Viewing by month: December 2005
Sortable Tables Custom Tag
Posted on Dec 20, 2005
I have been using Web FX Sortable Table javascript to create table lists that can be sorted without requiring a page refresh. One of the nice things about this script is that it allows you to specify a data type for a column to help it determine the manner in which to sort a column. It also allows you to specify a column not be sortable (for example columns that may simply contain a link). I just finished wrapping most of the functionality necessary to accomplish this in a custom tag (click the download link)
Gaim 2.0 Beta Released
Posted on Dec 17, 2005
If you are a Gaim user, you would probably be interested to know that the version 2 beta has been released. I have generally been happy with Gaim for instant messaging and use it to connect to AIM, MSN and GTalk...and if you aren't already using it, I recommend it.
Create Your Own Code Generator
Posted on Dec 16, 2005
Lately there has been a lot of talk about tools like Reactor, Arf, ObjectBreeze and Transfer with regards to how they can help reduce repetitive coding tasks and and speed up development time. While, as you may already know, I am a huge fan of these tools, there may be times when you are not able to or may choose not to (for whatever reason) use these tools. This leaves tools like Roobios (and even SQL Surveyor though it is not free) that include some basic code generation to speed up your component development. However, these tools only offer a few basics, and may not write code in the manner you wish to have it. Well, as it turns out, it isn't all that complicated to build your own tool to generate components your way. I put together a basic example and will walk through how I built it (and share the code via the download).
Building a Simple Image Manager with tmt_image
Posted on Dec 11, 2005
Two of the greatest benefits of open-source software is that it is updated frequently and that you can modify the source to suit your needs. However, often these two benefits are somewhat incompatible; once you modify the source, keeping up with the constant updates can be difficult. Such is the case with the FCKEditor, while it is (IMHO) the best and most feature rich WYSIWYG editor out there, its image management is missing some features - of utmost importance to your non-"web-savvy" user is image resizing. However, I know from experience that once you modify the image management source, keeping the editor up-to-date can become daunting. For those projects that are tightly budget constrained and cannot afford Alagad's image component, fortunately Massimo Foti has created the free (not open-source - see license) tmt_image component. I have created a very basic image manager that allows you to upload, resize and delete images from a folder to demonstrate how you can use tmt_image to get the dimensions of an image and resize it.
Arf, ObjectBreeze, Reactor and More!
Posted on Dec 06, 2005
Don't like writing and maintaining your CRUD methods or tedious getters and setters, well there seems to be a proliferation of tools/frameworks that will do that work for you thanks to some very hard-working and generous developers. While I see a number of similarities between them, each has its own unique implementation (of course!). I have not used them all, but I have done limited tests on a number of them.