March 11th, 2010
I just finished switching an implementation of Google Maps over to Bing Maps. We used Google Maps to display a list of locations to choose from, centered on your current location. It was working great until we had to deliver over https. The only way to get Google Maps to work properly (without some sort of proxy hack) is to get the Google Maps API Premier which costs a lot of $$$$. Opening up in a new window or an iframe wouldn’t work due to browser restrictions.
So, after giving up on Google Maps, I pulled in the Bing Maps API SDK, and rewrote the entire code for the map locations. It took about 1/3 of the code that Google Maps API v3 used to do exactly what I needed. And instead of having to fork out a tonne of cash, all I had to do was change the http in the script src to https, and add &s=1 to the end of the URL. Simple, quick, and works.
Also, I haven’t really tested this a lot, but my impression is that Bing Maps just works better. It loads faster and seems to be more responsive.
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
January 28th, 2010
- Lists are easy.
- You don’t need to research your topic. Just pull list items out of the air.
- It’s almost like writing a real blog post but with hardly any effort.
- You can link to other people’s work instead of your own.
- They drive traffic to your site.
Tags: lists, useless
Posted in Business | No Comments »
January 5th, 2010
I started working on a new project today, which I hope to write about as I work through the different parts and challenges presented. I’m developing the project in PHP using Zend Framework with Doctrine ORM for the database layer. I’ve used ZF for a few projects now and it just keeps getting better and more mature. I’ve been reading about Doctrine ORM and read a few articles about integrating it with ZF and so far it’s been really good, although I’ve just barely scratched the surface.
The frontend of the project is going to just use the Zend Application MVC tool, but for the backend I’m using ExtJS. I’ve been a fan of ExtJS and used it for a few projects now but this time I’m trying something new – I’m using Zend_Json_Server to provide the data directly to ExtJS. I’m still working out how it works, but basically you create the objects on the backend, enable Zend_Json_Server and then your objects and methods are available right within the Ext.Direct and Ext.DataStore objects. Very slick. Once I’ve figured it out more I’ll post some links to the resources that helped me the most.
Also, it seems that everytime I log into WP there is a software update… maybe I need to post more.
Tags: doctrine orm, extjs, PHP, zend framework
Posted in PHP, Web Development | 4 Comments »
December 19th, 2009
Found a great tool today in Cinch. It replicates the window behaviour in Windows 7 on the Mac where you can drag a window to the edge of the screen and it resizes to 50% of the screen width. If you drag to the top then it goes full screen.
I’ve been using that behaviour a lot in Windows 7 and it’s nice to have it on my Mac too. Check it out:
http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/cinch/
Tags: mac, windows 7
Posted in Computers | No Comments »
December 14th, 2009
Once in a while I come across a folder inside which creating a new folder can be problematic. Here’s what happens: I open up the folder, press Command-Shift-N to create a new folder, the folder is created with the default label “untitled folder”, and then I can’t edit it right away. I’m used to being able to just press Command-Shift-N and then type the folder title right away. Anyways, my desktop started doing this and it drove me nuts so I figured out how to fix it.
- Load up Terminal.app
- cd [folder that isn't working right]
- rm .DS_Store
That’s pretty much it. I suspect that the .DS_Store file gets a little messed up once in a while. Deleting it doesn’t cause any problems as it just stores some meta data about your files. Every folder on your Mac has one of these so if you are having problems, try this solution first.
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December 9th, 2009
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
October 31st, 2009
Heading out on Monday for what was supposed to be a good week and a half off from work. Unfortunately, one of the drawbacks of working for yourself is that sometimes its really hard to get away from work. You try to tell everybody you are going to be away and work a bit harder before and after to try and make up for it, but sometimes you can’t avoid having to do some work. For example, I started a project two weeks ago that I thought would be finished by now, but it turns out it is going to take another week and the deadline is next week, while I’m gone. Good times! Ah well… at least I’ll get some time off. 
Posted in Business, Web Development | No Comments »
October 5th, 2009
The Calgary International Film Festival just wrapped up last night. I was lucky enough to work on it after being contacted by Brian Clegg over at 3.9 Marketing and it was a crazy ride over the last few months. During this time we built a new frontend site, upgraded admin tools, reworked their online box office software and rewrote their ticket taker software using AJAX. There were a lot of successes but also some areas that we’ve figured out need more work. I’m looking forward to working on improving those areas and making things run better.
A few things I learned:
- Allocate proper resources – I could have used some help on this project. It was a struggle to get things done in time and especially since my son was born halfway through.
- Don’t just use the client’s requirements for the build. Analyze the requirements and the client’s processes to see if they actually match up. Sometimes what they are asking for isn’t exactly what they need.
- If you are working on a festival and they want you to provide support during the festival, book that time so it is exclusive — tell your other clients that you are going to be unavailable during the festival, or find somebody to cover for you.
Now that CIFF is over, I can finally get around to doing a few things that I wasn’t able to during the festival:
- Clean my office
- Catch up on invoicing and bookkeeping
- Get back to studying for my Zend PHP certification
- Sleep
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September 10th, 2009
Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been able to work on projects using Zend Framework, CakePHP, and CodeIgniter. These are just a few of my own thoughts on the different frameworks.
CakePHP
Not a huge fan. My understanding is that CakePHP spawned from a desire to replicate the Ruby on Rails movement in PHP. My experience though is that it is slow and poorly documented. They try to get you to do things their way and I’m just not a big fan of that. I can understand trying to standardize for the sake of rapid development, but then you are stuck with development methods which work for small scale projects and not large complicated ones.
Zend Framework
This is the framework I’ve had the most experience. It’s got great documentation and a very active community. It does have the biggest learning curve though. While it’s true that ZF was more of a library in the past, they’ve made great strides to provide an application framework and a pretty decent one at that. It’s flexible and extensible. You can quickly whip up a small project and the system is adaptable enough that you can also build out large scalable projects.
CodeIgniter
CI is a great choice for those who don’t want to deal with the learning curve of ZF. It’s fast, well documented and has a great development community. It’s supported by a great company who has done a great job developing and promoting the framework. After working with CakePHP it felt refreshing to work with CI. Things were cleaner, faster, and just made more sense to me.
Summary
You can probably tell that I’m not a CakePHP fan. If I hadn’t picked up ZF for a few projects earlier in the year I probably would use CodeIgniter for everything. It’s still a bit of a toss up.
Posted in PHP, Web Development | No Comments »
August 18th, 2009
Got my invitation to the Typekit beta today!
First thoughts – great interface! The UI design makes it super easy to pick which font you want and assign it to the elements of your site. I just picked a couple just to test things out but I’m not a designer so it might take me a while to figure out what I want.
I can’t wait until there are more fonts – it would be great to see some there from some of the big foundries. Also, it would speed up things if they could use a bit of AJAX in the interface. I find that looking for fonts is a process where I need to scan a lot of them fairly quickly and speeding up the UI would be great for that. One last thing I think is missing, but isn’t a huge deal, is a search field. I think that is something which would be more important when they have more fonts, but it will be great if I have a specific font in mind to just quickly search for it by name.
I am very impressed though and I can’t wait to sign up my designer friends so they can start working with fonts other than the usual, and so they can stop using image replacement.
Tags: fonts, typekit
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