Simple Deployment from Sandbox to Production

I just tried to deploy new custom tab, custom objects, application, pagelayout, visualforces, and a document from my Salesforce Developer sandbox to Salesforce production using Force.com IDE. Pretty simple. Here are the steps, assuming you make the changes directly in your sandbox and wish to deploy the changes to the production org:

1. Create a new Force.com project on your Force.com IDE from your Salesforce Developer sandbox. If you have created the project previously, make sure you "refresh" or "add meta-data" to the project to make sure that you have the latest changes downloaded into your project.
2. Deploy to Server (Force.com > Deploy to Server)
3. Login to your production org 
4. Select the items to deploy
5. Test the deployment by clicking "Validate Deployment"
6. If succesful, click Next and Finish

Once it's deployed, you want to make sure that you login to the production org and provide necessary access to the components that are deployed. It's best if you have deployment runlist to make sure that these are documented properly.

HTML 5 - Flexing The Muscles!

I had an awesome opportunity to attend HTML 5.0 crash course taught by Peter Lubbers, the co-author of the Pro HTML5 Programming book. I am very awed to learn that HTML 5 is designed to be very powerful. It definitely changes on how web app will be built. Here are some key points from the training:

• Cleaner HTML Codes –  It introduces some new  HTML tags such as SECTION, HEADER, FOOTER, ARTICLE that will make HTML codes more readable (moving away from general DIVs to define page sections)
• Improved Offline Experience –  It allows programmer to define HTML files that should be stored in the desktop for offline browsing experience (instead of depending on the browser to decide for you).
• Richer HTML Native Data Type – Some new rich data type such as email, calendar, URL will be available. It means we don't need to build masking, JavaScript validation code, etc to handle the user experience/data quality. 
• Better Graphic, Audio & Video Support – The Canvas object will provide drawable region in the HTML code. It allow programmer to embed SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) in the document, embed audio & video file without plugging and allow JavaScript to control the audio/video properties.
• Improve Browser Scalability with "Work Workers"– Heavy JavaScript execution sometimes caused browser to freeze. With Work Workers, the browser can spawn background workers running the script in parallel to the main page (similar to thread) to avoid the browser performance issue.
• Better Storage Management – In addition to cookies, now JavaScript can manage store values with “local”  or “session” storage. Value is stored and retrieved with Key (similar to map data structure).
• Secure "Cross-Site Scripting" – JavaScript will be allowed to make cross-site scripting with supported server-side configuration to whitelist origins.
• Full Duplex Communication with Web Socket – JavaScript codes can can be transmit & receive data concurrently in a single connection.  

This is very exciting. I can't wait until the day where major browsers fully support HTML 5!