Web Applications Blog

You may have seen we're approaching the 1001st widget on widgets.opera.com. 1001 widgets is a milestone we want to celebrate properly with the readers of this blog. So we invited a special guest to our Web chat next week.

More than 11 years ago, Jon von Tetzchner and Geir Ivarsøy huddled in a darkened corner of Telenor to create what would become Opera. Fast forward to today and Opera is everywhere. That success is due in no small part to Jon and Geir's original vision to make Opera small and portable.

And now we're sitting down to chat with the main man himself. Please join us next Thursday, March 1st, at 5:00 PM CET (or whatever the time is where you are) over on #webapps.

See you there!

Alright folks, I don't think I have to say a lot about this one. He proposed CSS. He's been one of the major proponents of the ACID2 test. He's currently working to get Opera on the little green machine.

So please join us for what will be one of the coolest chats we've had in a long time when we welcome Mr. (technically Dr.) Håkon Wium Lie. He'll take questions on any of his many passions: CSS, ACID2 (or 3), microformats, the One Laptop Per Child project, Web standards.

But we'll have a special time this week: Wednesday from 5 to 6 PM CET. We hope you can join us over on #webapps.

You may have seen the recent news that the first working draft of the Widgets 1.0 specification has been posted. Ajaxian notes the benefits of working toward a widget standard.

With all the action going on, we're pleased to present this weekly Web chat with two Opera folks heavily involved in the process: Arve "Virtuelvis" Bersvendsen, a member of our Web Apps team, and Anne Van Kesteren, one of the spec editors.

We hope everyone can join us at the regular time (5:00 PM CET) tomorrow, Thursday the 16th. We're over on #webapps as usual.

We had a great Web chat last week about the new dev.opera.com. We've had a lot of success since the launch and that's in no small part due to the readers of this blog. Thanks guys.

Anyway, here's the transcript. Be sure to keep your eyes on this blog for the topic of this week's chat.

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nicomen: you can already ask questions by messaging Pony with /msg Pony !ask What is the answer to life, the universe and
everything?
shoust: we... can... chat!
nicomen: sure
nicomen: anyone visited the dev site already?
aleksanteri: ME
Orcinus: sure
jax: I have seen it too
ROBOd: of course i visited the dev site
Ramunas: me too, nice article nicomen
ROBOd: jax: coolies. you like it?

jax: It is getting better, and that is good
ROBOd: yep, it does
Gautam: Ok everyone! the time has come to start the chat
Orcinus: oh boy!

Question from dante_: regarding Widget development: would you consider hosting common server scripts on
dev.opera: e.g. to support score-keeping, peer2peer communications, even small graphics scripts (say, to generate icons), etc.
jax: Yes, we would definitely consider that. The criterium for articles is that they should be useful.
jax: and depending on the feedback we get, server-side support can come in just as client-side.
nicomen: I think he also means as in actual tools and backends.
jax: But we will be doing one thing good and then advance.
jax: Tools are one thing we can consider, yes.
jax: The idea is to make life easier for developers, after all.

Question from dante_: what is labs.opera.com doing ? something secret, no doubt..
jax: Shhh...
jax: Labs will continue doing what it has been doing up until now. The difference between the sites is that Dev Opera
is a community geared towards web developers producing sites and applications.
jax: Labs is more about the technology making it possible.
nicomen: and maybe sneak peeks into cool new stuff.
jax: There will be more cooking from the Opera labs in the future.

Question from danigoldman: Can you explain the meaning of "Break the rules" in the tagline for dev.opera?
jax: Both good design and good development is about rules, and how to apply them.
jax: and the way to make truly great design is to be familiar with the underlying rules and knowing when to extend, "break", them.
jax: It is easy to be too rulebound in design, but without them you end up with a mess.
nicomen: "The rules" I'd guess is the conventional way of doing things on web, for instance some dominant web browsers have been holding back the web due to not supporting new and cool technologies. I believe we and others want to show you
how to break this rules and make new and interesting content and applications.

