CSS Editors (why you don’t need dreamweaver anymore)

It been a long time since I first started developing web sites. Before that, I developed interfaces for CD ROM applications. It took a long time for the web to be sophisticated enough to display interfaces of the caliber I was striving, and like everyone else – before there was a real support for standardized CSS I too used apps like, OMG, Pagemill and Dreamweaver.

But let’s not forget what those tools are. They are for designers, not programmers, to generate interfaces rapidly. Not serious tools for development. When I code, I like real editors like BB Edit, and now the standard Eclipse editors * specifically ZEND studio. I don’t want the bloat that is generated by the code there. It’s just not clean, not really. Like mamma said, just because its convenient – doesn’t mean its right for you!

Rapid CSS style sheet editing was possible with Dreamweaver, and I did keep it in the arsenal just for the purpose of using it to style rendered portions a site I was working on. Because until today, I didn’t see a way to edit stylesheets visually without it. Now my eyes are so open, and I will probably never use dreamweaver again!

Mac Rabbit makes the app, and you can find it here: Want this? I have downloaded the trial and decided in the first two moments that its going in the trick bag. Oh, yeah!

URL string encoding issue in Flex 3

I am pulling data from a mySQL source using a traditional httpService protocol, this time adding a specific filter value to the string. So it’s a string with multiple values encoded, and I am using the & symbol. This seemed like a straightforward proposition, and the test in the browser worked well. However, I had a very specific issue with URL encoding. The IDE was throwing a pretty descriptive error:

next character must be “;” terminating reference to entity “method”

The issue is that the MXML compiler hated the & symbol. I tried using the ascii symbol for ampersand, which is %26, but to no avail. the trick turned out to be grabbing the decimal value, and present it in HTML code. In this case that’s the ampersand – its #38; – and a handy little chart was very helpful – here at acsiitable.com

The service request worked perfectly!

mx:HTTPService id=”prodList”
url=”http://mysite.com/flexedOut/Products.php?filter=594&method=FindAll”
result=”myResultHandler(event)”

in case you can’t tell, the browser is rendering that ampersand perfectly so here it would be one space between characters: & # 38 ;

Timeline vs No Timeline

As a developer, I love the purist code. I develop in the ZEND architecture and I rarely code in anything that isn’t Eclipse Based anymore. Adobe Flex has become one of my favorite IDEs. What an interesting evolution in thought processes.

I have developed many OOP applications in Flash with Actionscript. This approach utilizes a basic timeline structure, as Flash has always been (since 4.0) on timeline. Thinking in terms of Timelines was no big switch, because Lingo was my language of choice before flash actionscript was an option. Learn to Speak, Just Enough, and the Berlitz titles too – were based on Lingo and director. Director was always the tool I used to bridge the gap between the artists and the programmers.

The timeline structure, although interesting and workable, is less appealing to hard core developers. As I develop more and more code in Flex, I realize that the old school timeline paradigm is less appealing. The more I use actionscript 3 in the Flex IDE, the better I like this shift in thinking.

There are times that I really miss the timeline in flash, but the tradeoff so far makes it worthwhile to stick with flex.

First Module for Elastic Cart

Elastic Cart has an open architecture that allows for modules to be written as ad-ons. Tonight we finished one such module. We will eventually make this part of the framework, and allow a full web based or possibly air based solution for data entry – but for now this is a Filemaker ESS solution and ‘contribution’ based code addendum. Using actual technologies open ODBC driver for data piping, we breathed life into the ‘fast event calendar‘ for Elastic. This can also be easily adapted to both Zen Cart and OS Commerce, cube cart, or any of the other popular open source frameworks.

Interacting with a simple filemaker interface, your data entry personnel update the web immediately by simple interaction with the record in Filemaker. On commit, if the status of the record is on, viewers of the website will see immediate updating and adding of entry or event records. Add images to depict your events, plus a link for each event.

@todo – plans include ticket sales and full integration to the shopping cart portion of elastic, as well as to add social bookmarking to each event in the calendar.

Eclipse SDK Version History

You can follow the same methods for doing a quick rollback in ZEND studio that you can in flex 3.0 – I tested this on 6.12. It’s nice – right click over the code and view your local history. Same trick works in flex because they are both built on the eclipse framework…

Local Version History in Flex SDK

You work at home to avoid distractions to meet a deadline. You’re doing some heavy duty cutting edge work, and you are custom coding components in flex. So there you are, coding in flex, and you get interrupted by a phone call. your eyes avert from the screen, you lose your train of thought. While you are not looking, the kitten you are watching for a friend pounces on the desk and does cartwheels on your keyboard. wait, an entire section of code is now gone. the kitten has beautiful blue eyes and you can’t stay mad at it. curses! how will you get your work back?

The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind. It’s also the kick ass context menu option in Flex SDK. put your mouse over the code, and right click (you know you love it) Choose Compare with -> local history. Wowee, zappo. There’s your entire code history, and you can retrofit or roll back easily.

I must say, I love flex SDK on eclipse like a mouse loves cheese for this very reason.