Required Form Fields for HTML4+

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The full HTML5 spec provides support in browsers for using the “required” attribute on form inputs.  Along with built-in data type validation and other features this is a great improvement on how we work with forms and in general will help to standardize form validation in the future.  Unfortunately the only browser that I know of which supports this feature is chrome.  But all is not lost, here is a simple jQuery script which enforces the required attribute in all other browsers. Continue reading →

Cygwin for Local Development

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Since starting my job at WolfNet I have been exposed to a lot more Linux. Since all of our web servers are running on Ubuntu Server and we use Git for our code repository I have really been thrust into the world of Unix and in general I have found that I really like it. It is a very fast and flexible way of getting things done.

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Git, Dropbox, and No SSH

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So you want to use Git for your source control management system but you don’t want to use GitHub (for various reasons) and you don’t have access to a SSH accessible remote server.  Or maybe you just don’t want to deal with the obstetrical that SSH inevitably causes.  Well luckily since Git is essentially just a bunch of text files and directories you don’t need anything more complicated than a file sharing system such as Dropbox, Box, SkyDrive, or Google Drive. Continue reading →

Working a Wiki Into My Development Workflow

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At work we use a wiki (MediaWiki) for internal documentation.  Wikis are something I had some previous experience with at my old job (obviously I have had experience with sites such as wikipedia.org) but it wasn’t something that more than a few people were contributed to and it was really never fully embraced.  Part of lack of acceptance was that it was an MS SharePoint wiki and keeping with SharePoint’s MO, was not very user friendly and therefore did not lend itself to easily being incorporated into everyone’s workflow. If you have ever had any experience with a wiki you know that they are only as good as the frequency with which they are updated.  This means that it is crucial for the wiki itself to become a regular part of your ever day development workflow.  Doing this will have tremendous results and an incredibly positive impact on your documentation and developer collaboration. Continue reading →

Introducing PHP Site Mesh

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We have been learning Grails at work and I couldn’t help but feel that the Site Mesh implementation is an awesome way of doing templating.  I looked around for awhile to is if I could find an similar implementation in PHP but I only found one so far that seemed at all like what I was looking for.  SiteMesh.PHP is a open project on SourceForge and I honestly just didn’t like the way it was implemented.  It seemed very limited  and general not as elegant as what I have seen in Grails.  So I have set out to create my own implementation.  So far so good.  I should have something beta code to post soon. Continue reading →