Web

2008-11-21 programming

REST web services

If you have followed the latest advancements in the technologies and standards around web services, you must have come across the term “REST” at least more than once. In rough terms REST is a way of building web services by relying exclusively on the infrastructure of the World Wide Web to define operations and exchange messages. This is an alternative to “traditional” web services, which instead use a set of standardized XML dialects, WSDL and SOAP to achieve the same goals. The reason I’m writing about REST is that if you, like me, have prematurely judged it as some kind of toy technology, you are in for a real eye-opener!

2008-09-12 technology

Internet Explorer fights back

In a previous post I wrote about how Mozilla Firefox during the last 4 years slowly grew in popularity among Internet users, until it finally became a threat to Microsoft, who finally decided to refresh good old Internet Explorer by releasing version 7 in late 2006.

2008-09-12 technology

A quick tour of Internet Explorer 8 beta 2

If Google is focusing on making the browser’s UI transparent to the user, Microsoft apparently wants to make it opaque. At first look, the most striking new feature in Internet Explorer 8 is, in fact, the way the browser is integrating web content into its own UI. This becomes apparent when looking at functionalities like_ _Web Slices and Accelerators. Internet Explorer 8 offers more than just that. The browser now caught up with the competitors and now sports a “smart” address bar with integrated search, as well as a “private-browsing” mode. Here are IE 8′s new features in a quick tour.

2008-09-05 technology

First impressions on Google Chrome

I’ve been using Google Chrome as my primary browser for a few days now. As a side note, I almost feel bad about having abandoned Firefox so quickly. I mean, I’ve been using Firefox since version 0.5 (back when it was still called Phoenix), for all my daily browsing, both at work and at home. For 4 years, I’ve always been satisfied with the experience. Then Google comes out with its own browser, and in a blink of an eye away goes Firefox and Chrome suddenly gets to be my default browser. Incredible!

2008-09-03 technology

Google enters the browser arena

We often hear the phrase “history repeats itself” when talking about the evolution of mankind. Well, it seems that this principle is equally true for the evolution of technology. When it comes to browser software, it’s 1996 all over again! Well, that’s not completely true. Let’s roll back for a second to see what has happened in the last 3-4 years.