Pottering
Tuesday, 28. July 2009, 12:38:05
I was given the option of take some holiday or lose my entitlement so I've got a week off work with not a lot to do.
Weather has been a bit grim so I've spent some time on the interwebnets & having a look at some new stuff. I've been playing around with Chrome a lot more which is very good & I'm much happier to use than Firefox but is still featureless when compared to Opera. I'm always impressed that I've been an Opera user for over 7 years now & I'm still discovering new features.
I've gone through a number of the articles at Opera's Web Standards Curriculum which although is very good is not really my style & is not inspiring me.
I've looked at Unite which I think is interesting but like widgets I can't really see the point. I get the argument about being in control of your own data, & a few years ago a free server side scripting system would have been just what I was looking for. But thanks to ByetHost offering free PHP hosting Unite really can't compare. For me PHP + MySQL is easier & more powerful, & for my projects if my hosting company wanted to look at the data I am storing remotely I wouldn't be particularly bothered.
I've cleaned up the quick & dirty PHP leader board I threw together last week, adding a nice load of js validation tricks to make updating the results easier.
I might itemise some of my code into reusable snippets for others to have a look at. The code I write tends to be specific for the apps that I build, as a result it is a lot smaller & faster. A lot of the generic javascript UI libraries are huge in order to take into account all the possible quirks of the pages they are cut & pasted into. As an internet snob I believe that pages should be as minimal as possible to avoid such quirks & that a web designer should know exactly what is on a page.
I've got a few ideas for future projects, but nothing is really catching my imagination at the moment so I'm struggling to find the motivation to really sink my teeth in.
Hence the pottering...
Weather has been a bit grim so I've spent some time on the interwebnets & having a look at some new stuff. I've been playing around with Chrome a lot more which is very good & I'm much happier to use than Firefox but is still featureless when compared to Opera. I'm always impressed that I've been an Opera user for over 7 years now & I'm still discovering new features.
I've gone through a number of the articles at Opera's Web Standards Curriculum which although is very good is not really my style & is not inspiring me.
I've looked at Unite which I think is interesting but like widgets I can't really see the point. I get the argument about being in control of your own data, & a few years ago a free server side scripting system would have been just what I was looking for. But thanks to ByetHost offering free PHP hosting Unite really can't compare. For me PHP + MySQL is easier & more powerful, & for my projects if my hosting company wanted to look at the data I am storing remotely I wouldn't be particularly bothered.
I've cleaned up the quick & dirty PHP leader board I threw together last week, adding a nice load of js validation tricks to make updating the results easier.
I might itemise some of my code into reusable snippets for others to have a look at. The code I write tends to be specific for the apps that I build, as a result it is a lot smaller & faster. A lot of the generic javascript UI libraries are huge in order to take into account all the possible quirks of the pages they are cut & pasted into. As an internet snob I believe that pages should be as minimal as possible to avoid such quirks & that a web designer should know exactly what is on a page.
I've got a few ideas for future projects, but nothing is really catching my imagination at the moment so I'm struggling to find the motivation to really sink my teeth in.
Hence the pottering...
WIDGETIZE