tgeller writes "Drupal developer Ben Buckman attended the BostonPHP Framework Bake-Off with the hopes of pitting the CMS against CakePHP, Symfony, Zend, and CodeIgniter. He was told that he couldn't because Drupal is 'not a framework,' a response he felt was 'coder-purist snobbery ("it's not a framework if you build any of it in a UI").' So he decided to unofficially compete in the back of the room by accepting the challenge of building a job-posting app in 30 minutes, while the official competitors did the same from the stage. He recorded the results, which are impressive. In the process he raised the question: What is a framework, anyway?"

Lisandro writes "The Enlightenment crew has finally released the first version of the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries, which the E17 desktop is built on." Adds reader mu22le: "Among the Enlightenment libraries hitting version 1.0 are Eina (core data structure), Eet (data encode/decode and storage), Evas (canvas and scenegraph rendering ), Ecore (core mainloop, display abstraction and utility), Embryo (small virtual machine and compiler), Edie (GUI layout and animation), E_Dbus, Efreet (handling of freedesktop.org standards), and Eeze (udev wrapping)." Getting it right can take a while -- a preview of the EFL libraries first appeared in 2004. Enlightenment has never stopped looking cool.

Michael J. Ross writes "Of all the better-known content management systems, Drupal is oftentimes criticized for having the steepest learning curve. Yet that would only be a valid charge as a result of Drupal's great power and flexibility — particularly in the hands of a knowledgeable Drupal developer. But how can the interested programmer begin gaining those skills, as quickly as possible? One approach is to read and work through the examples of an introductory book, such as Foundation Drupal 7, written by Robert J. Townsend (except for a chapter contributed by Stephanie Pakrul)." Read on for the rest of Michael's review.

PerlDudeXL writes "Today, after almost two years of work, we have the special pleasure of announcing the much awaited release of Xfce 4.8, the new stable version that supersedes Xfce 4.6. [..] Xfce 4.8 is our attempt to update the Xfce code base to all the new desktop frameworks that were introduced in the past few years. We hope that our efforts to drop pieces like ThunarVFS and HAL with GIO, udev, ConsoleKit and PolicyKit will help bringing the Xfce desktop to modern distributions."

copb.phoenix writes "I'm a sophomore Computer Science student teaching computing labs to a freshman class, getting ready to go over the major ins and outs of the Linux terminal and GUI. While I have my own ideas and the professor over this class to lean on, I've found it difficult to get the few students that I've tried to teach in the past to connect the dots and understand how it relates to what they already know about computers. Does anybody out there have any advice on how to engage and inspire our upcoming class? (Perhaps important: Our machines are running Ubuntu Hardy.)"

surveyork writes "''Mozilla today officially released Firefox 4 Beta 9 and it's a big improvement over previous betas and a parsec beyond the Firefox 3.6.x experience. At this stage, after months of development, Mozilla developers are clearly nearing the end of this development marathon.' After Firefox beta 9, a beta 10 and a single RC are scheduled (this road map can change, of course). The main features of Firefox beta 9 are IndexedDB and tabs on titlebar (just like Chrome and Opera). IndexedDB allows sites to store data on your computer (with your prior authorization). Tabs on titlebar is self-explanatory. Old-schoolers can always turn on the 'show menu bar' to get their familiar GUI back. Oh, and Fx beta 9 is fast and starts fast. Firefox beta 9 available here and in lots of official mirrors."

paugq writes "Last week KDE 4.5.4 was released for Windows as a late Christmas present from the KDE on Windows team. Almost at the same time BehindKDE, the site for interviews with KDE contributors, has started a new series of interviews with the 'Platforms' theme. In the first interview, Pau Garcia i Quiles talks with Patrick Spendrin, the current release manager of KDE on Windows and asks about the current status of the project, challenges and difficulties. In future interviews, Mac, Solaris, BSD (it's not dead, after all!), Haiku, OS/2 and more."

CowboyRobot writes "Tom Limoncelli has a piece in 'Queue' summarizing the Computer-Human Interaction for Management of Information Technology's list of how to make software that is easy to install, maintain, and upgrade. FTA: '#2. DON'T make the administrative interface a GUI. System administrators need a command-line tool for constructing repeatable processes. Procedures are best documented by providing commands that we can copy and paste from the procedure document to the command line.'"

