Category: Programming

Dear Graphic Designers,
I understand that you are artists and by definition probably a little prone to inconsistencies for the sake of artistic license and creativity. I’m a little artsy fartsy myself so I can appreciate the desire to freehand a stroke rather than pull out a straight edge and right angle; after all this is art, not drafting…or is it. See, a web developer craves and desires regularity. Consistency, predictability, repeatability are programmable. That is, I can write something once and use it over and over with forecastable results. In odd cases, I can program exceptions. Exceptions to rules, much like the real world, are ripe for abuse and unpredictable results.

Consider the job of a doorman at a nightclub. He has been given a procedure. When someone enters the club, he increases the number on a counter in his hand. When someone leaves the club, he decreases the number on a counter in his hand. He is now given a rule which is as long as the number of people in the club is less than a particular number, let’s say 740, then he should let the person in the front of the line in. Once the counter hits 740, he doesn’t let people in. Nice and simple. Now let’s say the manager has a thing for a certain type of woman so he makes an exception to the rule. Any pretty blond woman under the age of 30 wearing a tank top and skirt above the knees immediate gets in without standing in line. We have introduced several opportunities for error but let’s focus on the most obvious one. If 740 people are in the club and a pretty blond 23 year old in a mini-skirt and tank top walks up, does the doorman let her in or send her to the back of the line?

Back to our graphic artists. When you are designing a layout for a website, the layout is typically created as a single image then sliced into smaller images. If you are designing a horizontal navigation bar, when slicing it up do not make two images 41 pixels tall, one image 42 pixels tall, one image 43 pixels tall, and the creme de la creme, the final image 44 pixels tall, and expect me to easily line up the text below the images. Especially don’t do this when the extraneous pixel height is all white space! Thank you. That is all.

/rant

I don’t like explaining this to my clients but sometimes the solution to the problem is simply…magic.

For most of the past decade I have coded using CFStudio 5. It is a fantastic editor that was bought by Allaire from another company under the name Homesite. CFStudio was a more robust version of Homesite. Eventually CFStudio was abandoned which probably had something to do with Macromedia buying Allaire and wanting to promote Dreamweaver as their preferred editor. Now that Adobe owns Allaire/Macromedia, CFStudio has been reborn as Homesite+ and Dreamweaver still exists.

When my computer crashed, I found myself reinstalling everything. Yes, the computer is back up. It is running Windows XP and has a 500 GB hard drive. I can finally download all the podcasts I want! It also begs the question of whether or not I am using the best IDE for my purposes. I am not an eclipse fan. I see the potential and I really want eclipse to be a good solution but I’ve had too many bad experiences with it. For the past several weeks I have been coding in Notepad++ and although the compare plugin rocks the editor itself is really just an editor and I need an IDE.

Suggestions? IDE should accommodate PHP, ColdFusion, CSS, JavaScript, etc.

I spend a lot of my days staring at stuff like this:

fV,da){var result=[];for(var i=0;i<=da.length-1;i++){if(da[i]!=fV){result[result.length]=da[i];}}return result;};function um_aM(fV,f){for(var i=0;i<=f.length-1;i++){if(fV==f[i]){return true}}return false;};function log(fi){regetPopDoc();var fW=um_K.getElementById("debugHint");if((um_v)&&(fW)){fW.value=fi+"\r"+"\n"+fW.value;}};function um_aZ(fV){var dn=0;if(fV.offsetParent)while(1){dn+=fV.offsetLeft;fV=fV.offsetParent;if(!fV.offsetParent)break;}else if(fV.x)dn+=fV.x;return dn;};function um_ba(fV){var dp=0;if(fV.offsetParent)while(1){dp+=fV.offsetTop;fV=fV.offsetParent;if(!fV.offsetParent)break;}else if(fV.y)dp+=fV.y;return dp;};function um_aF(el,gP){if((um_J)||um_I||ie){var gX=gP.split('-');var gY='';if(gX.length>0){gP="";for(var i=0;i<=gX.length-1;i++){if(i>=1){gY=gX[i].substr(0,1);gY=gY.toUpperCase();gY+=gX[i].substring(1);}else{gY=gX[i];}gP+=gY;}}else{}}var x=el;if(um_p||um_n||um_o){var y=x.currentStyle[gP]}else if(um_q){var y=eval('x.currentStyle.'+gP);}else if(um_I||um_J){var y=document.defaultView.getComputedStyle(x,null).getPropertyValue(gP);log('get style: y is '+y);}else{var y=document.defaultView.getComputedStyle(x,null).getPropertyValue(gP);}return y;};function um_aN(){var fB=navigator.userAgent;var hd=navigator.appVersion;log('navigator is: '+fB);log('version is:'+hd);if(hd.indexOf('MSIE 5.5')!=

When in doubt, when the results do not make sense, validate validate validate!

If you are going to give your programmer updates to your bylaws with changes from last year’s bylaws, and your bylaws are nine pages long, please red line the changes. Your programmer isn’t interested in reading every word and you don’t want him taking horrid shortcuts like using Microsoft Word’s "Save as webpage…"

Everyone must read Brent Simmons’s Anatomy of a feature!