The process of creating rich web interfaces has gotten way, way easier thanks to the release this month of ExtJS 2.0. Yeah, it�s heavy as hell (the minified core JS weighs in at nearly half an MB, and the non-minified debugging file at just under 1MB), but the abilities ExtJS gives you are simply amazing. Collapsible panels, tabs, animated transformations are all there out of the box and run pretty much without major hiccups. It�s got the GUI interface conventions you may be used to if you�ve done that sort of programming before�event handlers and listeners, data stores, initializing, etc.

Weâ��re using this on the build-out weâ��re doing for Webstrong Groupâ��s platform. The work is starting out as a mod to Mephisto, and the interface will tie in with a REST service weâ��re building to be the connective layer between the CMS and several web services — most notably SalesforceCRM and ExactTarget

Honestly, the spec that I built for this UI was pretty ambitious. It includes all kinds of edit-in-place and drag/drop stuff that can be pretty dicey to debug on most JS frameworks. I was thinking that I would have to either give up on some features or spend a lot of time hacking through a bewildering forest of stubborn JavaScript errors. ExtJS has not only eliminated those fears, but has gone one step further—Iâ��m now free to think about extending the core CMS interface in ways that hadnâ��t even occurred to me before. Example: Iâ��m relatively certain that weâ��re going to bolt the WYSIWYG form editor onto the Mephisto core article editing screen. It just feels a lot better than TinyMCE, which is just to Wordish IMO.

I�d love to avoid the WYSIWYG problem all together, considering how finicky they can be in web deployments, but it turns out that clients buck like a rabid horse at the idea of using something like Textile to style blog/page entries. So WYSIWYG it is. With ExtJS, it seems like that won�t be all that painful to make happen.

(Via BoingBoing)

A blogger has gone to the trouble of collecting a massive quantity of awesome retro future art from all over the world, some of which is quite stunning.

I love stuff like this because you can see so many influences in reverse. Everything from the fighters in the later Star Wars movies to the Gargantua I space station in season one of The Venture Brothers seems to be represented in this set. I�m wondering (probably along with a lot of other people who read BoingBoing on a regular basis) if there will soon be a whole online museum of this kind of stuff along the lines of Plan59 (a treasure trove of 1950s-oriented pop art where a good chunk of this stuff originated from).

(Via Slashdot)

I�m loving this pretend fubar of Gmail�s interface if it were re-tooled by the UI sloths at Microsoft.

For another design iteration in our inbox, we will need to camouflage the checkboxes next to the messages by putting a mail icon on top of them. Also, we need to break up messages from conversation threads into their individual parts. Furthermore, this version of Gmail needs to change from context-aware text ads to context-unaware graphic banners, which we�ll require to carry at least one clip art.

Even if this were to take place, it still wouldn�t suck as bad as Hotmail (or Windows Live Mail or the Cornucopia of Infinite Frustration or whatever the hell it�s being called now) already does in real life.

Two basic subjects in one post? You�d better believe it.

Slashdot links to this article which cites a study warning of �internet brown-outs� by 2010:

A flood of new video and other Web content could overwhelm the Internet by 2010 unless backbone providers invest up to US$137 billion in new capacity, more than double what service providers plan to invest, according to the study, by Nemertes Research Group, an independent analysis firm. In North America alone, backbone investments of $42 billion to $55 billion will be needed in the next three to five years to keep up with demand, Nemertes said.

$137 billion. That�s like a year and a half or so in Iraq, going by the straight-from-my-brain estimate of $500 or so billion we�ve spent in the time since Cobra II (the operation the book is named after, kids) finished up in May of 2003. That�s a decent-sized building worth of money. I wonder if that means that we could rebuild the internet for the financial cost of the war in Iraq. Probably. Probably that and then some.

So $137 billion could buy us a massive upgrade to the North American backbone. We should spend it. As soon as possible. If only to keep stupid videos to keep coming at us as fast as the series of tubes can allow. I�m joking but not kidding.

Then again, sometimes you have to wonder about net neutrality. I mean, we need to expand the internet as fast as possible, but with that effort comes the fact that as the internet gets bigger, people will inevitably foist ton after ton of inane drivel upon it, like this blog. Only this blog doesn�t take up that much bandwidth, and I pay for the hosting myself, so it�s not completely analogous to posting self-indulgent crap on YouTube or Veoh and expecting all internet users everywhere to make sure it gets sucked down by any troglodyte who wants it. After all, the internet essentially works by having decent people shoulder the burden of ferreting your offal from node to node along with more enlightening and business-minded communication.

Iâ��m not a fascist — I just think itâ��s fun to realize for a few moments that if you mix cultural cynicism with not-on-my-dime-ism, you get a pretty good argument against net neutrality. OK — maybe not good. Maybe just humorous. Hopefully.

Of course I believe in net neutrality, but that belief was (I have to be honest) seriously shaken when I watched the Leave Britney Alone kid and was scarred deep in the dank, leathery crotch of my psyche. I know I linked to that thing before, but it�s simply so scary to me that it�s shaken much of my faith in humanity, the internet, cameras, mascara, and English speech. And almost 13 million people have watched it. I am so scared for mankind.

Lots of people throw around the term â��web 2.0.â�� Most of the time, they use it to mean whatever they think it means at the time, much in the way that humanities professors will deem something to be post-modern — it helps you seem smart by obfuscating the fact that your idea is in fact pretty dull, and you ought to shut up until youâ��ve either determined what youâ��re trying to say, or (better yet) come up with something meaningful.

That being said, I think this interview with Peter Morville, author of the somewhat mindblowing Ambient Findability has some interesting things to say. I especially like the way he pushes back against the lament that a �Culture of the Amateur� is taking over all media due to the surge in user-created content:

Mainstream media has forever lost its monopoly on our attention, but professionally produced movies, music, newspapers, articles, and books will continue to play a key role within our increasingly diverse media ecology. We love the authenticity of amateurs, and it�s fun to see what everyone else finds interesting, but we also need experts and editors to tell the important stories and deliver difficult news in ways that are clear and compelling.

Damn right. Does anyone think that the utterly terrifying leave Britney alone kid is going to replace filmmakers like Todd Solondz — even if LBA kid has more viewers of his freakish YouTube clip than Solondz did of his last 5 movies?