Via Simon, SitePoint has published an XHTML tutorial for beginners. I read through it and thought it very helpful for new developers.
Archive for March, 2003
XHTML For New Developers
Monday, March 31st, 2003Take… Luck
Monday, March 31st, 2003Last Saturday, along with a group of friends, I had the chance to see Brian Regan live at the Comedy Connection in Boston. Talk about a good time. He is the only comedian I know of to become famous (in my area at least) by having his debut set shared on Napster. Had my friends not introduced me to the widely spreading mp3, I would never had heard of this guy. Ever since, many of his phrases have become a part of normal conversation amongst my friends. If you’ve heard him then you know what “Take… luck.” and “You too.” are referering to.
The Journal O’ Andy
Sunday, March 30th, 2003A longtime online friend of mine, Andrew Barker, recently started his own online journal/blog. Done completly in notepad from design to content. I rather like the layout and the colors are a nice combination. My only grip, he uses tables for layout. But I’ll forgive him ;).
URL Fever
Sunday, March 30th, 2003Over the weekend I was hit by URL fever and decided to rework the structure here a little bit. In the past (and continuing on for compatibility sake) my URLs looked like this: http://my-dimension.com/archives/2003/03/#t1047606262. While this will still work, I have depreciated it in favor of this form: http://my-dimension.com/article/report_from_sxsw/. The new URLs are much more informative as to their content.
For those with pingback built into their blogging software, the new URL scheme is now the URL to ping to. The old form will no longer work.
Some Handy JavaScript Functions
Wednesday, March 26th, 2003Both Andy and Simon have come up with very interesting, and potentially very useful, functions for JavaScript. Andy started it by creating document.getElementsByClassName, a function that will return an element based on its class name. Then Simon come up with the idea of being able to select an element by using CSS selectors. Thus document.getElementsBySelector was born. So far they both seem to work in modern browsers.
I personally think document.getElementsBySelector will get more use because it is much more flexible. But that coming from a guy who, until a few months ago, loathed using JavaScript is not saying much. I actually enjoy using JavaScript now, but with one reservation: I will use it only to add features which can be safely lost in a browser with no JavaScript support. As cool as some JavaScript can be, it irks me to see some sites use it as a critical component to the function of their page.
PHP5 Intro
Monday, March 24th, 2003Via Simon, Sterling Hughes has posted his slides (apparently it is for Mozilla browsers only) for an upcoming PHP 5 presentation in New York tomorrow. Simon likes the class autoloading. I like the Exceptions handling.
<?php define('NUM', 10); try { if (NUM < 20) { throw new Exception( NUM . " is too small!" ); } } catch (Exception $e) { echo $e->getMessage(); echo "\n<br />\n"; } ?>
Could prove very useful for debugging purposes.
I for one can’t wait for PHP5 to come out. I just hope PHPWebHosting.com isn’t slow to upgrade.
The Platypus Unveiled
Friday, March 21st, 2003Mark has unmasked himself as the Ragging Platypus. For those unfamiliar with this parody site (as I once was), it is a weblog told from the POV of a platypus. I personally enjoy the humor presented by the platypus, er… mark. It is witty, mixed with current web happenings, and a dash of web stadards for good measure.
I can’t help but chuckle at the choice of the platypus as the character for this blog. The platypus is undeniable proof that God has a sense of humor. I mean here is an animal that is part duck, part beaver, has webbed feet, fur, lays eggs and suckles its young. Friends of mine have said that God must have had leftover parts when he created the world and thus was the platypus spawned.
New Icons, As Promised
Friday, March 21st, 2003As I promised earlier, I changed the way my icons in the navigation section function. They no longer use an img tag (go ahead look) and they react to your hovering over them. If they don’t react right away keep trying. Your browser should load them after a couple tries. I am aware of a few issues that I will be dealing with as time permits.
PHPComplete.com Redesign
Thursday, March 20th, 2003I haven’t been to PHPComplete.com in a very long time. Now that I re-visited I am treated to a new, table-less, CSS rich, standards compliant design. The other thing that I find new is that Jason has tured the site into a blog rather than a news roll. He still focuses on PHP and thats fine. Jason has a great set of resources pertaining to that fine scripting language.
Simon On Spell Checking
Wednesday, March 19th, 2003Simon as been working a spellchecking implementation that uses PHP and JavaScript. I tried it out and it seems very functional and looks to degrade nicely if JavaScript is disabled in a users browser. I am deffinetly going to keep an eye on this and perhaps implement it if and when it becomes a “stable solution”. Thumbs up to Simon.