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:

• Plugin can be customised using options
• Setters/Getters for options
• Private and public methods
• Callback hooks
• Plugin instances can be destroyed

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:

• Better handling of checkbox results in the emailResults method.
• A custom form submit URL can be passed to the FormBuilder constructor. Useful when using FormBuilder in an environment that is performing URL rewriting.
• Replaced deprecated ergei functions with preg_match.
• Checkbox field types are correctly processed when field is not mandatory, and the user didn’t check any of the available options.
• Added new field type: file (for file uploads). Note that files are currently not emailed when using the emailResults method. Any handling of the uploaded files should be accomplished manually by accessing PHP’s $_Files array.
• The textbox and textarea field types now accept an optional defaultvalue parameter.
• Fixed a bug that meant checkboxes had a CSS class of ‘fbheckbox’ instead of ‘fbcheckbox’.

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.

PHP example:

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.

PHP example:

One of my readers, René, asked me if my FlashScaler JavaScript class works with SWFObject 2. I’m happy to say that yes, it does. The demo and download on my original FlashScaler post now include working examples using SWFObject 2.1.

Over at roScripts there is a nice tutorial explaining how to modify my FormBuilder PHP class so that validation is performed unobtrusively using AJAX. Check it out.

If you work with Flash at all, by now you will have heard of Papervision 3D, the open source project that has turned the Flash world on its head by introducing a 3rd dimension. I had a quick play with Papervision 3D a few months ago and found it surprising easy to pick up. It is now in public beta so I decided to dust off my old project and rewrite it in Actionscript 3.

I spent an hour yesterday sprucing up the ‘file download’ icon I use on one of my websites, and I’m putting my Photoshop file up here for you to use if you like. I’ve made it very easy to change the color scheme of the icon, or to modify the graphic on its label, so you’ll have no trouble adjusting it to suit your own needs.

I have made a minor update to my FormBuilder PHP class. It now includes support for ‘password’ and ‘hidden’ field types.

Next up I will be adding functionality so that the submitted form variables can be emailed to any address. Stay tuned…

Even though HTML forms tend to be much of a muchness, each is different enough to require customized markup, styling, and validation. Sometimes it feels like reinventing the wheel. Over the past year I have been progressively streamlining the way I build my forms, and recently got to a point where I realized it wouldn’t take much more work to create an all-in-one PHP class that generates form markup, validates input, and displays error messages to the user. So that’s what I did, and I’m sharing it here in the hope someone else finds it useful too.