Webonaut

Future Wi-fi standards should have the concept of a ½ connection; a way to distinguish "open" gatekeeper connections. This would prevent a) constantly connecting to fake "open" networks as you walk about any city (effectively destroying your connectivity) b) your crappy BT Home Hub "open" version connecting in favour of your real one. ALSO Android / iOS  please only connect to known secure networks, ASSUMING for now that any open connection is a gatekeeper. OK? Thanks.

Clicking to either show or hide something gets coded all the time, and it's a nause, so here is a one line jQuery extension to toggle show/hide. 1. Smash this piece of javascript in your header or somewhere useful: $.fn.extend({ showHide: function() { if ($(this).is(':visible')) $(this).hide('slow'); else $(this).show('slow'); }}); 2. ...it extends jQuery so that you can do: onClick='$("#someDivOrSimilar").showHide();'

...was skimping on dev resource for the Mac Flash player. If that decision - which probably saved a developer (or at most two) had not been made, the memory leaks that caused most crashes on Macs could have been avoided, deflecting Steve Job's ire and the subsequent exclusion of Flash from the mobile web (and further down the line the whole web as it unifies)

Come on DEV world; let's have some proper innovation in programming. Hipster coding paradigms of the last couple years (Angular, Ruby, etc I'm looking at you) have exponents spouting "look, I've written no Javascript!". Yeah, well you've written a TON of Angular. In fact, I could have done it with less code in standard javascript & HTML. Incremental benefits in some areas (usually academic, along the lines of "better" practice coding structures) are too often negated by added complexity; legacy nightmares (out-of-fashion code is not pleasant 5 yrs later) & increased dev time when the real-world doesn't match the ideological utopian world envisaged by the creators. This is why we're all still programming C/Javascript/HTML/Perl using slightly better text editors. Occasionally genuinely useful new tech is added to the list (jQuery for example) - but where is the game-changing development system that allows for an order of magnitude i...

This (embarrasingly) simple online tool allows you to make tables in gmail messages. The lack of this feature in googlemail has annoyed me for some time, so I went to Google Campus London and constructed this one-page-wonder. If I was to slap a couple AdWords ads on it would that make it the fastest ever startup from conception to monetisation I wonder? www.gmailtable.com

OPEN LETTER TO DVLA ( if you wish to write yourself, it's: evl.feedback@dvla.gsi.gov.uk ) Not sure how to make a complaint, but suffice it to say this is one. I was disappointed to see the previously consumer friendly tax disc system implement Verified by Visa. Why? 1. This system is anti-small business (such as mine) being thrust onto them as an extra payment hurdle that big players like Amazon do not have to implement. Government should not be supporting systems that actively hurt small UK engines of growth in favour of big global corporations IMO. 2. It is anti-consumer, not just because it makes smooth processes (like your own) more convoluted, but analysis of the protocol by academia has shown it to have many security issues that affect the consumer, including greater surface area for phishing and a shift of liability in the case of fraudulent payments (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3-D_Secure#General_3-D_Secure_Criticism ). Basically, Visa can more readily get o...

Trying to avoid form CAPTCHAs, so considering implementation of a "Double Bluff" honeypot to stop spam. Goes like this: CSS hidden, traditional honeypot input with a tempting name like 'title' that's empty for robots to inadvertently fill. Then a hidden input that is javascript filled once page has loaded. Checking the first pot is empty and the second full should capture all but the mightest spam routine...