After my amazingly successful use of mod_proxy to provide clean URLs in an IWWCM instance, it’s been added to my bag of useful tricks to know about. When you realize you can proxy differently based on the current virtual host it’s a very powerful solution. My latest use for it was to add name based virtual host support to two completely separate virtual machines. One machine runs IBM WCM and the other runs Quickr.

I was going to write a post around accessibility and WCAG 2.0 but got annoyed once again about the EditLive! toolbar taking up two lines instead of one. I’d already removed a whole bunch of stuff from it but it was still wrapping around by a few buttons. It occurred to me that there are a range of functions that I had on the toolbar because I use them frequently, but that aren’t actually required because I always use the keyboard shortcut.

They aren’t really new anymore, but I just discovered them. Apparently the Dutch accessibility laws go beyond just the WCAG standard and require a whole range of best practices for web sites. Good stuff.

There’s a lot of talk around at the moment about how to allow cross-domain AJAX requests without compromising security. What I don’t get, is why this whole thing is an issue. What’s the difference between the two examples below: Option 1: Browser connects to site A which loads JavaScript and initiates a request via AJAX to site B. Option 2: Browser connects to site A which loads JavaScript and initiates a request via AJAX back to site A.

Permissions and an edit link. All too often we think of wikis as some special breed of software that’s completely different to CMS. In reality any good CMS should be able to be a wiki simply by opening up the permissions, removing the workflow and adding an “Edit this page” link when viewing the site. The problem is, most CMS implementations spend all their time focussing on locking things down and adding 10 stage workflows.

As part of a very good series on sustainable software, Gianugo Rabellino writes: The market couldn’t care less about your developers’ kids in need of new sneakers or your VC craving about his next Lambo: the argument that someone has to pay for software development is one of the biggest straw man of Open Source – the market pays for value, and if you build very little, guess what, you won’t get more than peanuts.

Dear lazyweb (actually, just more intelligent web, I’ve done a lot of searching on this already…), I have a nice install of WebSphere Application Server and IBM Portal 6.0.1.3 up and running with the WCM component configured. This is great, really happy. I’d like to add Quickr (later also Connections and maybe even Sametime) but all the Quickr installs I can find want to deploy a second instance of WAS which isn’t ideal.

Since the search function for Apple’s mailing lists is pretty much useless, I’m making a note of the Reading PICT Images thread which contains numerous options for rendering PICT images in Java on OS X.

James Robertson: Having a catchy and memorable intranet name is a great way of promoting the intranet. A name can help build an identity, even give the intranet a personality, removing that ‘techy’ edge. This is useful when trying to build staff awareness and engagement with a new or relaunched intranet. It is an opportunity to leverage off the organisation’s brand or simply to differentiate the intranet from the organisation’s internet site.

So here’s a surprise – FireFox 3.0.1 can’t handle RSS/Atom feeds that have a port number in the URL. The problem stems from the fact that it uses a custom feed: protocol instead of just working off of the mime-type of the content. So if you visit http://www.example.com:10038/ and it provides an RSS autodiscovery link that points to /feed/, FireFox will try to go to feed:http//www.example.com:10038/feed/. Note the missing colon after http.

Ephox provides a bunch of different sites with feeds to help people keep up to date about what’s happening with our software and the company. For example, LiveWorks! helps you learn more about our products and get the most out of them, the releases blog keeps you up to date with the latest stuff and the official Ephox blog has all the company news. Then of course there’s a range of blogs by Ephox employees like this one and they’re all gathered up at People@Ephox.

I’ve always liked the Atom spec. It’s neat and tidy with strict rules about what’s valid and what’s not with all those rough corners and incompatibilities of RSS sorted out (well, mostly). If I run into one of the silly sites that offer both RSS and Atom I pick Atom just because it feels right even though both would work perfectly well for me. So it came as quite a surprise to me to discover a major weakness in the Atom spec – it’s a right pain to generate.