Ryan Lanciaux, a .NET developer and friend of mine, has created a JavaScript-based Visual Studio theme generator. Use it to create great looking color schemes for viewing and editing code in Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008.

http://www.frickinsweet.com/tools/Theme.mvc.aspx

While I’m still skeptical about the comprehension and retention of text read using Spreeder (http://www.spreeder.com), a JavaScript-based speed-reading tool, they do provide a handy bookmarklet and Opera plugin that makes using the service more efficient. For the bookmarklet, simply drag this spreed! link to your bookmarks bar. Then, make a selection of text in your browser and click the bookmark.

Also, on the Spreeder site, be sure to take a look under the Settings menu, as well as the Advanced Settings. You can change how Spreeder reads your text, including placing slightly more natural pauses (which might help with reading comprehension).

More info here: http://www.spreeder.com/plugins.php

Thanks to Ryan Lanciaux for this tip.

via John Gruber

No need to check every evening after 9 on Apple’s availability page if you plan on purchasing from an Apple retail store. The iPhone availability page, made by Chris Barnes, uses Apple’s JSON inventory feed which is updated every 15 minutes throughout the day: http://www.topmuffin.com/3g-iphone-availability

Inquiring minds want to know: with WebKit officially banking on the use of the SquirrelFish JavaScript interpreter (WebKit is the HTML rendering engine underlying Apple’s Safari browser and Adobe’s AIR platform), does this mean that we’ll see Adobe moving away from using JavaScriptCore for JS execution and toward using SquirrelFish?

In 2006 Adobe donated the Tamarin interpreter to the Mozilla Foundation (press release). Tamarin is a JavaScript engine based on Adobe’s Flash ActionScript interpreter. More recently, a branch known as Tamarin Tracing is most likely going to make its way into Firefox 4.

Early tests have shown SquirrelFish to be a (whopping) 52% faster than Tamarin, which seems like it would make it an ideal candidate for AIR.

So the question is: will Adobe abandon the child of its scripting engine in favor of SquirrelFish?

[Update, 11/17/2008] Yes, they did indeed.

This is possibly a useless trick, but if you come up with any uses, let me know. I’m thinking maybe it could be used for checking how well content re-flows on the fly, without having to modify and upload a page. There are probably less scrupulous uses as well, but I won’t go into those.

Drag the following link to your bookmarks bar. Known to work in IE7, Firefox, and Safari.

Make HTML Editable

Zoomii is “an online visual bookstore which replicates the browsing goodness of real bookstores” (quote from developer Chris Thiessen).

Keep reading “Zoomii Books, the Visual Online Bookstore”...