Over the last few months I have been working on getting the latest version of jsLex coded, packaged and tested.  A few weeks ago, I wrote up my thoughts on the new release 2009 will be a Rockstar year. If you want to check out the features in the new version go to the products section of the site.

Product releases are more than just the bits and JAR files, you need to update documentation and Web pages to reflect the new stuff. If you can’t find it on Google does it really exist? In the past I had been using three separate methods.

• Static HTML homepage
• Wordpress
• A wiki

Going forward, I felt this was too many solutions and none of them appropriate to manage a 50 page website where I will be updating it in real time.  So… in order to move the site forward I needed to find a CMS system.  The thought of this gave me the shivers; but it needed to be done.

Read more…

I just read on news.ycombinator.com via Eric.Weblog via Z trek that the Programming Magazine Dr. Dobbs will no longer be publishing it’s normal monthly rag.  Click for Dr. Dobbs take.  That really stinks.  Even though I don’t read it regularly any more.  When I started my first full-time job back in 1995, I read Dr. Dobbs and MSJ (Microsoft System Journal) every month.

Back then both of those magazine were sold at newsstands and bookstores, so every month I would go with my girlfriend now wife to Borders and buy the latest copy of each magazine.  My wife has way different tastes then me so she got… actually not sure she got, I was busy reading my magazines. In the early days of my career, I always looked to the publication to learn new programming technique, and spark new ideas. Dr Dobbs was throughout the time I read the magazine high quality and packed with a variety of programming languages and implementation ideas.  Variety, I felt was one of its greatest attributes.  It never seemed to focus in one area but rather gave an introduction to many different things.  This was completely opposite to MSJ which focused for obvious reasons on Microsoft (This was a great magazine as well). Read more…

Thanks to everyone!

One of my apdictions is Google Analytics and over the last several days I have noticed an up tick in amount of traffic the jsLex tool has been getting. This is a result of two recent posts;

1. Kevin Hackman of Aptana linked to the jsLex tool in a news article on Aptana’s website.
2. Forum post on the ExtJS website, click here to see post.

Thanks to the people that have used jsLex to this point and to those who link to and talk about the tool a double thanks. There is no better way to get the word out then to have people talk about the tool as satisfied user.

The other thing that I noticed in Google Analytics: there are quite a few searches for “jsLex ant”. I am taking this to mean that people want to use the jsLex concatenation and compression tools via ant. To those who are searching for this, is this a correct assumption? If so, I can whip this up for you to use Read more…