Jon Udell: InfoWorldJon's InfoWorld articlesWhatever happened to SVG- November 29, 2004 In his .Net rollout speech four years ago, Bill Gates used the memorable phrase universal canvas to describe this concept. At the time, Internet Explorer's support for open XML and Web standards was still advancing. Now, of course, it's back to business as usual at Microsoft. In the realm of graphics, Longhorn's XAML (Extensible Application Markup Language) turns inward, reinventing SVG rather than supporting it. It's tempting to conclude that SVG just plain failed. Yet it keeps popping up on.http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/categories/infoworld/2004/11/29.html#a1122 Speech recognition circa 2004- November 18, 2004 If you've never tried dictation, you can get a sense of how it works by watching a video screencast I made shortly after I installed Version 8 of NaturallySpeaking. The out-of-the-box experience was dramatically better than before. It got even better when I fed the program all the articles and blog entries I've written during the past few years. ... What I find most interesting about this process is the way in which I train the computer to be an intelligent assistant. Because recognition...http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/categories/infoworld/2004/11/18.html#a1117 Can rich Internet apps be web-friendly- November 9, 2004 In my October 22 column, I argued that Gmail's aggressive use of dynamic HTML qualifies it as a kind of rich Internet application (RIA). As email correspondents and bloggers pointed out, the technique has a fairly long history. Many many wonder why it remains on the fringe. The reason, I think, is partly a weakness common to all RIA technologies. Whether it's based on DHTML, Java, Flash, .NET, or just a standard GUI, an RIA has a clientserver architecture. Unlike a Web application which...http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/categories/infoworld/2004/11/09.html#a1110 Introduction to MSH- November 2, 2004 System administration has always been Windows' Achilles' heel. The graphical tools that simplify basic chores just get in the way when there's heavy lifting to be done. And CMD.EXE, the hapless command shell, pales in comparison to the Unix shells that inspired it. Win32 Perl has been my ace in the hole, combining a powerful scripting language with extensions that can wield Windows' directory, registry, event log, and COM services. But I've always thought there should be a better way. Jeffrey.http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/categories/infoworld/2004/11/02.html#a1106 New directions in source code analysis- November 1, 2004 Large-scale software systems are staggeringly complex works of engineering. Bugs inevitably come with the territory and for decades, the software profession has looked for ways to fight them. We may not see perfect source code in our lifetime, but we are seeing much better analysis tools and promising new approaches to remedy the problem. TDD (test-driven development) is one increasingly popular approach to finding bugs. The overhead can be substantial, however, because the test framework...http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/categories/infoworld/2004/11/01.html#a1105 |