I uploaded my first experiment with SVG and Video tonight. This is based on the W3C's HTML 5/SVG presentation at the Boston Web Design Group last month.

Imagine my chagrine when I woke from the passive phase of my blogging to find that the java plugin is not supported in Google Chrome on Mac OS X. Now imagine my happiness the next day when I found a plugin that is in Developer Preview phase on Apple's Developer site. Interested parties may find it on the Developer download page.

I've been meandering down the Open Web path for a few weeks. Now I'm going to experiment. For starters, I'm posting a data visualization that I created in 2008 using Processing. It is a project to visualize the effects of Hurrican Katrina on various demographics in the state of New Orleans. In the coming days and/or weeks, I will be porting this to HTML 5 and SVG, and also to processing.js. Stay tuned . . .

Bocoup, an internet mashup/startup loft in Southie (that's South Boston to the uninitiated), offered up a panel discussion of the Processing.js library on Friday, April 9th. Nevermind that it was Friday night -- the talk was well attended and not for just the free pizza and beer. There was alot of positive buzz about processing.js from the web dabblers and professionals that attended this talk by the likes of Ben Fry, John Resig, Chris Blizzard, Dave Humphrey & Corban Brook. More talk about the Open Web with Mozilla leading the way having sent two panel members and also being one of the fast forward implementors of HTML 5 and SVG.

On Saturday, March 27th, W3 gave a talk about HTML 5 with an afternoon hands-on lab on svg and video (One Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA at Microsoft's offices off the Charles River). Here are some key points from my notes. I'll expound on these in future topics. First, XHTML is now part of the HTML 5 specification, and also Microsoft has recently announced that IE9 will support SVG and various other features of HTML 5. The other major browser players already implement or are implementing SVG and Canvas to various degress. My proposition is that now comes the reverse browser war where implementors are racing to include what they see as the hot new features of the OpenWeb. Will it be anarchy or the evolution of the HTML 5 specification? Stay tuned.

Happy 2010 to all! LavaFlow needs to make its resolutions for the New Year. One of those resolutions will be to complete the development that was begun this past Summer. I started a new job and have been working on a consulting gig. When that consulting gig ends this February, expect to see full implementation of all my tbds! Cheers!

How's this for a separation of powers? Content management systems like Drupal for setting up a web presence, Rich Internet Akpplication technologies for creating web applications. CMS like Drupal have great out-of-the-box support for the most popular features on the consumer oriented web today, but RIA, such as those built on JSF technology, is better for building web applications which rely more heavily on customized user interfaces and middle-/back- ends, and which provide better core components.

While migrating this site, I ran into several issues with the hosting plan and also with Tomcat. The new version of LavaFlow was developed on Eclipse Galileo and its Web Tools Platform, using Tomcat 6.0. My shared hosting service through DailyRazor offered Tomcat hosting, but I found it difficult to deploy given that the setup was all managed and hidden from me, and that the logging facility was mostly useless: I couldn't access the logs directly. So I switched to private Tomcat hosting, also with DailyRazor, in order to have more control.

The private hosting was much better in that I could ssh and ftp into the server and see the Tomcat 5.5 installation in addition to my public html space. Accessing the logs helped me to discover that there were some missing jars. That this was not an issue with my localhost Tomcat 6, I soon discovered that it was the Tomcat version difference that was the root of most of my deployment issues. So I began uploading some missing jars, starting with the el-api and el-ri jars, JSF 1.2 and JSP 2.0 jars, and eventually it all came together.

The reason I mention this is that I found many forums where it was said that the JSF 1.2 platform could not be supported by Tomcat 5.5. I thought initially that this could not be true, and hoped that the provision of some missing jar files would resolve the dilemma, which it did. I hope this blog can inform someone else, that yes, if you cannot upgrade Tomcat to 6.0, your JSF 1.2 application can still be deployed.

I just finished reading the HTML 5 draft changes from August. Wow! It represents a sea change in the way the recommendations influence the web and vice versa. HTML 5.0 is content based, reflecting the trend in the way that web content is created, and who does what to make that happen. This is the Good Housekeeping Stamp of Approval on the focus of web content creation as content, not markup. We've all seen it in the popularity of tools like Drupal and sites like MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn ... There is now a clear definition of the concepts of presentation and content, and a marked case for the separation of those functions in many web groups. That's not too say there isn't room for cross functional people in the office, but that the world is changing and tech people need to keep up. My next question is . . . when will browsers begin supporting HTML 5, and what are the guidelines for authors in terms of transitioning?

Today I migrated the site from a static html site, to a jsf web application. The underlying technologies are JSF 1.2, Facelets and ICEfaces. There is still some work to do to straighten out issues created with the migration. One that comes to mind is that the ordering of events is out of whack on the About page, mainly due to my editing data and the timestamps not being managed properly. Also there are a few tbds: The calendar and search stick out. I have design decisions to make on these, both user experience, needs analysis, usefulness. My thought is that the calendar may be better pushed off to another time, with the possibility of adding a word cloud. Eventually comments will be enabled on the blog entries and the blog entries will be collapsible and expandable in some iteration.

LavaFlow is in its fourth iteration as a web site. Initially it was invented as a place to develop user interface to develop an online presence to support my post-grad school self, to experiment with web-based user interface design in the support of online learning, and as a place to hang out and share my interests at the time; streaming video, web site graphics and other stuff like political commentary, and my personal hobbies. That was back in 1999 when most of the audience had a 56 k connection, but high speed for the masses was coming on strong. The second and third iterations were a redesign for sharing my knowledge about user interface design, software development and graphics production. It was mainly an avenue to show off my professional skills, and I also used it to support the courses I was teaching online at the University of Phoenix.

Today I am interested in letting my personal interests takeover the web site, although I am still exploring the professional support aspect of my online presence. Below are some of the highlights of my recent career. There's more. You can ask me by clicking the Contact Us link in the menu bar.

LavaFlow is a dynamically driven web site as of this release. The redesign was originally static & ndash; basically a wireframe to let people know LavaFlow was not languishing forever. Having just come off working for a JavaEE project at Harvard University, I wanted to use a JavaEE approach to building out the new web site. The reason for doing so is clear; it allows me to keep the content updated and maintains the look and feel.

Today I integrated Icefaces on LavaFlow. When it deploys to production, my application will be fully ajax enabled because of Icefaces. This is the beauty of Web 2.0, and is no small feat on Icefaces part -- to build a framework that makes my job as a developer/designer so much easier.

I completed the links from the menubar tonight. The content is still under development, and I expect that the About page will change dramatically. For lack of a clear starting point, and because of the state of the economy, I initially thought about this page like a resume. However, I'd much prefer to support the content from the home page, so I may be dramatically changing my approach on that page. It will be categorized according to the interests that I have either listed on this page, or new ones as they popup. Cheers!

LavaFlow is being redesigned, please bear with me while I reconstruct the site. As much of the content from the previous version of LavaFlow, covering interface design, software design, and graphical design will be ported when possible. In the meantime, LavaFlow will begin a rebirth as a place to blog about my industry, technology, maybe some code tips, brag about my beautiful hound dog Lotus and generally whatever else seems fit. Enjoy :)