KermMartian writes "In an effort to make your trusty graphing calculator more like a computer, a shell called Doors CS has been developed, with an integrated networking stack, CALCnet2.2. The protocol is demonstrated in a nine-calculator pong-type demo, and the many file management, GUI, and other features of Doors CS can be seen at here. All the associated software is available for download."

srimadman writes "The Alpha 1 Release of Ubuntu 11.04, often known as 'Natty Narwhal,' is intended as a developer snapshot of the next major Ubuntu version, which is due in April." So, if you want to try Unity and Wayland before your neighbors do, this is the time.

Zmee writes "I am looking to build a 2D application for personal use and I will need to use a canvas to paint custom objects. I am trying to determine what foundation to use and have not located a good side-by-side comparison of the various flavors. For reference, I need the final application to work in Windows; Linux is preferred, but not required. I have looked at WPF, Qt, OpenGL, Tcl/Tk, Java's AWT, and others. I have little preference as to the language itself, but each of the tutorials appear to require significant time investment. As such, I am looking to see what the community uses and what seems to work for people prior to making that investment."

dmbkiwi writes "The first beta release of KDE SC 4.6 was released yesterday. OpenSUSE had packages up almost immediately, so being curious as to what's new, I've downloaded and upgraded to the new release. These are my impressions thus far."

k-s writes "Linux, the GNU userland and Enlightenment and its foundation libraries (EFL) are known for their resource efficiency and flexibility, key components for embedded products. Today it was announced that such features led them to be used in a fridge that runs Linux and X11 with EFL. The Freescale i.MX25 based fridge by Electrolux (Frigidaire) provides the expected bits such as temperature controls and pre-set modes (vacation, party) as well as a special purpose drawer that cools your drinks and food with a beautiful UI. It also ships with handful applications for contacts, calendar, reminder, digital picture frame and even an illustrated recipe book from a famous Brazilian magazine."

angry tapir writes "In an effort to expand software compatibility for its upcoming Fusion chips, AMD has joined rival Intel's efforts to develop the open-source MeeGo OS. AMD 'will provide engineering expertise intended to help establish the technical foundations for next-generation mobile platforms and embedded devices,' the company said in a blog post on its website."

First pressing 'Enter' was to much work... now actually clicking on the links and visiting the sites is to much, too... Google is testing instant previews, where you can see a miniature rendered view of the landing page without requiring you to click through and back-arrow.

DrHeasley writes "Rockmelt, available for the first time Monday, is built on the premise that most online activity today revolves around socializing on Facebook, searching on Google, tweeting on Twitter and monitoring a handful of favorite websites. It tries to minimize the need to roam from one website to the next by corralling all vital information and favorite services in panes and drop-down windows. 'This is a chance for us to build a browser all over again,' Andreessen said. 'These are all things we would have done (at Netscape) if we had known how people were going to use the Web.'"

alphadogg writes "When Microsoft released the very first version of Windows nearly 25 years ago, on Nov. 20, 1985, it was late to the game and little used. Apple had already brought graphical user interfaces to computers with Macintosh more than a year earlier, while DOS systems dominated the market for IBM and IBM-compatible PCs. No one who used this first version was likely to have predicted that Windows would completely dominate the PC market 25 years later..."

An anonymous reader writes "Canonical and Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth has announced that Ubuntu will move away from the traditional X.org display environment to Wayland — a more modern alternative. The move means there is now little reason for GNOME developers to recommend Ubuntu as an operating system. Shuttleworth said, 'We're confident we’ll be able to retain the ability to run X applications in a compatibility mode, so this is not a transition that needs to reset the world of desktop free software. Nor is it a transition everyone needs to make at the same time: for the same reason we'll keep investing in the 2D experience on Ubuntu despite also believing that Unity, with all its GL dependencies, is the best interface for the desktop. We'll help GNOME and KDE with the transition, there's no reason for them not to be there on day one either.'"

Timothy found a news report and a little video demonstrating the multi-touch capabilities of Ubuntu. It's attached below if you're curious what the new Unity Netbook UI is looking like these days.

itwbennett writes "On display at Japan's Ceatec show this week is a heads-up display from Pioneer that links with a smartphone's navigation system. The prototype uses a laser to display bright, high-contrast, full-color images on a screen that would be mounted above the dashboard so drivers don't have to take their eyes fully off the road in order to receive driving instructions from their robot overlords. The demonstration model was hooked up to an Android-based phone and displayed a navigation map on the left-hand side and an animated Android robot on the right-hand side that passed on information to drivers. 'We are currently aiming for an after-market product, but we are talking with car manufacturers,' said Masaya Hashida, tech manager at Pioneer's smart vision business development department." An anonymous reader points out another gadget shown at Ceatec: a pair of augmented reality glasses that projects information to a user's peripheral vision and weighs only 20 grams.