I am just in the middle of watching Jobs’ Keynote at WWDC07 and was interested in the new ‘webclip’ technology.

From computerworld:

WebClip enables users to “scissor” a portion of a Web page and then turn it into a stand-alone Dashboard widget

This basically allows you to create a ‘widget’ on your desktop that contains a portion of someone’s website.

But doesn’t this bypass most web site terms and basically avoid you viewing adverts or the rest of the content, affectively ‘deep-linking’ into portions of the content?

I think its cool, but am somewhat unsure about its legality … what do you think?

A new build is available that fixes a couple of bugs and adds some new features:

• Fixed bug so you can get version information from different language EXEs
• Modified so it will run a DOS Command task tool process from given search paths if a path is not given, also removed validation that exe exists so this can be done
• Added condition operators to specify how to compare the condition values (has equals, not equal, contains, not contain and is empty)
• Added ability to have macros in command line log paths
• Added current build file to log so its clearer what file the log is reporting on

Previous builds; Build 120:

• Added ability to specify a ‘condition’ on whether a task runs or not. This is a simple case insensitive comparison of the value of a specific macro. The task only runs if the value specified is exactly the same as the actual macro value
• Added a new system macro “SCRIPTSTART” which contains the string value of the date and time the script started in format “21 July 2007 13:21″ … this can be passed into a VBS CDate or a JS Date object constructor to create a script usable date
• Fixed bug with wrong value being saved into macro when running a DOS Command Tool Task
• Added ability to specify if the “Send Email” task should send as Plain Text or HTML, and also can specify the Importance of the email
• Added some more script functions for new email facilites:
  ## Sends a plain or HTML email to an already connected SMTP server with given importance. Importance can be: 0=Low; 1=Normal; 2=High
  BOOL SendSMTPEmailExtra( String strTo, String strFrom, String strSubject, String strMessage, BOOL bSendAsHtml, short nImportance )

  ## Sends a plain or HTML email with attachment to an already connected SMTP server with given importance. Importance can be: 0=Low; 1=Normal; 2=High
BOOL SendSMTPEmailExtraAttachment( String strTo, String strFrom, String strSubject, String strMessage, BOOL bSendAsHtml, short nImportance, String strAttachmentPath )

Build 119:

• Added ability to save return value of DOS Command Tool Task into a given macro for later use
• Modified command line version so it exits with appropriate exit code depending on if it finished successfully or not
• Modified output of file management tasks when operating on files due to date specifics
• Added some exception handling on scripts to try and catch failures due to security issues
• Added some more script functions:
  ## Returns whether given task is enabled or not. If task name doesn't exist, it returns FALSE
  BOOL IsTaskNameEnabled( String strTaskName )

  ## Returns whether given task has executed yet or not (current task would return false)
  BOOL HasTaskNameRun( String strTaskName )

  ## Returns whether given task has succeeded to execute or not (disabled tasks or current task would return false)
  BOOL HasTaskNameSucceeded( String strTaskName )

  ## Returns whether given task has failed to execute or not (disabled tasks or current task would return false)
  BOOL HasTaskNameFailed( String strTaskName )

  ## Returns the given named version field of a file with version information
  String GetFileVersionString( String strFilePath, String strVersionStringName )

  ## Returns an MD5 hashed string from given string
  String ConvertToMD5( String strUnhashedIn )

  ## Returns an SHA256 hashed string from given string
String ConvertToSHA256( String strUnhashedIn )

Build 118:

• Fixed same CPU bug in MSDev/VB Tasks

Build 117:

• Fixed major bug eating up all CPU when running a DOS command
• Fixed issue with double-clicking tickbox would edit task instead of not
• Fixed issue with file management dialogs would not size even though they had sizing grippers
• Added ability to use DEL and INSERT keys on files list in Manage Files task
• Fixed crash bug with incorrectly enabled edit/delete buttons when creating a Manage File tasks
• Fixed bug where encoded characters in XML File parameter values where not converted. This would mean that apostrophes in task names and other places would load back in as '

From:
http://www.fearthecowboy.com/2007/02/javascript-cool-feature-of-day-on.html

A nice little one-liner script you can use in your HMTL page to run some a function when the browser is done loading the HTML.

I have been using this cool little snippet for a while, something I factored down for my own purposes, and tucked away in my little bag of tricks. I didn’t realize that others’ were not using something similar to this, (I saw a spate of posts where people were using document.write)[SHUDDER!]. So, I’m going to post it, and let the world rejoice:

var _my_init = document.addEventListener ? document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", function(){myinit();}, false): setInterval( function(){if (/loaded|complete/.test( document.readyState )){ clearInterval(_my_init);myinit(); } }, 10);

Works in IE, FireFox, and Safari. Probably others, as I think most browsers support one of the two methods for bootstrapping an init function.

To use it, just replace the two myinit() calls with whatever you want to run, and the replace the _my_init variables to something that’ll be unique to you. I’d comment on my crazy desire to overload the living tar out of the ternary operator in javascript, but that’d be redundant.