Quickie – Aptana 2009 Roadmap Survey

Just a quick post letting everyone know that we’re asking the developer community for their input on the Aptana Studio…. what do you like, what do you hate, and what do you want. Per the survey page:

We want to make Aptana Studio better for YOU.

To do that, we need to understand what you do, how you work, what you like about Studio, and what drives you nuts. Whether you’re a regular Studio user or you’ve only tried it once or twice, we want to know what’s working for you and what’s not, what features you can’t find, and what features you can’t live without.

From now until January 10, you can help us determine our direction for the next year and beyond by taking a few minutes to give us your thoughts.

Take a few minutes and share your thoughts:
2009 Aptana User Survey

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Filed Under: Aptana, General

Dec

2008

Aptana PHP 1.0 Released – Free PHP IDE

Aptana (yes, this is a shameless plug) released version 1.0 of its PHP support yesterday, and it is something that you should definitely check out. Prior to working at Aptana, I was an avid user of Zend Studio, and Coda, simply because those were the best PHP IDEs as far as I was concerned. Over the past few months, however, we’ve been hard at work on the PHP support for Aptana Studio, and I can say with much confidence that it is in every way as good as every other PHP IDE out there, and better than some in other respects. I would also say this regardless of the fact that I work for the company… it really is that good! Read on to find out about all the new goodness…

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Filed Under: PHP

Dec

2008

PHP to JavaScript

Really cool project for porting PHP functions to JS… 198 so far. A lot of really handy string and array functions, definitely worth a look.
PHP to JavaScript Project

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Filed Under: Asides

Quickies & Cool Stuff

Web Developer Collection: Packaged up Firefox extensions

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

MooTools ScrollSpy – Surprising Useful JS Plugin

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

jQuery vs. MooTools – Finally, a Useful & Subjective JS Framework Comparison

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

Doctrine – PHP Object Relational Mapper

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

Preloaders.net – Fantastic Preload Image Generator

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