An aside for any web developer who is frustrated with not being able to have IE6 and IE7 side by side, take a look at this Free IE6 Virtual Machine with Pre-Activated Win XP (yes, legal, yes from Microsoft!).
Enjoy.
Archive for the 'Web Development' Category
Well, its been awhile since I’ve had a chance to post. A lot has been happening with my work and college. All leading up to the probably graduation in May 2007, so I’ve been unable to post as often as I would have liked.
So what’s been going on? Well let’s see…
- The web speculates that MyBlogLog is in acquisition talks…
- Apple updated, well, everything in their line yet again
- I have left my position with FuJ Tech, and will continue to work on freelance projects
- I recently learned that MediaTemple’s Grid service is actually not a grid. So much for that idea.
- Sony’s PS3 has about as many issues as the Xbox360 had at launch, but with almost double the initial pricetag
- The Nintendo Wii is selling like crazy, as predicted, and I for one will be buying one once I raise some funds.
- Windows Vista is practically out, and Acer is saying not to bother with the ‘Basic’ version.
Did I miss anything? Oh well, check the Digg section or my ma.gnolia for daily link updates and news stories.
Great article via Digg.com, Developers are from Mars, Programmers are from Venus, is probably the single best description of the difference between developers and programmers. I am proud to be the former. It took a year of experience to get me there, but I’m on the right track. Kudos to the blog author.
Subversion
Subversion is the CVS done right. Now, I know many web developers who sware by FTP and their own voice as a means of controlling their source code. I for one believe that method is by far the easiest, and usually most efficient way to manage source code in a small business. Yes, it is dirty, and yes it can get ugly. The upside is that everyone knows what is going on in the company, and everyone knows what they can edit at any given time. The downside is that one slip up can cost you several hours, if not days of precious development time.
Continue reading ‘Free Source Control and Blissful Workflow’
I just had to cross post this. If for no other reason than to show off, gloat, or otherwise inflate my ego. That or just to prove how incredibly crazy the web really is. Small world, huh?
Background
It is (about) day 2 of using ASP.NET and Visual Studio 2003 and I’ve finally managed to deploy an application to the new webserver. Basically all it does is read the iTunes text file output (File –> Export Song List… –> Text File) and outputs a DataGrid component with the artist, album, and song title with nice pagination. The nice thing is that the DataGrid handles the pagination and pretty much any operations with the data. I have to say, I really wrote this in about 2 hours in the wee hours of the night so if it breaks, let me know.
Why ASP.NET is unique…
There are so many people that have told me that ASP.NET and .NET in general is pretty much a waste of my time, but see, there are so many others who are using it and loving it. Here are a few reasons I personally see promise in the language(s).
- .NET keeps the code out of the interface using ‘Code Behind’ allowing your layout people to work on layout, and your coders to work on… code.
- .NET uses more than one language, but those languages can be used in both desktop and web based development. What this means is, an employer only has to hire one person and they could easily jump from web to desktop in hours instead of weeks.
- I can’t say just how much .NET WebForms really act like desktop applications. You can actually write subroutines that run on the webpage based on user actions. This is really unique, as at my work we usually have to shoehorn it by creating a new page or using a ton of javascript. .NET tries to take care of it for you and does a darn good job.
- Choices: You get a choice of VB.NET, J#, and C#. They all work pretty much the same with the .NET framework, but it really gives programmers the choice to specialize or just pick their favourite to work in. Personally, I like C# because it reminds me of Java and C mashed together, but these choices give developers with different backgrounds the ability to work together.
- Postbacks: .NET has a built in way of handling postbacks, you know, when there is an error or if you want to process data on the same page it is displayed, .NET can handle it for you.
- Source code safety: ASP.NET builds. It actually has to complie, which for some of us LAMP developers sounds like a royal pain, but really it keeps your source safe. Think about it, if you lose a client, or a client demands FTP access, they cannot access your source (at least not easily). It’s really a beautiful thing.
Hello World, for good measure…
I of course had to write a classic ‘Hello World’ in C# (desktop!) for good measure. It has a little more than a standard hello world, but I think it just shows how carried away I can get at 2am.
Well, that’s it for now. More when I finally write something useful!
I saw this amazing link on Digg today and thought I needed to make my stance on MySpace heard. MySpace.com is quite honestly the most rebellious and anarchistic social networking site I have ever seen. Users can pretty much do whatever they want to their profile, post what they want, and befriend who they want. All in all, this sounds like a wonderful Utopia of social goodness and web based interaction. The problem with all this freedom is that at some point that animated GIF background, your flash based video and music player (which autostarts no doubt) will make your content illegible and probably annoy any potential viewer. On top of the usual suspects, there is illiteracy. The article actually graphs the millions of grammatical and spelling errors that MySpace is chock full of and I must say, it is very, very scary.
Anyways, enough ranting. Enjoy the link.
Updated – February 20th, 2008
There is no readme file for my plugin, and for that I apologize. If you need further instructions, just drop me an email and I’ll do my best to lend a hand. Though, this plugin is quite out of date and I would heartily recommend using the sidebar widgets HTML plugin instead, as it does much of the same thing and is included with the new WordPress distribution.
A few months ago the company I work for (cloudspace) built an awesome link tracking system called MyBlogLog. Ever since, I’ve been trying to use it with WordPress. After upgrading to WordPress 2.0, I decided it was time to integrate MyBlogLog into WordPress without opening the template code. I spent about an hour or two learning the WordPress plugin API and came up with the MyBlogLog WordPress plugin. At the moment, it only integrates the actual link tracking code and the Top 5 Links script. The plugin allows you to enable or disable the Top 5 Links script and set its colors. The plugin hooks the main tracking script in just before the content of the site and the Top 5 Links code is inserted just after the Meta section of your template. As far as I know, there are no template specific issues thus far and everything should be working. I wrote this plugin for myself, but I figured others might find it useful as well so I am going ahead and releasing the plugin here.
Just a note to anyone reading Digg and anyone who has used the Vitaly Friedman Web Developer Handbook website. Some very unscrupulous guy in Romania has blatantly ripped the site off. The reason I am so upset is because, quite honestly, Vitaly’s site is the best collection of web developer links ever created. A cheap knockoff that gets dugg is just begging to be ripped apart. I will be adding this to the “users who blogged this” on digg, so hopefully the following link gets some traffic:
The original complaint: Dealing With Plagiarism Issues (Vitaly Friedman’s Blog)
The real site: The Web Developer’s Handbook
For some reason every Web 2.0 application I have ever used, and pretty much every web application period (that I’ve used) fails me on this one stickler that I have. Let me update my data in bulk. Spending hours tagging photos, bookmarks, and the like is not what I think of as convienient, ‘cool’, or fun. If I wanted to do that, I’d use paper and scribble every URL on a post-it note and throw it in a hat for tag-soup. Really, why add AJAX if I can’t add the same tag to many different items at once without going to another page? Why have a really nice fading modal box for deletion if it still refreshes the page (ma.gnolia)?
A lot of these applications are very sweet, money making ideas but frankly, until I can do everything with ease… I won’t use the application nearly as much. When I can right click a link in the browser, tag it, and send it on its way I will be a little happier. When I can tag a ton of items at once, and add/edit/delete them on the fly, I will be willing to pay for the service. Unless of course it costs more than a candybar a week, cause then I just can’t justify it… I’ll build it myself.
Just kidding, sometimes.
