window object; and reviving the stagnant DOM Level 3 work. They will also produce guidelines for web applications and other educational material. As discussed in the Web APIs WG Charter, This will involve collaboration with other external groups including, among others, the WHATWG and the WaSP DOM Scripting Task Force.
The Web Application Formats Working Group will develop languages for client side web applications. In particular, they will work on standardising existing formats such as Mozilla’s XUL, Microsoft’s XAML, Macromedia’s MXML or Laszlo Systems’ LZX. They will also work on the XBL 2 specification and produce guidelines and other educational material as required.
If you would like to be involved, or just keep up with their work, there is of course a public mailing for each of them: public-webapi and public-apiformats. As mentioned on their respective WG home pages, they’re also intending to be setting up blogs to discuss their work.
My First Mac
Today, I purchased my first Mac. It’s a Mac Mini 1.42GHz with Combo Drive to be precise. Set up was a breeze, everything came preinstalled and I just had to fill in my details such as name, password, contact details, etc. and it’s all ready to go.
The software update feature is also easy; it immediately let me know what needed to be updated and just a few clicks later, it started downloading and installing. In some ways, it’s even easier than Windows Update. Additionally, I also downloaded and installed Firefox versions 1.0.7 and 1.5rc2 with ease and I must say that dragging an icon to the Applications folder is a much quicker and easier installation than any Windows installer.
Now that I’ve been playing with it for just a few hours, I’ve already managed to connect it to my phone via bluetooth, synchronise my calendar and contact information (which I couldn’t do on Windows without resorting to MS Outlook and, naturally, I refused to do that. I’m quite sure I’ll have a lot more to play and experement with as I learn the ins and outs of OSX.
One difficulty I am having, though, is that the keyboard shortcuts I’m used to don’t seem to function in the same way that they do on Windows; at least not not in Firefox as I’m writing this. For example, the home and end keys go to the beginning and end of the text area, rather than the current line; I have to use ? where I would normally use Ctrl; and my usual undo (Alt+Backspace), cut (Shift+Del), copy (Ctrl+Insert) and paste (Shift+Insert) don’t work, I have to use ?+Z, ?+X, ?+C and ?+V instead.
Well, I’ve got a lot to learn, and not much time to do it. Any usage tips to help me out with this new toy would be greatly appreciated.