I finally installed and tried out TurboDbAdmin, an AJAX-based database manager built with Dojo. It lets you edit rows in a database table in the page by clicking on them, and creating and deleting rows is simple too.

This is one of those apps that makes me impatient--at version 0.1, it doesn't do very much, but what it does is a step forward in usability. Despite its limited functionality, I've found myself using it as my preferred tool for some of my regular database management work. I haven't seen an update to TurboDbAdmin since November, so here's hoping they finish it quickly--or that some enterprising developer rolls the same functionality into phpMyAdmin.

24 Ways was an "Advent Calendar" that posted web design articles from various celebrity authors every day leading up to Christmas 2005. This seemed like a great idea at the time, but now it just seems like a great weblog that won't have any more posts. At any rate, there is some good stuff there, starting with this: Introduction to Scriptaculous Effects by Michael Heilemann is a great beginner-level tutorial for adding effects to a page using the script.aculo.us library.

Since I'm catching up on posting a ton of material, here are another couple of 24 Ways links:

• Improving Form Accessibility with DOM Scripting by Ian Lloyd
• DOM Scripting Your Way to Better Blockquotes by Jeremy Keith

I'm back from a bit of an unintended absence here, so there's going to be lots to catch up on for the next few days. Let's start with a simple one: Firefox 1.5 has been released. If you've been following the betas, I believe it's the same as release candidate 3.

Also, via Ajaxian, the Mozilla Developer Center has a list of what's new in JavaScript 1.6, the version supported by Firefox 1.5.

Eric Meyer's S5 has quickly become the tool of choice for presentations at web conferences. Now there's some competition: AJAX-S by Robert Nyman uses Ajax to display a presentation, like this demo.

It ends up looking a lot like S5, but the big difference is that the content is entirely separated from the presentation. You edit an XML file to create the slides, and a CSS file for their presentation. The Ajax script reads the XML and uses XSLT to format it. Due to the need for XSLT support, AJAX-S requires IE 6.0 or a Mozilla-based browser.

[via 456 Berea Street]

Version 2.0 of Google Desktop, Google's desktop search app, was released last week, complete with support for scripted plug-ins using JavaScript or VBScript. You can use scripts to create new displays for the Google Desktop sidebar, a job that previously required COM programming.

[via Google Blog]

Each Friday I try to point out one of the more frivolous or entaining uses of JavaScript.

It's a bit primitive for now, but this Google Maps version of RISK has potential. You're limited to a solitaire game for now, unless you have a few bored friends sitting around your computer, but a network-playable version is in the works.

[via MetaFilter]

There's a new beta version of Yahoo Maps and a new API to go with it, or several APIs to be exact. The default view in the new maps uses Flash, unlike Google and Microsoft's Ajax-based maps. The three APIs include a simple API that lets you use RSS to manipulate maps without programming, a Flash/Actionscript API, a Flash/JavaScript API,  and a Flash-free Ajax API.

More from Simon Willison. Also, Jeremy Zawodny points to a demo application using the API, a local events browser. I'm sure this is just the beginning, and I can't wait to see what else people come up with.

Brendan Eich, creator of JavaScript, has posted a couple of interesting updates: first, this roadmap update talks about the plans for Firefox 2.0. They plan to release Firefox 2 in less than a year, and will be concurrently developing the platform for Firefox 3.

Second, he just posted some JavaScript 2 Design Notes, in particular about the data typing of the next version of JavaScript. Be sure to read the comments because Brendan goes into more detail about backward compatibility there.

Sitepoint has published another Ajax tutorial: Take Command with AJAX by Stoyan Stefanov is a walkthrough of creating a command-line interface using JavaScript and PHP. If you're still trying to figure out Ajax, it's worth a read.

I do have to take issue with Stefanov's choice of example, though—a command-line shell that passes user input to a shell exec on the server. Granted, the PHP script is restricted to allowing only a few set commands, but PHP has had the occasional security hole, and the first thing many people are going to do while tinkering with this is to remove the single if statement that handles security. Please be warned, don't implement anything like this without doing a great deal of thinking about security.

