Got a bunch of stuff here, so I’m combining it into one post.

First, Smashing Mag, if you weren’t on there on Monday…I believe, you might not know. Apparently they are in some financial trouble and were asking their readership to help them out by purchasing an e-book. I’m guessing they took on more than they could chew, but who really knows. What I do know, is that the e-book contains like 10 articles…8 of which have already been published, and two new exclusive items. For $10. Not a lot really, but for content that most of us who go there have seen? Bah. Better if they asked to buy their print book for $30.

Second, NetBeans IDE 6.8. I know there are a ton of IDE’s out there, and most people I know use Aptana. I always thought it was too bloated. I don’t use half the crap it comes with, and just a little too confusing to get things going. If you think its easy and awesome, that is fine. It IS good. But a co-worker of mine downloaded NetBeans and showed it to me. And it is exactly what I want. Nice and simple, supports Zen Coding (though not as much as I would like), subversion, ftp, and a great little Navigator Panel. It also has some damn awesome javascript features. I only saw that what it does with the Ext library, but I am going to assume it does the same for jQuery.

Lastly, I just saw an amazing looking jQuery slider done by Gilbert Pellegrom of Scotland. Here is a link to the Nivo slider.