I created this boilerplate for a jQuery plugin I’m working on, and you can use it to kick start your own jQuery plugin development. The features of my boilerplate are:
I recently discovered js-assessment, a “test-driven approach to assessing JavaScript skills” created by Rebecca Murphey. The js-assessment application contains a series of tests designed to assess a job candidate’s grasp of JavaScript, but it can also be used to gauge your own knowledge of the language. Think of it as a mini Project Euler for JavaScript.
The questions are divided into five topics covering different aspects of the language: arrays, objects and context, functions, asynchronous behavior and Backbone views. If, like me, you have a decent grasp of JavaScript, but wouldn’t feel confident writing “JavaScript programmer” on your curriculum vitae, then I think you’ll find the tests an enjoyable challenge. None of the questions are super difficult, though I confess to needing help from MDN to arrive at a few of the solutions. I definitely learned a thing or two about JavaScript along the way.
This week I came across a new JavaScript framework, called Meteor, which promises to simplify the process of developing web applications. It looks like an interesting project, run by some very smart and talented people, but something about the Meteor marketing pitch rubbed me the wrong way.
The Meteor website is full of claims about how amazingly easy the framework will make web developer’s lives. It will allow us to build “top-quality web apps in a fraction of the time.” Its demo applications require “no programming knowledge.” What “once took weeks, even with the best tools, now takes hours.” In fact, you can “build a complete application in a weekend.”
If building Facebook or Twitter was really something that could be done in a weekend, wouldn’t everyone and their dog be CEO of their own Internet startup? If the barrier to entry was as low as the Meteor team would have us believe, then business owners would have no need for developers at all – a few hours of training and they’d have all the skills required to build their own app or website.
A few days ago I posted about my experiences setting up XAMPP on OSX. Here’s another little XAMPP tip…
By default XAMPP won’t start the Apache and MySQL services at system startup, so every time you reboot your computer you’ll need to restart them. Wouldn’t it be nice if those services started automatically? One way of doing that is to create a Launch Daemon that runs at system startup and have it start XAMPP for us.
Fire up Terminal, and run the following command:
cd /Library/LaunchDaemons sudo nano apachefriends.xampp.apache.start.plist
Enter your OSX password when prompted, then in nano paste the following into your new plist:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"> <plist version="1.0"> <dict> <key>EnableTransactions</key> <true/> <key>Label</key> <string>apachefriends.xampp.apache.start</string> <key>ProgramArguments</key> <array> <string>/Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/xampp</string> <string>startapache</string> </array> <key>RunAtLoad</key> <true/> <key>WorkingDirectory</key> <string>/Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles</string> <key>KeepAlive</key> <false/> <key>AbandonProcessGroup</key> <true/> </dict> </plist>
Save the file and exit nano (control+o, return, control+x).
Now run the following terminal command:
sudo nano apachefriends.xampp.mysql.start.plist
And into this new file paste:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"> <plist version="1.0"> <dict> <key>EnableTransactions</key> <true/> <key>Label</key> <string>apachefriends.xampp.mysql.start</string> <key>ProgramArguments</key> <array> <string>/Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/xampp</string> <string>startmysql</string> </array> <key>RunAtLoad</key> <true/> <key>WorkingDirectory</key> <string>/Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles</string> <key>KeepAlive</key> <false/> <key>AbandonProcessGroup</key> <true/> </dict> </plist>
Save the file and exit nano (control+o, return, control+x).
When you restart your computer the XAMPP Apache and MySQL services should start automatically. You can check this by launching XAMPP Control and checking that Apache and MySQL have green lights displayed next to them.
If you’re concerned about the security of your system while running XAMPP, the safest approach is not to run Apache or MySQL at all, in which case you might not want to have those services running while you’re not using them. However, I’m fairly certain that unless you intentionally open up port 80 in your hardware/software firewall your XAMPP server should be invisible outside your local network.
A hat tip to ‘cwd’, who posted this solution on Superuser. I tried a couple of other approaches before I stumbled upon this one which actually works.
A few weeks back I rejoined the “Cult of Mac” when I replaced my old Asus notebook with a MacBook Pro, and since then I’ve been busy settling into my new OSX workflow. I do all my development locally, so one of the first applications I installed was XAMPP, a cross platform Apache/MySQL/PHP stack. While I know that MAMP is very popular on Mac, I have been using XAMPP for many years so I thought I’d stick with what I know.
Installing XAMPP was a snap, but when I came to create my own Apache VirtualHosts things started getting fiddly. Here are the steps I followed to get everything running smoothly.
Parallax scrolling website interfaces have been popping up all over the place recently. I didn’t want to miss out on the fun, so I have put together a parallax scrolling demo built using jQuery and CSS.
It’s been almost exactly four years since I updated my FormBuilder PHP class, but believe it or not I have been slowly modifying and improving the class during the intervening years. I figured it was high time I rolled those improvements into the public version of the class, so here’s what’s new in version 1.5 of FormBuilder:
emailResults method.ergei functions with preg_match.emailResults method. Any handling of the uploaded files should be accomplished manually by accessing PHP’s $_Files array.defaultvalue parameter.If you encounter any problems with the new version please let me know.
Last year I created a port of the Monokai syntax highlighting theme for phpDesigner and posted it in the phpDesigner forums, but I think it deserves a proper home so I’m archiving it here on Pixel Acres.
If you’ve ever wanted to display your latest Twitter tweets on a website, here is method to do that using PHP. My approach has the following features:
My weapon of choice for code editing is the excellent program phpDesigner, but every so often I like to test drive a different editor to see what I might be missing out on. Recently I spent some time playing with Notepad++, and one feature that jumped out at me was the ability to choose from a large number of pre-installed syntax highlighting themes.
When I switched back to phpDesigner, the default blue-on-white color scheme seemed a tad boring, so I decided it was time to pimp my IDE! Unfortunately user created themes for phpDesigner are thin on the ground, which left me no option but to make my own.
