Posted 08/27/09 at 03:30:20 PM by David Murphy

It sounds like Buzzword Bingo, but a new Mozilla Labs project is applying an open-source, crowd-sourced routine to solve common Web developer issues. The program's called TestSwarm, and I must confess, it's a novel idea for increasing a developer's ability to test out new JavaScript framework on a variety of browsers at once. And the fact that this an open-source project is cooler still: Aspiring testers can load the framework onto their own servers and set up their own test

TestSwarm was developed by one of the Mozilla Foundation's JavaScript Tool Developers, John Resig, to deal with the scalability issues that factor into JavaScript code testing. To Resig, the proper testing platform includes at least five different browsers split into 12 total versions per operating system. Although he doesn't go into this length in his example, you should triple that number to factor in the Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 operating environments.

Factor these (now) thirty-six tests against an average of ten test suite iterations--a minimum number of variances that Resig runs in a common jQuery testing environment. That's three hundred and sixty runs for every test you create, more if you're expanding to include OSX and Linux platforms. And did I mention that the best results tend to occur when actual human beings are behind the testing instead of some automated attempt at user interaction? Yeaaaah...

So how did Resig address this grand problem of JavaScript testing scalability? You should know--you're a part of the solution, after all. Click the jump.

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Posted 07/13/09 at 03:30:04 PM by David Murphy

Distributed computing is one of the wonderful ways that you can use your PC to contribute to more thoughtful, worldly causes than keeping your room warm during a cloudy summer day. These projects, made up of members from all corners of the world (even Maximum PC's own forums), make use of your computer during its idle periods. Whether they're come as a screensaver that launches after a set period of time, or a background application that launches after a certain period of CPU inactivity, these free applications divvy out the tasks of a large, complicated project to a number of people at once.

Why should you care? Because distributed computing is a nice way to use a minimal amount of your system's resources--resources that you wouldn't be using anyway--to contribute to something greater than yourself. It's entirely altruistic in its purpose. Very, very few distributed computing projects have some kind of monetary award attached to the work, and you'd have to score a major knock-out in your individual contribution to the project to see the result. That is, your computer would have to be the one that finds the next huge prime number, or major breakthrough in protein analysis, or something to that effect. If you're in it for a reward, you might as well develop a program that estimates lottery odds.

You'll find that entities like Maximum PC, amongst others, have teams of people contributing to these distributed computing projects. It's a great way to make friends and fellow geeks--in fact, I'd probably be strung up by this site's forum folk if I didn't include a shout-out to their work on the Folding@Home project. Click the jump to find out how you can get involved in this and other awesome distributed computing efforts. +10 Light Side points for you.

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