Web Development News & Articles

The Web's days of innocence -- where it was just used to post the digital equivalent of static brochures -- are long past. Today we expect to do everything over the web, no matter how forced and cludgy it has to work under the hood to accomplish our goals. Fortunately, there are people willing to wade into the mind-numbing realm of protocols and data streams in order to improve it all.

Microsoft has deployed an updated version of their open source code repository CodePlex. The latest updates include support for Windows Live ID and page ads.

Everyone understands the value of a readable URL. But many web applications and websites still output complex ones that no one, even a search engine can understand. Microsoft now makes it easier to map those complex URLs to simpler ones.

All kinds of good stuff coming out of Microsoft these days. Among them is the final release of ASP.NET MVC 2 and the Release Candidate for Silverlight 4.

There's a change of the guard at the W3C (news, site) this month. Jeffrey Jaffe has been named as the new Chief Executive Officer. His extensive business and technical experience make him the perfect match to support the W3C's role as the leading forum for the technical development of the Web.

One day the mobile interface will influence everything from the way we collaborate, communicate and design. According to Gartner’s five social software predictions for 2010 and beyond, the mobile web will change the way we think about user engagement, work spaces and the PC-based web.

Last year, Telerik (news, site) brought out betas of two new products. Now, those products have come out of beta, joining an updated .NET toolbox. There's something here for every developer.

Web CMS outfit Clickability (news, site) adds an integrated development environment to allow customization and flexibility for its on-demand CMS product.

The wired world is jibber-jabbing nearly non-stop about iPhones, iPads and the next generation of publishing. Open source web content management vendor eZ Systems (news, site) aims to keep its customers on the edge with the release of a new iPhone and iPad content delivery product complemented by services designed to facilitate custom application deployment to the Apple application store.

NCachPoint is a new solution from Microsoft Certified Partner Alachisoft. The company says its solution will help you improve the performance and scalability of your SharePoint implementation through the use of BLOB externalization and a number of caching techniques. Interested? Read on.

If you are big on agile development, then you probably know who CollabNet is. We've mentioned the ALM (application lifecycle management) solution provider before when they came out with a Visual Studio supported version of their desktop offering.

And while we don't cover a lot of agile development news, CollabNet's acquisition of Danube, a provider of Scrum project management seems worth a mention.

Of course the terms of the deal have not been disclosed, but CollabNet says it positions them very well in the agile ALM market. Together they provide scrum focused services and project management in addition to lifecycle management for software development.

“CollabNet has pioneered new methods of software development since its inception, ranging from the introduction of Subversion, aimed at helping distributed teams collaborate on their code assets, all the way to the introduction of enterprise ALM platforms, enabling all development stakeholders to collaborate in the Cloud, regardless of location. CollabNet’s acquisition of Danube is the next step in our continued leadership in changing the way that software is built,” said Bill Portelli, chief executive officer, CollabNet.

Developing applications has become more difficult with the need to get things out faster and with less bugs and issues in order to be competitive. That's why agile development has become so popular.

There are plans to integrate CollabNet's TeamForge product and Danube's ScrumWorks for Agile. If you want to know how and see the products in use, there's a webinar on March 16 that should provide you all the details.

The Internet Explorer browser does not currently support HTML 5, Microsoft has already said that support is coming in version 9. But you really don't want to switch browsers just to get a taste of the new order. Christian Adams has a little something that will do just that. But keep in mind, it is little.

2010 is proving to be about user experience. Even in the past few weeks, we have covered the trends and needs associated with improving usability online, from web design to promoting transparency.

With the upcoming MX: Managing Experience conference that will focus on usability and user experience best practices, we'd like like to revisit the three key variables Jared Spool once indicated as being critically important to the field.

Personas are a flexible and powerful tool for user researchers. They're also one of the most misunderstood. When done well, they ensure the team focuses on the needs and delights of their users.

Visual Studio 2010 (news, site) is now out as a Release Candidate and available to everyone to try out. Keep in mind it will still have issues and if you want to do Azure or MVC development, there a few things you need to do.