I’ve recently (well, 6 months ago anyway), started using frameworks more heavily for many new web applications. I have to say I’m wondering why I didn’t do this sooner.

About a year ago, a client introduced me to RubyOnRails (RoR). What struck me most about it was not just the clear separation of content, layout, and business logic I’ve already tried to embrace in my coding, but the speed at which I could tie in DB structures, along with data validation and cleansing. In addition, there were tons of plugins and helpers to manage common tasks like AJAX, or not so common tasks like internationalization, all in the name of a speedy deployment.

So in short, RoR is great, and I love it. But my problem is that I work with lots of other developers, and shared servers that aren’t RoR friendly, plus I already know PHP. So what to do? CakePHP of course!

All I have to say is Wow. If you know PHP, and want an awesome framework, CakePHP is it. I’ve tried others, like CodeIgniter and symfony, but Cake IMHO is the best (it’s also very RoR like). It’s more robust than CI, less weighty than symfony, and easy to deploy and maintain. It took awhile to learn their conventions, and structure, but it’s already paying off. I can scaffold sites like with RoR just as easily, add functionality (like AJAX and i18n) without worry, and get on with dealing with my custom classes, rather than the mundane nuts and bolts of building a site.

So if CakePHP is the answer to serverside scripting, what is the answer to clientside scripting? Enter Jquery. If you love frameworks, and you know you do, you’ll want to add Jquery to your arsenal. It’s lite, it’s fast, and it’ll fade, animate, and handle all of your javascript events like a dream. Clients ask me for all these SEO friendly (ie. not flash), cool web2.0′ish  javascripting like they see on Google desktops and Netflix. It’s a chore to create, mostly because of the cross browser issues, and lack of good debugging tools.

Jquery helps keep that to a minimum (though you still need to perform all your normal testing), and makes traversing the DOM easy, no more writing a bunch of nested statements to grab the 2 or 3 elements you need. Like Cake, I was able to create some pretty nice applications with minimal fuss.

There is always more to learn, and the web changes so fast that it’s hard to keep up, but frameworks are not going away anytime soon. Learning those like CakePHP and Jquery, is worth it.  Even if you change frameworks in another 3-4 years, you will already be in the mind set of how to best leverage the most important asset you have, your time.

We took this picture of the Queen Anne Victorian Mansion on December 28th. The mansion is one of Portland’s premier landmark Christmas events for the annual “Miracle of a Million Lights”. With about 2.5 million lights this historical landmark turns into a Christmas wonderland each holiday season. See for yourself!

1441 N McClellan St (by the DMV); 6-10 pm daily.

Event Dates:
12/14/08 - 12/30/08

Admission: $5.00 for adults, $3.00 for children 10 and under

Photo taken yesterday afternoon.

I need to get out more. There’s so much stuff going on, that it’s easy to get overwhelmed. And while there is some great music happening (there was a  jazz performance by Chris Botti last night I would have loved to have seen), it’s the odd ball stuff that I’m really missing out on. Like SantaCon that I promised I’d do this year, or the local Dodgeball and Kickball leagues I’ve been meaning to sign up for. But with all the snow craziness going on, I might just have to add this to my list

Say what you will, the people in this town are awesome. I love PDX!

Here is one of several logos we did for TKW, premier CPA and consulting firm located in Portland, Oregon.

This photograph was taken earlier today in Pier Park, St Johns Portland.

A logo and a website for nkWorks; digital art studio from Portland, Oregon.

Go get free Starbucks coffee!

Lets face it, Internet Explorer has been the child only a mother could love for so many years, with it’s varying degrees of standards compliance (or lack there of) across versions that make development a nightmare. That said, Microsoft looks to finally be changing it’s tune… or so I hope.

IE is awful. Version 7 is better than 6, but it’s still aggravating to work with. IE6, which is still in wide spread use, brings tears of utter sadness to my eyes. To a developer, getting a site standards compliant takes a little work, but that’s nothing in comparison to the acrobatics I have to go thru to get a perfect site to render correctly in IE6. I loath it with so much animosity that I go out of my way to steer random strangers towards another browser. Any browser.

With IE8 around the corner, that’s looking to change. For the first time, MS is FINALLY serious about adopting standards set out by the W3C. The only problem now is that with so many Windows machines out there running IE6 and 7, it will be awhile before we can finally spend our time on more important tasks like making beautiful and functional sites!