1. Aarron Walter

  2. Web Directions South '06 Podcasts

    Oct 29, 2006 | Development,Podcasts,User Science | be the first to comment
    Web Directions South, a recent conference held in Sydney Australia September 28 and 29, is now releasing presentation slides and podcasts of the learning sessions conducted by some bright people in the web world. Speakers include: Jeremy Keith, Andy Clarke, Kevin Yank, and many others. The podcasts are being released incrementally, but you can subscribe to receive them automatically when they become available. The topics of discussion are wide ranging including Information Architecture, recent technological trends, and the like.

  3. There's a New CMS in Town

    Oct 28, 2006 | Development,Tools & Utilities | be the first to comment
    Expanse is yet another cool, home-brewed web application that fills a gap in the Content Management System market. It is marketed to artists, and small businesses who need to have control over their content without spending a fortune on an enterprise solution. It’s a tightly designed, standards compliant CMS that makes extensive use of JavaScript and Ajax in the admin tool to create a very intuitive user interface. It appears to do a few things well, rather than trying to do everything half-heartedly. Their demo gives you the chance to test drive its core feature set and get a sense for the quality of the interface. At $30 per site license, it could be a great option to use as a base for client sites, allowing a designer/developer to create a great skin for the application, and charge for customization and setup.

  4. Essential CMS Development Tools

    Oct 25, 2006 | Development,Tools & Utilities | 2 comments

    There are two JavaScript utilities I can’t live without when it comes to developing Content Management Systems: Tiny MCE and Prototype. Tiny MCE creates a robust and customizable WYSIWIG editor on your textarea form elements allowing users to write copy with formatting, links, and images. It’s used in many popular projects like Word Press (which is powering this blog!) and Drupal. A word of caution that there are known library conflicts between Scriptaculous and Tiny MCE.

    Prototype can be used to do very simple, elegant form validation as is demonstrated on my contact page. Dexagogo demonstrates this with great detail and offers a demo download for your learning pleasure.

    With both of these libraries it’s much easier to develop forms that give your users the power to add sophisticated content while preventing input errors in a user friendly way.

  5. Future of Web Apps Podcasts

    Oct 24, 2006 | Development,Podcasts,Technology | be the first to comment
    Carson Workshops, the creators of Think Vitamin, puts on short conferences examining hot topics in the Web world featuring a host of luminaries speaking about the various facets of their topic. They often post podcasts of each talk, and their recent The Future of Web Apps Summit is the latest in that series. Kevin Rose, Jeff Veen, and Tantek ?áelik are just a few of the big names who spoke at the recent conference, and all of this knowledge is free for your listening pleasure. The topics cover UI design, the business of building and selling your web application, development practices, APIs, and more. You can download each talk individually or subscribe to their RSS feed to get them all at once.

  6. SitePoint Article Forthcoming

    Oct 23, 2006 | Development,Programming | be the first to comment
    I’ve recently written an article for SitePoint entitled “Use Ajax and PHP to Build Your Mailing List”. The article walks readers through the process of constructing a mailing list sign up widget that makes use of the Prototype JavaScript library to send an Ajax call to a PHP script, which then stores the email address in a MySQL database. The result is a very quick, and painless mailing list sign up process requiring no page refreshing or redirects. The article will be published later this week or next week, and will include a code archive with a completed version of the scripts.