ExtJS 4 information
I've begun using ExtJS 4.0 from Sencha and this post is to document some of the information and tips I've collected recently before I forget them.
ExtJS is a framework and library of components for creating rich internet applications. If you are thinking JQuery, sure JQuery does some of the stuff but ExtJS is more about providing a set of integrated and extensible JavaScript components (think WinForms for JavaScript) along with databinding, RPC and an MVC structure for creating applications. There's even a variant of the framework for creating rich application targeting smart phones and touch pads. There's a set of sample applications on the Sencha site so you can get an idea of what its about.
ExtJS and Visual Studio - can you help?
This post presents a C# program to convert ExtJS JavaDoc comments to XmlDoc comments so at least some ExtJS commentary is available within Visual Studio. Can you suggest ways to improve the output? By improve, I mean ways additional comments can be created so VS picks them up or how the generated code can be modified to increase the use of functions.
Auto update for EC2 security groups
Access to services on an Amazon Web Services EC2 instance is controlled by security groups. These allow you to have, say, port 80 available to anyone but have other ports only accessible from specific IP address(es). If the IP address supplied by your ISP is dynamic or, at least, not not static you can find yourself shutout of your own services until you've updated the EC2 security groups.
Updating groups is easy enough but with more than one it's just a pain to have to do. And what have you missed while those services were inaccessible?
The utility documented (and source code provided) in this post solves the problem by checking your IP address periodically to update any security groups with a new IP address if a change is detected. It will also send you an email when changes are made or if internet connectivity fails.
Remote Desktop in a browser
Walter Wang has a collection of remote desktop products at http://www.remotespark.com/. His RDP client for Android is, in my view, easily the best of a wide crop of such tools. But his greatest tool is the Spark Gateway. The gateway presents a remote desktop in a browser. No need for anything to be installed. The restriction is that it works by painting on an HTML5 <canvas/> element which means the browser you use must support HTML 5 and Web Sockets. Chrome certainly works but HTML 5 support across browsers is inconsistent at the moment. For example Spark Gateway can work when used from the iPad browser but not when used from the Android Honeycomb browser.
Previous Articles
Welcome to Dev Blog
Not so much a blog as an extended favorites list. With hundreds of links saved in my browser favorites I miss the ability to add notes to explain to myself the reason for saving the link. A blog seems like a great way to record the notes and to make them searchable too. If you see something to help you that's great. If you see something is clearly not right, please let me know.
