More than 1000 Videos and Tutorials on SoftDevTube.com

There are now more than 1000 software development related videos and tutorials categorized on SoftDevTube.com. SoftDevTube is a repository of videos, interviews and tutorials focused on all software development activities: UML, Agile Methodologies (eXtreme Programming, Scrum, TDD, FDD,..), Software Testing, Software Configuration Management, Database Modeling, Coding (Java, .NET, ruby, python, C/C++, Cobol,… ) Rich Interface Application (Ajax, Flex, Silverlight), Software Project Planning and Management, Test Automation, Software Analysis and Design, Quality Assurance, Software Process Assessment and Improvement, Software Development Tools, Risk Management.

Ajax In Practice

This book by Dave Crane, Bear Bibeault and Jord Sonneveld aims to be of a second-generation Ajax book. It should go beyond just explaining the technology and explore in details the different client-side Ajax technologies and show what you can do with them. The target audience is a developer that has already a background of developing web applications and a basic knowledge of JavaScript. I can say that the book achieves its goals and provides practical concepts and code excerpts that can be readily used. For every topic that is discussed in the book, there is a detailed code example that shows how to use it in practice. I like also the fact that the specific goal of important lines are put in evidence in the code examples.

The book is divided in two parts. The first part contains four chapters that present the basic concepts of Ajax. After an introduction, it discusses the various communications techniques like Json or XML. A chapter is then dedicated to object-oriented JavaScript, that the authors present as a must to build scalable Ajax code. Finally, the book takes a closer look at the different JavaScript libraries (Prototype, Dojo and JQuery) used for Ajax applications.

The second part presents the various practices that could be used in client-side programming and are related to Ajax, either directly or indirectly: events, data entry and validation, navigation, drag-and-drop, usability, state management. Each topic is clearly explained in a dedicated chapter. A chapter is also dedicated to integrating outside API like Yahoo! or Google maps. A last chapter is dedicated to a sample mash-up application.

Source code and sample chapters for this book can be find on http://www.manning.com/crane2/

Get more details on this book or buy it on amazon.com

Get more details on this book or buy it on amazon.co.uk

More than 1000 articles in Software Development Articles Directory

The Software Development Article Directory has now more than 1000 articles in its database. This directory references knowledge-providing articles related to all software development activities (programming, testing, configuration management, process and project management) selected from the best sources on the web.

Some of the last interesting additions to the directory are
* Must-have tools for HTML, JavaScript and AJAX development and debugging
Use the best open source tools to work with Web pages, scripts, and styles, and make development of new sites and pages easy.

* Schedule Adherence: A Useful Measure for Project Management
This article utilizes the new practice of Earned Schedule (ES) to discuss a proposed measure for further enhancing the practice of EVM. The measure, Schedule Adherence, provides additional early warning information to project managers, thereby enabling improved decision making and enhancing the probability of project success.

* Focus on Value: How to create value-driven user stories
Agile has a tool that can help organizations re-focus on return on investment: value-driven user stories. Value-driven user stories are created specifically to link features with their users and the value the features have for their users. They can be created from a list of high-level features or a list of values and users centered on a general idea.

The Relative Importance of Web Development

If you follow the evolution of software development on Internet, you may have the impression that every new development is Web based and that the main areas of concern are whether you should develop new application with Ruby on Rail or if you should choose Flash rather than Ajax for the interface. However, if you ask developers, you may find that the Web is not as ubiquitous in their work as you may think.

Even if 66% of the participants develop the majority of their new applications with a browser as the interface, there is still a large portion of developers that are working today for operating contexts that are outside the Web world, like embedded software or Windows applications.

Get the full results of this poll here

Software Development Articles

Some of the last interesting additions to our directory of software development articles:

* Smells to Refactorings
This handy cheat sheet maps code smells to their likely refactorings with corresponding page references to source material contained in the books Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code by Martin Fowler and Refactoring to Patterns by Joshua Kerievsky.

* Invasion Of The Dynamic Language Weenies
A critical and humourous look at the increased usage of dynamic (interpreted) languages for Web applications.

* Bare-Naked Languages or What Not to Model
Domain-specific language (DSL) technology was introduced at Microsoft as part of the software factories methodology. While DSLs are useful as stand-alone languages, placing them in the context of a software factory makes them more powerful and helps avoid some common pitfalls in applying the technology. This article explains how DSLs fit into the software factories methodology and how using the methodology can help DSL developers avoid some common pitfalls.

Getting Rich with Rich Interfaces

At the end of March, Microsoft announced that it had joined the OpenAjax Alliance. The OpenAjax Alliance is an organisation of vendors, open source projects and companies using Ajax that are dedicated to the successful adoption of open and interoperable Ajax-based Web technologies. The prime objective is to accelerate customer success with Ajax by promoting a customer's ability to mix and match solutions from Ajax technology providers. The OpenAjax Hub project is aiming at this goal. The OpenAjax Hub is a set of standard JavaScript functionality defined by the OpenAjax Alliance that addresses important interoperability issues that arise when multiple Ajax libraries are used within the same Web page.

Microsoft joined more than 70 member of the Alliance one year after its foundation. The motivations for this action could be multiple. First Microsoft has launched its ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 product in January. Then there is also the interest to promote Ajax as an "open" solution versus Adobe's Flash as the preferred architecture for the Web rich interface. Microsoft will have to work so that is Ajax solution respects the OpenAjax conformance specifications. As far as the battle for rich Internet interface is concerned, the winner is still to be decided, and there could be more than one. Adobe is currently presenting the alpha release of its Apollo technology. Apollo is the code name for a cross-operating system runtime that supports Flash, Flex, ActionScript, HTML, JavaScript, CSS and Ajax. Adobe is currently targeting the second half of 2007 for the first release of Apollo, supporting Windows and Mac OS X. Support for Linux will be added later. Basically, Adobe is trying to propose a free runtime (like for Flash or Acrobat) that will allow consistent behaviour of Adobe proprietary Web interface solutions and standard technologies. It targets both traditional Web applications and mobile devices.

Microsoft Frees Ajax

Microsoft has just released ASP.NET AJAX 1.0. This product (formerly known as "Atlas") integrates cross-browser client script libraries with the ASP.NET 2.0 development framework. ASP.NET AJAX is not just for ASP.NET developers. Developers targeting other server frameworks can take advantage of the Microsoft AJAX Library. This library is a standalone collection of the standards-based JavaScript classes included in ASP.NET AJAX. It’s supported by most popular browsers and can be used to build Web applications that integrate with any backend data provider. This free software can be downloaded here.

With this release, Microsoft joins, albeit late, a crowded market for Ajax related frameworks provided by open source projects, small or large (Google) companies. Market is perhaps not the right word as a vast majority of solutions are available for free. Microsoft product will certainly get some following in the .NET community and this will hurt current providers of paid frameworks like Telerik or zumiPage. With its free client-side library, Microsoft can also appeal to people looking for developers outside the ASP world.

More information on the Web
Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications (original Ajax article)
Wikipedia on Ajax
Wikipedia on Ajax frameworks
Comparison of AJAX frameworks for ASP.NET
Exploring Ajax Runtime Offerings (java oriented)