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Business
Curl: a multi-functional web development tool
WHEN WE think of creating a web site, many technologies such as HTML, java script and Java come to our mind. This week we will explore a new web language-Curl- that encompasses the features of all these technologies.
Early web
The development of the formatting language HTML (hyper text mark-up language) by Tim Berners-Lee (http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/) led to the creation of world wide web that has completely scaled up the Net's utility and brought many divergent forces into the realm of the virtual space. In the beginning when web pages were created completely by the HTML codes, to become a priced web designer you need to mainly know only the HTML concept. I still remember the old advertisements that offered short-term HTML courses!
Over time this overwhelming popularity of the web service resulted in more and more sectors embracing the web and slowly the deficiencies of HTML-only web started surfacing. If you design a web page with just plain HTML codes, the resultant web site will be just a static document. Many web-based applications demand a dynamic/interactive web with a lot of live and active customised content.
To get around the HTML-deficiencies and provide the web users dynamic web content and interactive web sessions with live multi-media content, many new web technologies emerged in the Net horizon _ Java script, Java, CGI and flash are some of them. Though these technologies provide the necessary tools to the web developer to accomplish his/her task well, the web technology arena with a string of products does not provide him/her a standard technology that is accepted by all _ some people may use Java script, some may opt for VB script, another one may use PERL and the like. Of course, this is a difficult situation for a web developer who has to master many/all of these technologies. So, if there is a technology that combines all the features of the present popular web technologies discussed above, it will naturally make the web developer's life quite peaceful and more productive. And this is what the new web programming language claims to deliver.
Curl
Curl is a full-fledged programming language that provides the necessary tools to format a web page, write necessary scripts to make the page interactive/dynamic and enrich the page with multi-media features. According to the information available at the curl site, the language provides support for, 2D and 3D-rendering, scene and animation creation and image-filtering. As all these features are weaved into a single product this should be a boon for the developers as they need to study only one development environment instead of acquiring skills on multiple technologies to achieve same task. (All the curl-programming statements are written inside curly braces and this seems to be the reason for calling the language (curl). As curl is a powerful programming language, one can even develop complete applications and make it run in the web browser. As the code can be compressed and transferred to the client's desktop to be executed there, the curl technology opens the possibility of bringing huge application from the web to our PCs without any drain in the Net bandwidth. Apart from this, it allows application providers to develop programs that make use of the processing capabilities of the client's machine, which in the present web scenario is a highly underutilised resource.
If you want to view a web site developed with curl applets, you need to instal the curl plug-in _ available as free download at the site http://www.curl.com _ in your machine that enables your browser (IE or Netscape) to run applications written in curl. Some readers must definitely be interested in learning this new language, and if you belong to that category, go ahead and download the curl development software Surge Lab IDE, which presents you a powerful programming language with excellent documentation. Though one cannot predict the future of this technology/language, if you are an enthusiastic student of programming, learning curl would most probably be an enriching experience. They have even announced a curl programming contest that might fetch you a few dollars and other accolades if you become one of the winners.
Search facilitators
Among the many technologies that let us spot the location of web resources that spread across the Net, search engines such as http://www.google.com and search directories such as http://www.yahoo.com continue to be the ones that are used by majority of the Netizens. It is common knowledge that there are many search engines and directories though most of us must have gravitated to one or two of them. Sometimes there can be situations in which you would get more meaningful results if you invoke the services of more than one engine. Like any other tool, search engines can also be used in a very unproductive fashion and may result in your wandering the cyberspace without achieving the required objective. The best way to learn the search skills related to a specific service is to go through its help facility. Since there are many search engines it will naturally be difficult for you to learn everything about all of them. If you are keen to know more about some of the popular search services from a single point, here is an interesting link: http://www.pandia.com/q-cards/index.html that sums up features and search rules for a few of the major search engines. Apart from this, here you will also find a link to an excellent tutorial on search engines and search tools.
In this regards I think it is worth mentioning here the meta-search tool _ Search Rocket _ that helps you automatically rope in the services of multiple search engines in a single shot. The program, available at: http://www.searchrocket.net/srkt20.exe, once invoked provides you a search box where you can input your search string. Once the program is assigned a search job, it automatically grabs the links related to the string from multiple search engines and stores all the hits in a folder for each service. When the search process is over you will see `+' mark in each of the folders that indicate the end of the search process. By clicking on the `+' mark you can view the search results. If you want to know more about a search result, just move the mouse over a hit name-you will immediately get a summary of the site. The program has many more features such as the facility that lets you re-organise and view the results according to such factors as domain type, search engine and the like and facility to save the results.
J. Murali
(The author can be contacted at: murali27@satyam.net.in)
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