Web Developer Blog

jQuery, the JavaScript library by John Resig is now at version 1.0 and replaces the last stable release (dated May 12). For more information and to download, read about it on the jQuery Blog: jQuery 1.0 . Many new feature - including AJAX form submission and more methods for navigating the DOM. The main jQuery site is in the process of being updated, so at the time of this posting, the download links on the home page are for the older stable version.

Windows Live Writer is a tool for writing posts to your blog. It is targeted at Windows Live Spaces, but also works with other blogging services (like Blogger). It is a WYSIWYG editor (which generates better markup than Word or older versions of Frontpage), but you can also edit the HTML directly. Rather that knowing the link to the API used for publishing, you simple provide your blog address and username/password and it discovers what service you are using (although this will take a longer time that just providing the publishing API URL). It publishes a post on your blog to detect styles that are being used (so you may need to delete the post it makes). Overall, quite a good tool that is easy to use.

Web Devout is a useful site with comprehensive tables listing the state of standards support in various web browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari and Konqueror). It includes the levels of HTML, CSS, DOM and ECMAScript (aka JavaScript) support for all these browsers. It also has other useful information, articles and tools.

osalt.com is a site that lists Open Source alternatives to commercial applications. It is broken down into the following categories: business communications databases development graphic applications internet & networking multimedia & audio security & privacy system utilities web development While most commercial products have an free alternative, there are sometimes features that the commercial product offers the the free one doesn't. For instance, you can generate PDF's with PDFCreator , but if you want to edit them (or add form fields), Adobe Acrobat is the only real option. Sometimes the Open Source counterpart can be more unstable and lack technical support (there will be exceptions to that though - generally when the release version is greater than 1.0). With each release though, stability normally gets better.

Currently, the way to create radio buttons dynamically in Internet Explorer is to use document.createElement("<input type='checkbox'>") . However, that is not very cross browser friendly. There is an easier way, that involves using jQuery and the correct DOM methods: First of all, the HTML: <form action="mypage.php"> <div id="radios"></div"> </form> Now add the radio buttons to the radios element. $(window).load( function() { $("#radios").each( function() { var radio = document.createElement("input"); radio.name = "myradio"; radio.type = "radio"; radio.value = "radio1"; this.appendChild(radio); for(i = 2; i To see it in action: Dynamically create radio buttons with DOM

A handy plugin for adding auto complete capabilities to your web pages - autocomplete . Start typing in a bird name to see it in action.