Firefox 1.5 is getting closer to a final version with the release of Firefox 1.5 Release Candidate 1 today. As always, since it's not a final version, you might want to keep your Firefox 1.0.x version handy, especially if you rely on extensions.

If you've been trying out the betas of Firefox 1.5 as they've been released, you won't find any huge differences here, but if you're still using 1.0.x (especially on a Mac) there are many improvements. Here's the complete list of changes.

The Web Developer Toolbar for Firefox is one of the tools I use most often when developing web sites. I've often wished there was an IE version for testing sites in IE. Microsoft has granted my wish—they now offer a Developer Toolbar for IE. It works on IE 6.0 and later, and includes the following features similar to the Firefox toolbar:

• View DOM: Opens a panel that allows viewing the DOM for the current page in a tree, similar to Firefox's DOM Inspector.

• Disable: Includes options to disable the cache, images, cookies, scripts, and IE's popup blocker.

• View: Displays class and ID information for page elements, link paths, tab indices, or access keys.

• Outline: Similar to my most-used feature on Firefox, outlines tables, DIVs, and other elements in pages.

• Validate: Pop-up links to various validation services.

• Images: Displays image dimensions and other details.

• Resize: Resizes the browser window to common sizes (800 x 600, etc.)

• Misc: Includes options to clear the cache for a domain, clear session cookies, etc.

• Show Ruler: Opens a pop-up ruler to measure page elements.

This toolbar has a way to go before it's as useful as the Firefox toolbar, but it's already a must-have tool for those of us who test sites in IE.

[Announcement at IEBlog - via Weblog Tools Collection]

In case you haven't heard, Google's Blogger.com has been having all kinds of problems with spam blogs created on their system. I'm not going to link to any, but thanks to various RSS search feeds, I find several of them a day.

Fortunately, Blogger has been dealing with the issue—they've added a "Flag" button at the top of every site where I can indicate that it contains spam or objectionable content. This worked well for a while—I flagged each one I found, and they were often taken offline the same day.

Unfortunately, the spam blogs have recently upped the ante. The last 10-20 spam blogs I've found are conspicuously missing the Flag button, and sure enough, I found a bit of JavaScript in each one:

document.getElementById('flagButton').style.display='none';

So, until Blogger provides a proper solution—such as a "report spam blogs by URLs" feature—I made a bookmarklet to re-enable the Flag button. Here's the link—just save it as a bookmark, and activate it while viewing a spam blog to reenable the button.

Jesse Ruderman has updated the JavaScript Shell tool / bookmarklet to version 1.4. The new version includes history navigation and some improvements to the built-in props function. Here's the announcement. Test the shell here or install the bookmarklet (Firefox only).

The JavaScript Shell is one of my essential JavaScript debugging tools. The bookmarklet version opens a shell in the context of the current page, so it's great for poking around other people's scripts, or debugging my own.

So you're building a cool Web 2.0 app that will change the world in your spare time, but you need a simple and good-looking way for your users to choose colors? ColourMod has you covered. It's a drop-in DHTML component that pops up a nice Photoshop-style color picker.

The DHTML version of ColourMod is free of charge. There's also a Konfabulator version and a Dashboard version for web developers who need a quick way to pick Web colors, and an unbranded version for $15 that loses the ColourMod logo so you can pretend it's just another part of your fancy code.

[via SimpleBits]

South by Southwest Interactive 2006 is scheduled for March 10-14 of next year. Register by November 18th at the discounted rate of $225—trust me, this is the best value you'll find in a tech conference. A couple of previews of next year's event from a JavaScript perspective:

• Jeremy Keith has confirmed that he'll be speaking at next year's event. (See this interview)

• Steve Chipman of Slayeroffice will also be participating in a panel, although not on JavaScript. "How to Convince Your Company to Embrace Standards" will talk about how Steve and his cohorts got AOL (now this weblog's parent company) to accept Web standards. With Kevin Lawver and Kimberly Blessing also on the panel (among others) it should be great.