Jason Ashdown’s Blog of Wonders

I’ve been playing around with the Zend Framework for the last couple of weeks and I love the MVC methods and it’s very well structured and comes with full documentation (very much like CodeIgniter which I’ve used but CI lacked the sustenance for my projects which I desired.)…

So what’s so annoying you may ask?

What bugs me is the naming conventions of methods and functions… as I mentioned, I’ve been trying to get to grips with the framework over the last few weeks but progress is slow. What’s slowing me down? Remembering the naming conventions.

I understand that Zend are trying to create a framework that can be used by a wide range of developers by using verbose names but sometimes I feel they are clunky, unnecessary and hard to remember. Zend’s great for decoupling and using it in anyway you want but it also seems to be it’s own enemy with making simple tasks hard to comprehend.

I find that I am forever creating new classes each time I want to use a Validator or use my Auth functions… I still have a lot to learn, so many of these problems might be solved with a different approach (like extending the classes more). But I’ve yet to find the hidden tricks.

I am currently in the middle of coding my first plugin for WordPress when I came across my first stumbling block…
Why doesn’t my jQuery code work in the admin area of WordPress??

After some probing on Google, the answer was revealed to me. Basically WordPress doesn’t use “$()” for jQuery, that’s reserved for ProtoType, which is also bundled with WordPress. Instead you have to use “jQuery(’field’).” in order to get it working.

This article explains it in more detail.

Who-Remembers-Me.com has recently been spamming the hell out of my inbox lately. I’ve been getting more emails from them than anyone else within a week. It’s really starting to bug me!

Thankfully Yahoo mail blocks most of them and dumps them in spam, but one or two leak through occasionally offering my insurance, credit cards, pharmaceutical, fictional offers etc. You know, everything that spam is about…

It’s driving me mad! I just hope someone comes down on them like a tonne of bricks soon. They have already had an official complaint from the Advertising Standards Authority but that was back in 2006.

Another guy blogged about this problem too, and recently as well. It seems the amount of unsolicited spam from them has gone up this year and is causing major problems. I did what the guy suggested and reported them to their ISP which isn’t such a bad idea.

Check out this useful tool that will draw some radically cool graphs for you without any trouble :)

A good find me thinks! PHP Chart Tool

The admin interface on the new WordPress 2.7 is impressive. I haven’t had time to play around with it very much, but I really appreciate the automatic upgrade link for plugins. Reduces the time required to keep them up to date :P

I’m surprised that the plugins still function even after the upgrade, but then it really is only backend changes. Verdict? It’s worth upgrading.

I just hope this build is just as stable as version 2.6, but only time will tell! We shall find out in the next few weeks.

I’ve always enjoyed tweaking my Web Servers, trying to get the most out of them, but sometimes it can be very tedious and frustrating… long, late hours of troubleshooting problems. Enter HowTo Forge!

HowTo Forge is website that provides pre-compiled virtual images of (pretty much) every UNIX platform already configured for you.

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Me and my friends are quiet the tech enthusiasts and we are always looking for the best in latest technology. We got into a talk about LCD Monitors and TV’s this weekend and were talking about how much bigger and better they are now.

I stumbled upon this article the other day which pretty much sums up what is going on in the TV world at the moment. It’s worth a quick look just to marvel at the grand scale of these screens!

Go see the Monster TV’s for yourself!

I have been delving into the Javascript Frameworks yet again. When I think of Javascript Frameworks, I automatically think “AJAX”, but that actually is just a part of what they are.

When I think of Javascript Frameworks, these 4 come straight to mind:

• ProtoType
• JQuery
• MooTools
• Script.aculo.us (derived from ProtoType)

I am sure there are others out there but these are the most popular ones that I have learnt about. I remember the first time when AJAX was being taunted with back in 2005. If I recall correctly, ProtoType was the first “Javascript Framework” to appear on the scene, taking hold of this new concept.

These days, more have popped up with very similar features and tools. They also focus on doing everyday tasks as well as handling AJAX. But admittedly, AJAX was the main reason why it spawned this new idea of creating “Frameworks” for Javascript.

The real point of this rant was to ask if anybody else knew of any other Javascript Frameworks? I want to have a look at some alternatives and see what they have to offer and to broaden my knowledge.

Thanks for reading!

For those budding PHP developers out there, you want to run your eyes over this!

http://www.mantisbt.org/

Mantis is a free Bug Tracking tool like Trac but without the SVN fuctionality.

Why is this useful? There are several reasons.

It’s a quick and easy way to log issues for any type of project. Even if it’s a simple “todo” list for a small job, its a quick and easy. Without the mess of SVN.

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The latest version of CL Auth now includes example files to help you understand how to use the functions.

You can download the lastest version CL Auth v0.2.5 now.