WebDev
JavaScript is a fully-featured Object-Oriented programming language. On the surface, it shares syntactical similarities with Java and C, but the mentality is quite different. At its core, JavaScript is more similar to functional languages. Inside is a list of JavaScript tips, some offer techniques to simulate features found in C-like languages (such as assertions or static variables). Others are meant to improve performance and explore some of the more obscure parts of the web scripting language.
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Submitted by Ayman on Wed, 2006/09/27 - 6:26pm.
Update: I posted some news on this here.
Ever wondered how to create an interface like Google Personalized Home? In the first section of this article I'll demonstrate how to create a drag/drop portal in a few lines of JavaScript code, using the excellent Prototype and Scriptaculous JavaScript libraries. In the second section, I'll explain how to integrate this code into Drupal as a server backend for storing user settings. You may check the frontend here (tested with Firefox 1.5, IE6, and Opera 8.5), and download a reusable JavaScript Portal class and Drupal module for the backend at the bottom of this post.
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Submitted by Ayman on Mon, 2006/09/04 - 12:23am.
Here is a solution for a problem I read about many times in the Drupal forums, but couldn't find any definite answer to: When upgrading or moving a database dump from MySQL 4.0 to 4.1, Unicode data stored by Drupal becomes gibberish. The attached module iterates over all tables in Drupal's database, and converts text columns to UTF-8. The bulk of work is already in Drupal's code (_system_update_utf8), the module simply makes use of it.
To use the module, install and enable it, then navigate to update.php, and select update 1 for the module, then initiate the update process. You may disable the module when done.
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Submitted by Ayman on Tue, 2006/08/29 - 5:51pm.
I wrote two CSS debugging bookmarklets to ease the pain of XHTML/CSS development under Internet Explorer. They mimic two commonly used features in the Web Developer extension for Firefox. The first outlines block-level elements, and the second displays ID and class information. Although that such functionality already exists in Web Developer and other bookmarklets, I couldn't find anything that is compatible with Internet Explorer and works offline (What I found are bookmarklets rely on including remote stylesheets).
To test a bookmarklet, simply click its link. To use it, drag and drop the link to your Links/Bookmarks toolbar, and press the resulting button when you want to activate the associated functionality. These bookmarklets are tested with Firefox 1.5, Internet Explorer 6.0, and Opera 8.5. I haven't had the chance yet to test with KHTML/Safari, but I think they should work because the code is standards complaint.
Anyone who's worked with XHTML/CSS for a while knows that Internet Explorer support for standards is lacking to say the least. It has many obscure bugs and compatibility issues. Firefox is my platform of choice for web development because of its compliance with standards and the plethora of development and debugging tools and extensions available (most notably Web Developer and FireBug). Once coding is finished under Firefox, I validate the code and test with other browsers (IE, KHTML/Safari, and Opera). Most of the time the code works on Opera and KHTML without any issues; however, IE often produces problems, and while working around them, I used to wish I had Web Developer's features for IE. Now I have these bookmarklets. They took me like 5 minutes to write and test under Firefox, but IE silently failed to produce the desired results until I did another hour of work. I adopted Web Developer's styles for outlined elements and ID/class information for consistency. And now I'm sharing them here now hoping that others find them useful as well.
Submitted by Ayman on Sat, 2006/08/26 - 12:08am.
Anyone interested in web development should have heard about the Model-View-Controller software pattern by now. This pattern emphasizes on separation of application's data model, UI (view), and control logic. The concept itself isn't new and has been around since 1979, but recently there have been many successful implementations of the pattern in the domain of web development.
Like any self-respecting web developer, I started to explore the available frameworks, and quickly settled on Python as a language and TurboGears as a framework. I viewed many webcasts and documents, then decided to practice my newly gained knowledge by writing a basic del.icio.us-like social bookmarking application in TurboGears. Now I'm documenting my work as a tutorial, hoping that other TurboGears newcomers would find something useful in it. The tutorial covers the following concepts:
- Designing data models.
- Developing controller Logic.
- Creating view templates.
- Working with forms and widgets.
There are also sections for the reasons behind my Python/TurboGears choice, and the installation process.
Please read on for the tutorial itself and an attachment of the project's source code at the end. I recommend viewing the code while working with the tutorial, as I didn't include imports or other tiny bits. In addition, the tutorial assumes good knowledge of Python.
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Submitted by Ayman on Fri, 2006/08/18 - 6:17pm.