Question from danigoldman: How often will new articles be posted?
jax: When they are ready... The frequency will vary. I don't see it as a goal to produce the most in the smallest
amount of time.
jax: but that the articles we have are going to do good.
jax: Practically speaking: There will be continous new stuff. You can expect more real soon now,
jax: one of my favourites in fact. Then this is supposed to be a developer community where people can post their own experience.
jax: We hope to see a lot of interesting content from you too.

Question from shoust: Regarding the javascript libraries, will there be any testcases or widgets that represent the functionality of these libraries?
jax: Yes, there will be. And tying in to the previous question,
jax: maybe there will be others showing off what they have been able to do with those libraries.
jax: But yes, we will publish that.

Question from aleksanteri: What does AJAX/POST do? for what is it used?
jax: I wouldn't consider myself an AJAX expert so I would forward that to others to complement.
nicomen: I asked aleksanteri in private what he meant, and he is asking wether one can use POST/PUT in widgets
jax: Ahh, that is OK.
nicomen: XMLHTTPRequest which is the foundation of AJAX is sused to fetch content from the network from within a web page
jax: Widgets can do that.
nicomen: GET is one HTTP method that can be used but at least POST should also be possible.
nicomen: POST is normally used when submitting large amounts of data, when you don't want parameters to show up in regular web server blogs, or if you want to POST an XML file or other content that can't be sent as a regular GET request.

Question from jsaucepn: Will you be approaching community members or outside contacts to write articles on specific subjects, or will you focus on encouraging people to submit content themselves?
nicomen: they should work in regular web applications and in widgets.
nicomen: I'm not sure how well PUT is supported in XHR
gormewe do not support it.
jax: Yes, we have already done that. The first SVG theme was made that way.
jax: we looked for people that really knew SVG and they have answered.
jax: But we are just as interested in experience from developers at large.

Question from ROBOd: The question about test cases got me interested. Could dev.opera.com host test cases for various web technologies? There could be a section where web developers see batches of examples. These are also good for UA testing, and for UA regression testing.
jax: That would be great. But I don't think it will be the first thing we would do.
jax: It will take some time to do well, and we should take that time.

Question from ROBOd: Would dev.opera.com host tutorials in other languages than English?
jax: Not immediately.
jax: But it is something that could happen eventually.
jax: The Web is capable of handling multiple languages, and so could we.

Question from albertrosa: have we decided which type of articles would be best appropriate. As for myself I take close and personal relation to Mobile Technology and development of tools.
jax: We want to have a certain depth in our content, not just a post-and-forget article about the topic of today.
jax: So, for instance Mobile Technology is such a subject that we would like to expand on.
jax: That said this is a general developer site, and we are not going to restrict ourselves to very narrow categories.

Question from shoust: Will there be some interface of allowing files to be uploaded using xmlhttprequest in widgets?
jax: There are security implications to that question, so we don't do that now.
jax: But as widgets are web applications, and web applications can upload files if the security is properly handled
there is no reason why we couldn't.
TarquinWJ: uploading to a server may already be possible using a file upload, and replace="values" (from Web Forms 2) on the form - although I must admit that I have never tried that with file uploads.
gorme: Will probably be fixed with the File Upload W3C specification. However, the spec work has just started
(http://www.w3.org/TR/file-upload/).
jax: And it is likely that there will be more to choose from in the future.

Gautam: Time for a TShirt!!

Gautam: So, I'm going to ask a question and the first person to post the answer to Pony - wins the TShirt.. simple.

Gautam: What licenses can you use while submitting articles to dev.opera.com?

aleksanteri: Creative Commons Attribution, Non Commercial - Share Alike 2.5, Creative Commons Attribution, Non Commercial - No Derivs 2.5

Gautam: Congratulations Aleksanteri! Send your address to gautam_chandna on my.opera.com and your TShirt will be with you in no time.

