open standards

If your web services on the Integrated Web Services server of OS/400 are running a little bit slow you might want to install the latest PTFs.

Internet Explorer 8 is available. Even though it includes a number of important enhancements (like the default use of a standards compliant rendering mode) this new release of IE is not going to end the suffering of web developers around the world.

Once in a while you stumble upon weird limitations of applications or APIs. The latest one I have seen is a limitation of the Integrated Web Services Server for i (aka AS/400).

In an earlier post I explained how I used the BlockUI jQuery plugin to prevent multiple form submissions because I couldn't get it to work by simply setting the disabled attribute of the submit buttons.

Some users confuse the concept of clicking and double clicking. This can have nasty consequences when they submit a form and fire off an expensive server job twice because they double clicked on the submit button of a web form.

Fortunately jQuery can help you.

Ubuntu includes Compiz which provides fancy desktop effects. Unfortunately it does not play very well with Java. After enabling Compiz, I have seen seen numerous empty Swing dialogs in soapUI .

Yesterday I discovered that the XPath expression "/customers/customer" is not an absolute expression even though it looks like one (because it starts with a slash).

Eclipse's XSLT editor is getting really smart. Here's a small example.

After Microsoft's push of OOXML through the ISO fast-track standardization process, two important things have happened.

Deploying a web service on the Integrated Web Services for i5/OS server is cumbersome. You have to step through a wizard in the IBM Web Administration for i5/OS browser interface. This is extremely slow and error-prone. Fortunately there is a way to automate the deployment of your web services.