I just whipped up a new portfolio app in CakePHP, complete with projects, tags, and screenshots. My plan was to write it in Rails, but my Ruby skills just aren’t there yet. Check it out by clicking the link in the top-right corner. I still need to test it in IE6.. so let me know if you get a chance.
I’m going to be making some changes to this site in the coming weeks. Check back soon for updates!
I am currently taking CS419 :: Open Source Software here at Oregon State, and one of our requirements is to submit a patch (or plugin, in this case). For my first patch of the term, I have decided to improve on an existing jQuery plugin: jEditable. I am changing it so that it works with tables. You can check it out here:
I’ve come to the conclusion that Internet Explorer is the reason I am going bald. Not genetics. Not male pattern baldness. Internet Explorer.
I am tired of creating alternate stylesheets, chalk-full of crazy CSS hacks. I’m tired of creating alternate image sets because IE can’t render >8bit .PNGs (w/ alpha transparency) correctly. The list goes on…
I find it ironic that the IE7 developers are now having to take issue with the multitude of hacks that developers have used over the years:
“We’re starting to see the first round of sites and pages breaking due to the CSS fixes we have made. We would like to ask your help in cleaning up existing CSS hacks in your pages for IE7.”
Anyhow, I’m hopeful that the release and adoption of IE7 will either a) significantly slow my hair loss or b) just finish the job already (by breaking most of my previous work). In the meantime, do me and other balding developers a favor:
There has been a lot of buzz this year about Ruby on Rails. For those of you who don’t know, RoR is an open source web application framework that closely follows the MVC (or Model-View-Controller) architecture. I read a few articles about RoR to find out what all the fuss was about and quickly realized that the MVC methodology was superior to my traditional method of writing web applications. In my previous web applications, I had always done an okay job of separating the logic from the design, but never at a level that can be achieved by the use of a MVC framework.
Rather than learning a new language (Ruby), I decided to search for such a framework that utilized PHP. Besides, I have always been partial to PHP and I wasn’t about to abandon something that has made me quite a bit of money in the past few years. The three frameworks I narrowed my search to were CakePHP, Symfony, and Code Igniter. Here are some quick observations I made:
… I don’t want to spend a lot of time running different scripts to get started. .So, I have decided to go with CakePHP. I’m not sure if there is anything Symfony supports that I will be missing out on, but it seems perfect for the project I am about to take on (more on that later). Within a few hours, I was able to get a decent start on my project. Without CakePHP I can honestly say that it would have taken me three days to achieve what I have accomplished in three hours. Cool beans.
