Google releases Open Source Crypto
Posted by James | Filed under Code, Open Source, Security, Web
photo credit: gruntzooki
Google has released “Keyczar”, a cryptography toolkit that supports encryption and authentication for both symmetric and public-key algorithms.
Why Keyczar?
Cryptography is easy to get wrong. Developers can choose improper cipher modes, use obsolete algorithms, compose primitives in an unsafe manner, or fail to anticipate the need for key rotation.
Cryptography is a common problem for web programmers, and Google aims to alleviate some of these issues by giving programmers a simple API for these functions.
Keyczar abstracts some of these details by choosing safe defaults, automatically tagging outputs with key version information, and providing a simple programming interface.
Keyczar is designed to be open, extensible, and cross-platform compatible. It is not intended to replace existing cryptographic libraries like OpenSSL, PyCrypto, or the Java JCE, and in fact is built on these libraries.
To download Keyczar and for more information, please visit the Google Code project and discussion group.
[Via] Google Online Security Blog
Tags: Cryptography, google, Google Code, Keyczar
Opera Releases Firebug Competitor - Dragonfly
Posted by James | Filed under Code, Geek, Mobile, Web
For web developers, the Firefox extension Firebug is a killer app and major time saver. It lets you deconstruct the page currently loaded into Firefox to get a better idea of how HTML, CSS, and JavaScript needs to be modified to work properly (even allowing live changes to CSS/HTML on the fly).
Opera has just released an alternative set of developer tools called Dragonfly. They will be automatically included in Opera 9.5 beta 2 and newer versions of the browser, and you will be able to enable them by going to "Tools > Advanced > Developer Tools".
The Norwegian software producer is highlighting several innovative features of Dragonfly that could give it an advantage over Firebug, all depending on how well they work.
Dragonfly will make it possible to debug web pages whether they’re on your desktop computer or any remote device, like a mobile phone, that runs the Opera browser. This has the potential to make development for mobile devices much easier.
To JavaScript developers’ delight, Dragonfly will display the most up-to-date document object model (DOM) of a page, not just its initial construction. This means the effects of dynamic changes to a page, whether Ajax-driven or not, will now be much more transparent and traceable.
Dragonfly is also said to have a sophisticated JavaScript debugger that lets you diagnose errors on a line-by-line basis. JavaScript notoriously lacks any real debugging capabilities so this feature holds a lot of promise for developers tired of inserting alert functions throughout their code to see where it breaks.
A couple downsides: it will only be available for Opera, certainly not one of the most widespread browsers, and it won’t initially support in-browser edits to CSS styles. This latter shortcoming is a big one since CSS editing constitutes perhaps the most useful feature of Firebug.
Dragonfly will be released as open source under the BSD license. Microsoft announced at MIX that it has also worked on a set of developer tools for Internet Explorer 8, still in early beta.
Tags: debugging, development, javascript, mozilla, opera, tools
Aptana Cloud: Develop locally, sync to the cloud
Posted by James | Filed under Code, Web
Aptana have announced their cloud platform initiative, Aptana Cloud.
Aptana Cloud plugs right into your IDE to provide instant deployment, smart synchronisation, and seamless migration as you scale. Aptana Cloud is ideal for developers who use scripting languages to create Ajax, Facebook, MySpace and all other sorts of web applications.
The key is that this isn’t an infrastructure play, which they clearly point out:
Aptana Cloud is architected to complement Cloud infrastructure providers like Amazon, Google, Joyent and others. To get started we’ve selected Joyent who serves up some of the largest of all Facebook apps.
This shows that their platform is designed to go meta, allowing you to deploy to various clouds in the future.
With Aptana Cloud we will see sophisticated tools to make us productive in the cloud. I am very excited to see that it won’t be too long until developers will be able to build an application, hit DEPLOY, and be done. This is a huge win.
For developers:
- IDE plug-in integrates Cloud development, deployment and management life-cycles right into Aptana Studio in either its standalone or Eclipse based editions.
- Instant deployment of projects to Cloud.
- One-click sync your project to the Cloud, or provide fine-grained sync control too.
- Integrated service management consoles.
- Configure desired memory size and disk size.
- Develop and instantly preview remote files right inside your Studio desktop environment.
- Subversion source control.
I was pleased to read that not only Ruby on Rails, but Python is on the docket. After developing Django applications and playing with Google App Engine, I would love to be able to use Studio for Python code too.
Aptana adds extra value via IDE integration, deployment automation and active monitoring and notification services. It’s like the ease and simplicity between iTunes on your desktop and its connectivity to services on the Web.
For developers, the IDE plug-in integrates cloud development, deployment and management lifecycles right into Aptana Studio in either its standalone or Eclipse based editions. The ability to deploy stuff to the cloud from Eclipse is part of this as well.
Other developer features include instant deployment of projects to the cloud; one click can sync your project to the cloud or provide fine-grained sync control; the technology features integrated cloud services management, enables users to provision their cloud right from Aptana Studio, configure desired memory size and disk size, develop and instantly preview remote files right inside Aptana Studio, and includes Subversion source control.
Can’t wait to get an invite. If you want one too, request an account.
On a related note, Aptana Studio just passed 1.5 million downloads!
Tags: aptana, cloud, cloud computing, development, programming
Welcome to Jimmahdigital.com, personal blog of James Simm, Wigan/Manchester-based .Net developer.