Question from danigoldman: Are there any plans to host developer tools on dev.opera? For example, an Opera Mobile simulator, where developers can test their sites for small screen compatibility?
jax: That may very well happen, but not now in the beta test phase.
nicomen: Mind you that you can test small screen compatibility by simply pressing shift+f11 in Opera, and or resizing a tab to the target device's screen size.
jax: And we already have an Opera Mini simulator, by the way.
Gautam: Its located at: http://www.opera.com/products/mobile/operamini/demo.dml.

Question from albertrosa: will other webApps chat as well as this one be available for others to read in the new Dev Center
jax: At least we can cross-link to them. But that is content that could be interesting.

Question from ROBOd: Can we contribute with tutorials about server-side technologies? If yes, which?
jax: Yes, it is not limited to client-side, though that is likely to remain the focus.
jax: That said, we would prefer to have content that adds to the other content we have, so it should have some relevancy.
jax: In other words, now a server-side tutorial on SVG or Voice would make sense.

Question from ROBOd: Given that tutorials about server-side technologies are allowed, authors will want their scripts to run on the dev.opera server. Will this be allowed? Under what restrictions?
TarquinWJ: I think the simplest answer there would be "no"
jax: Articles on Dev Opera will not have either server-side or client-side capabilities, so this is a question for the
examples.
jax: And for the most cases TarquinWJ's answer would be the right one.
nicomen: Examples can very well be pages on the author's own page or another live system.
nicomen: Screenshots will also do many times.
jax: Yes, but that has practical implications, like server availability.
nicomen: yeah, just saying it's not required to have things running on dev.opera.
jax: Yes, and we have no problems with pointing to external sites.

Question from aleksanteri: How important is DOM Level 3 developing? Will it be implemented soon/near future/not yet/in the future?
jax: DOM level 3 matters for some applications of JavaScript.
jax: including things like Opera Platform
TarquinWJ: XPath, for example was important, so it got implemented.
TarquinWJ: but many parts of DOM 3 are not ready yet
nicomen: http://www.opera.com/docs/specs/#dom
jax: It is also highly useful for many other applications, like widgets.
jax: When it is done? That is a question for W3C.
jax: There are many, not only us, that have an interest in seeing it done.
jax: We have been very close to the metal here, and implemented it early.
nicomen: (we already support DOM Level 3 Load and Save and DOM Level 3 XPath with some exceptions in Opera 9)

Gautam: hmm... hey nicomen, what time is it?
nicomen: time for a t-shirt!
Gautam: perfect!
nicomen: for me?
Gautam: no, for anyone who can answer my next question.
TarquinWJ: I can answer it.
nicomen: Gautam: so what's the question?
Gautam: mention five general purpose shapes you can draw with SVG. (for answers, take a look at our articles on dev.opera.com.)
Question from aleksanteri: circle, rectangle, polygon, line, polyline.
Gautam: hey! aleksanteri, seems like you're on a roll.
nicomen: good suggestions by many others though.
nicomen: http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/22/ <-- might want to read up on that one.

Question from sign666: Why do you thunk Opera should rule world?
TarquinWJ: rule makes it sound like a monopoly.
jax: I think a better approach than ruling the World, or in this case the Web, is to allow people to cooperate.
jax: To be able to do that we will need open standards.
jax: Supporting such open standards is something Opera Software is committed to, and so is this developer site.

jax: I have a question for you: What would you want from Dev Opera?
nicomen: I think Opera wants to help users and developers to rule their own world.
jax: You can answer that question on http://dev.opera.com/forums/topic/164958
Gautam: Time to end this week's webChat
Gautam: I hope all of you found it usefull and informative
nicomen: aww, already...
Gautam: please visit http://dev.opera.com and post questions and suggestions in the forums - see you next week!

We had a great chat last time. There was clearly a lot of interest in the Widget World Cup. Rather than move on to a different topic this week, we'd like to continue talking about the Widget World Cup. This time we're going to focus on what you can do to emerge from the first round and then take on the rest of the world.

So please join us this Thursday at our usual time (5 to 6 PM CET) over on the #webapps channel.

Looking forward to our usual suspects and a few new faces. And, just in case, some lucky people might want to have their t-shirt size handy...