I'd think running sql queries over the internet would slow down response time. Or is it not significant?

We're starting by targeting EC2 customers and ourselves running within EC2 to avoid this issue.

In future, we'll work with more cloud/hosting providers so that we can stay 'close' to the client, and we do have some tech that could be applied here also.

Is it possible to apply the service to already existing clients databases, maybe by sshing to their servers or providing them with special software?

You could just dump your current DB and restore it to the new one hosted at EC2, then point your application to the new one.

I used http://www.contextfreeart.org/ tool to design background pattern for one site. I'm a programmer and I always doubt when I have to design. Using generative art made me feel more reasonable about it.

Whats with the link on the logo, its href is {#http_root#}

Must be a templating system glitch.

what do you think of shopalizer.com its not taken

thanks for the suggestion! Ok, I bought that now.

Good luck with your app :)

+1 to that idea

Its strange why this article doesn't interfere with http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7720614.stm

I only use tables when its not possible to go without them (but it happens very rarely). Actually, it requires some time to get used to CSS technique. And I've never used CSS frameworks.

webpy (http://webpy.org/) is very lightweight and hackable

I can make a nice library out of this scratch. Or maybe create a repo and host it somewhere. But only if i know that people will use it :)

Circle is made of trapezoids, it takes 18 divs to draw the circle from the page.

ah true. Still, having 61 DIVs in the canvas in that example is a fair number.

Still cool though. How about using ● for a circle and scaling the font. I expect you'd have to do some calculations on each platform to adjust for font differences etc, but could work.

Nice idea, I will try to see if its possible to implement it

You can use characters to draw, and it's cross-platform, too:

http://nedbatchelder.com/blog/200805/css_homer_animated.html

(Not that I'd recommend it.)

I should know what font to use, that is available in all operating systems. And how to properly scale and position the character.(should check how the size and position of the character depends on the size of the font)

Manually tried to align them: http://old.etoleto.com/c1/ (orange circles are of text, transparent blue ones of divs) I'm not sure if i should use this instead of divs - being able to select them as text annoys

Its a well known technique (using border slants), though I enjoyed to implement it by myself as a simple drawing class that works in major browsers. What I want to know, is where it can be used (or maybe it is useless?), and what should I add or change.

Wait, you can make slanted borders?

This is cool, I didn't know. I googled around and found some more:

http://meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/slantastic/demo.html

http://infimum.dk/HTML/slantinfo.html (check also links from there)

http://infimum.dk/HTML/rasterTriangleDOM.html

Also please check this link: http://www.uselesspickles.com/triangles/demo.html (I found it after I implemented my algorithm) I use the same method to draw triangles, but a bit more simplified (requires 1 div less per triangle)

Would it be emulate the canvas tag seemlessly for browsers that don't support it such as IE?

IE and or any old browsers can support canvas tag when you use ExplorerCanvas http://code.google.com/p/explorercanvas/

So IE not supporting canvas tag 'officially' isn't really a problem.

EDIT: Just found that ExplorerCanvas has a new home at soundforg. Download here http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=163391

I doubt the possibility of emulating canvas tag in ie using this technique, because its very limited compared to canvas (for example, its not possible to draw lines).

This technique can bring cross-browser support of drawing polygons.