One thing that was big at JAX were these toolkits that allow Java developers to program user interfaces the way they're used to, by using libraries similar to SWT or Swing.

Two big ones I saw were Rich AJAX Platform (RAP), based on SWT, and wingS, based on Swing.

Now, Google has released the Google Web Toolkit (GWT). Not tightly based on a previous Java UI framework, GWT seems to be another good option for developing complex web user interfaces in Java.

These toolkits make things a lot easier for Java developers to make web user interfaces without having to master CSS and JavaScript. Java developers can stay in Java and have web interfaces generated for them. The result will be more rich web-based applications, something we will all benefit from.

Personally, I still have a lot of fun working with JavaScript and CSS by hand. I don't know if I'll ever start using one of these code-generating frameworks. I suspect those of us who have the patience and passion to put up with this stuff are in the minority.

I'd like to announce The Carnival of the Web. This will be a monthly blog carnival showcasing the best posts in the wide world of web professionalism. The first carnival will take place on Sunday, June 18th, 2006.

This carnival will be aimed entirely at web professionals. These include web designers, web developers, web masters, search engine optimizers, or anyone else who works with or creates web sites. The posts can be about any topic of interest to web professionals. This includes web design, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Ajax, SEO, usability, accessibility, web standards. General topics relating to the past, present or future state of the web will also be very welcome.

If you have a blog and would like to participate, please send in your submission!

If you want Ajax on your web site, I'm your man.

Although I'm already available to do all types of web freelancing, I want to emphasize that I specialize as an advanced JavaScript, CSS and Ajax freelancer. I've been doing Ajax and other advanced JavaScript for over two years now, and it's really my favourite thing to do.

If you're not really sure what is possible, I can also offer suggestions on ways to improve the usability of your site while still following best practices, web standards and accessibility guidelines.

So if you want to use some animation, auto-complete, XMLHttpRequest or any of that other Ajax stuff on your web site, or if you are a web developer or designer who needs help with JavaScript, please contact me.

There is a new online peer-to-peer loan concept that is growing, and I think it's a great idea. (Via slashdot). Two new companies, Prosper and Zopa, are allowing people to ask the public to lend them money. Anyone can bid on lending the money, stating their own interest rate. Whoever offers the lowest interest rate gets to lend the money (and make the interest).

The result? A pure capitalist financial system that doesn't involve banks. Anyone can get a loan, and anyone can make money by lending money. Everyone benefits.

This also reminds me of Kiva, a web site that lets people lend money to those in developing countries. I think this is a great alternative to just donating money since it helps build up the economy in these countries. It's very cool to see the idea being extended to the rest of the world.

Update: Only people in the US can use Prosper, and only people in the UK can use Zopa. I hope they (or others) make this available to the rest of us (specifically, Canadians living in Germany)!

I'm absolutely in love. While I bored was at JAX, I searched around for a PHP framework like Ruby on Rails. I already knew about CakePHP, but I wasn't convinced. I looked at a few others, but nothing caught my eye. Then I discovered Code Igniter.

Code Igniter comes from the people who make Expression Engine. I had already heard great things about that, and I had even considered purchasing a license. Code Igniter, however, is free and open source. It's quite new (first beta was released in February) but it is incredibly professional and already very stable.

Code Igniter does absolutely everything I want it to, and nothing I don't want it to. It's incredibly simple and clean, so there are no surprises or weird tricks. It forces you to organize your code using an MVC structure (actually, a VC structure — using a model is optional). This keeps your code cleaner and easier to maintain. It also comes with a number of libraries that help with common web development things like email and uploaded files.

This weekend, I rewrote my whole custom-made blog code for this site. It only took about 4 or 5 hours, and it was actually fun to do. It also reduced the amount of code I had, and makes it much, much easier to maintain and change in the future. For example, until now I was too lazy to add contact pages properly, so I just added blog articles for Contact Me, etc. and pointed links at these. Now, I've changed the pages to use /contact/me and /contact/hire, and I could easily reuse my blog template. This change took about 10 minutes.

By default, URLs are of the form /class/function/parameters. But if you want to do something different (I use /blog/2006/5/article-name), you can set up routing rules for anything you want. Actually, Code Igniter is totally flexible to let you do whatever you want. Anytime I got stuck, I poked around in the documentation and found that there was something in place specifically for my problem.

Also wonderful: only the minimal amount of PHP is loaded to create each page. You can load classes globally, if you need them, but by default, you only load what you need when you need it. This keeps every page as fast as possible, something I was worried about with other frameworks like CakePHP.

Okay, that's enough ranting. If you use PHP, check out Code Igniter. There are some videos you can watch to see just how easy Code Igniter really is. The user guide is also a pleasant read and explains everything really well.