Timeframe – Nice Prototype-Based Calendar
Found this via Ajaxian, it’s a nice calendar widget that lets you click and drag ranges in calendars. Check it out:
Timeframe, by Stephen Celis
Found this via Ajaxian, it’s a nice calendar widget that lets you click and drag ranges in calendars. Check it out:
Timeframe, by Stephen Celis
Adam turned me on to SPL, here’s a good write-up. Essentially, SPL is a MUCH better way to deal with OOP in PHP 5 through faster, more seamless interactions with the actual PHP engine.
Zend DevZone: The Standard PHP Library
As always, another great article from A List Apart… this time on data visualizaton. Check it out:
Accessible Data Visualization with Web Standards
Nothing’s cooler than writing a bad-ass site or application and watching it gain popularity and a significant user base. By the same token, nothing’s more frustrating than watching your app fall on its face when its running under high load. If you’re like me, you know how disheartening this can be, as it usually means that its time for a hard dose of reality: your code probably isn’t as awesome as you thought it was.
Or is it? There’s a whole slew of things that a person could point a finger at regarding slowly running code. The most-oft thing that gets called out is code with a lot of overhead (a ton of includes, excessive logic, and the like), and right behind that is poorly designed databases (unoptimized indexes, no indexes, ridiculous amounts of joins, blah, blah, blah). Well, let’s assume for a minute that you’ve got a fair amount of experience under your belt, so you know your code is pretty damn optimal, and you also have a DBA buddy that took a look at your database and helped you tweak it up a bit. What do you do if this isn’t enough? Before you say, “throw more / better hardware at that mo-fo”, why not take a moment and learn about APC: Alternative PHP Cache… Read the rest of this entry »
If you haven’t been using the Firefox 3 Betas yet, now’s a good time to start! This latest release brings major speed improvements to the JavaScript engine, along with some other goodness. Full release notes here:
Firefox 3 Beta 5
Welcome to Gen X Design. The name’s a little corny, I know, but it’s one of those things I’ve used since I was a kid.
Anyway, I built this site for me (and some friends) to share their thoughts and ideas. I love all things web 2.0, shiny icons, and gradients. I live in the San Francisco Bay area, work for eMeter, and am sometimes available for contract work.
Mozilla announced a new feature for add-ons today: collections. It also looks like they’re getting the ball rolling with several useful collections, such as the Web Developer Collection. It includes all sorts of goodness like Firebug, ySlow, GreaseMonkey, ColorZilla, and many more. Well worth a quick visit.
FireFox Web Developer Collection
David Walsh has put together a really handy plugin for MooTools called ScrollSpy. What impressed me the most was the automatic display of a “Return to Top” link on your page once you’ve scrolled beyond a certain boundary. There are also a handful of other neat demos worth checking out. Sounds simple, but if you think about it, there are tons of great applications for this plugin.
http://davidwalsh.name/scrollspy
It’s been said a thousand times I’m sure, but picking the right JavaScript framework is a pain. There are all sorts of biased arguments for one vs. another, but there’s really nothing subjective out there… until now. Arguably, jQuery is probably the most popular JS framework out in the wild, but that doesn’t always mean it’s the best choice. What you choose should really depend on what you’re trying to do. Aaron Newton of Clientcide has put together a really impressive look at jQuery vs. MooTools, which doesn’t categorically say one is better than the other, but, rather, goes into detail about why one framework is better than the other based on your needs. Definitely worth a read:
www.jqueryvsmootools.com
ORM is certainly a very popular concept these days, but I haven’t really come across any PHP implementations that I found worth-while. Sure, big frameworks like CakePHP may have ORM functionality, but I’m not a fan of huge frameworks. I’ve also dabbled in my own implementations, but never got too far, as I’m not a fan of re-inventing the wheel. At any rate, I stumbled across Doctrine by accident (good ol’ RSS readers), and am impressed, mostly because it’s something that can be integrated into existing projects / frameworks.
www.doctrine-project.org
Ajaxload.info used to be the site of choice when it came to generating preloader images… unfortunately, I think it’s been bested. Preloaders.net allows you to generate not only the standard set of preloaders, but even 3D ones! You also get much more control (size, speed, etc.) and the quality of the final images is impressive. Definitely worth checking out.
www.preloaders.net
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