Softies on Rails is a popular Rails blog that looks at Ruby on Rails from the perspective of .NET developers. They've just announced that they're holding a special one-day workshop where they cover how they went from .NET to Ruby on Rails for Web development and how other .NET developers can do the same.

(Disclaimer: I'm no Java wiz, so if I get anything wrong about Java or its libraries, post comments!)

The SWT (Standard Widget Toolkit) is a GUI widget toolkit for the Java platform. Unlike AWT and Swing, it uses the local operating system's own controls. This means you can develop Java apps that 'look native' on multiple platforms. The popular Eclipse IDE uses SWT to work and looks graphically native on multiple platforms (as does Azureus). SWT is also, reputedly, faster than the other alternatives. Sounds great for developers, right? Java developers.. sure.

RailsForum.com has just announced the winners of their October Tutorial Contest. A lot of cool tutorials came out of the contest, so I wanted to link to them here.

1st place - HOWTO: Make a Rails Plugin From Scratch by Danger Stevens.

2nd place - Refactoring on Rails: Move to Model and Refactoring on Rails: Multiple Scopes in Controller by Ryan Bates.

3rd place - HOWTO: Send Instant Messages in Rails

Other entries
Image uploads and resizing for Rails models with mini-magick
XSS and when h() just ain't enough
Creating Two Models in One Form
Editing Multiple Models in One Form
Test Helper: Clean, Custom Assertion Messages
Debugging on Rails: Reading Stack Traces
Introduction to Form Helpers
Programming Best Practices
Advice to Rails Beginners: Follow Conventions
Handy RJS Tips
Using Autotest with Rails on Windows XP machines
Creating Many Models in One Form
Creating a Variable Number of Models in One Form
Getting Started With RESTful Rails
Rails Migration For Beginners

I'm creating a library that sorely needs a 'debug mode' where each step of what the library does is printed to the screen for developers to check out. I wanted the debug mode to be easy to set and for the debug messages to be as non-intrusive as possible. Initially I arranged it in such a fashion:

Rather than spend $3049 on TextMate, the thrifty Dr. Nic Williams decided to try and port all of TextMate's useful 'snippets' over to RadRails. He has succeeded.

I've had this link sitting in my brew pile for some time and wanted to see if I could get it to work with the latest version of Ruby and Rails, but since I've been too busy so far, I wanted to post it anyway in case a reader would find it useful.