5th Annual Conference
on Technology &
Standards
April 28 – 30, 2008
Hyatt Regency Washington
on Capitol Hill
www.PESC.org
Web Tools
A Technical Perspective
Tim Bornholtz
5th Annual Conference
on Technology &
Standards
RSS
• XML file published to a web site
• Aggregators periodically retrieve your file
(This is slightly different than I said in the business session)
5th Annual Conference
on Technology &
Standards
RSS – Versions
Version
Owner
Pros
Status
Recommendation
RSS 0.91 UserLand
Very simple
Officially obsolete by Use for basic
2.0 but still widely
syndication
used
RSS 1.0
RSS-DEV
Working
Group
RDF based
Stable core
Use for RDF-based
applications
RSS 2.0
UserLand
Easy migration
from 0.9x,
widely accepted
Stable core, active
module
development
Use for general
purpose metadata
rich syndication
Atom 1.0
IETF
(RFC 4287)
Open standard,
widely accepted
Official IETF
standard
Use whenever
possible
5th Annual Conference
on Technology &
Standards
RSS 2.0 vs Atom
•
•
•
•
RSS 2.0
Plaintext or escaped
HTML (no way to signify
which)
RFC 822 date format
US ASCII only
More widely adopted
•
•
•
•
Atom
Explicitly set content type
(plain text, escaped
HTML, XHTML, XML, and
binary)
RFC 3339 date format
(XML standard)
Supports Unicode
Not as widely adopted but
more flexible
th
5 Annual
Conference
<?xml
version="1.0"?>
<rss
on version="2.0">
Technology &
<channel>
Standards
<title>Sample Feed</title>
<link>http://example.com/</link>
<description>Current news entries</description>
<language>en-us</language>
<pubDate>Tue, 27 Apr 2008 04:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
<item>
<title>Article Title</title>
<link>http://example.com/2008/04/27/sample.html</link>
<description>As much of the article as you wish to display
here</description>
<pubDate>Tue, 26 Apr 2008 09:39:21 GMT</pubDate>
<guid>http://example.com/2008/04/27/sample.html#item573</guid>
</item>
</channel>
</rss>
5th Annual Conference
on Technology &
Standards
How to implement
•
•
•
•
•
•
Determine the content
Generate the XML feed
Assign a well recognized URL
Post the RSS feed on your website
Use common images for linking
Modify existing HTML to include link to feed
<link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title=“Atom Feed" href=“feed/atom" />
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS Feed" href=“/feed/rss" />
5th Annual Conference
on Technology &
Standards
Developer Tools
• Source Code Tools publish RSS
• Project Management Tools
– Calendar RSS with every milestone
– RSS with all recent activities
• Bug tracking tools
– RSS for my outstanding bugs
5th Annual Conference
on Technology &
Standards
Web sites as web services
• Website APIs – Usually REST based but
many are SOAP based
• Unstructured information gives way to
structured information
• Google, Yahoo!, MSN Live, Amazon,
YouTube, and many more
5th Annual Conference
on Technology &
Standards
5th Annual Conference
on Technology &
Standards
5th Annual Conference
on Technology &
Standards
Hotjobs RSS feed
http://hotjobs.yahoo.com/rss/0/USA/-/-/-/student-loans
5th Annual Conference
on Technology &
Standards
5th Annual Conference
on Technology &
Standards
Google code sample
5th Annual Conference
on Technology &
Standards
Mashups
• Using the APIs of two or more sites to create a
new site
• Yahoo! Pipes
• http://programmableweb.com
• At this point it is more of a curiosity and a
collection of interesting ideas than a business
driver.
5th Annual Conference
on Technology &
Standards
Mobile Web Browsers
<link href="/css/screen.css" media="screen" rel="Stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<link href="/css/hh.css" media="handheld" rel="Stylesheet" type="text/css" />
• Many Ajax calls will not work on a mobile phone
• Section 508 compliant web sites require very
little changes to work on a mobile phone
5th Annual Conference
on Technology &
Standards
Considering dynamic languages
•
•
•
•
•
Many recent improvements in web frameworks
Ruby on Rails, PHP, Python
Designed specifically for developing web sites
Quick development speed
Long term maintainability
5th Annual Conference
on Technology &
Standards
"Jesus reflected on his situation and felt
irrepressible sadness. His tear-ducts filled
to a point where they could hold no longer
and had to be released."
5th Annual Conference
on Technology &
Standards
"Jesus reflected on his situation and felt
irrepressible sadness. His tear-ducts filled
to a point where they could hold no longer
and had to be released."
Vs
“Jesus wept.”
5th Annual Conference
on Technology &
Standards
Source: http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/11/10/Comparing-Frameworks
5th Annual Conference
on Technology &
Standards
Ruby on Rails
• Ruby is the programming language
– Pure object oriented
– Interpreted scripting language
– Loosely typed language
• Rails is the web framework
– Full stack framework
– Model-View-Controller pattern
– Ajax built in
5th Annual Conference
on Technology &
Standards
Ruby on Rails Benefits
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Vastly reduced code footprint
Zero configuration
DRY – Don’t Repeat Yourself
Rapid development methodology
Ajax UI support
IDE automation not required
Open source
Integrated testing
5th Annual Conference
on Technology &
Standards
Ruby on Rails Cautions
• Relatively new framework
• Difficult to retrofit to existing database
schemas
• The Rails way or the wrong way – no
middle ground
5th Annual Conference
on Technology &
Standards
Rails demo
5th Annual Conference
on Technology &
Standards
Questions
Tim Bornholtz
tim@bornholtz.com
http://www.bornholtz.com
(540) 446-8404