5
GetSimple: TweetMeme reTweet Button Plugin
This is my first attempt at creating plugins for Get Simple CMS, an awesome CMS system I’ve been playing around lately. So, I recommend you guys check it out, if you are looking for a “Simple” content management system for your next project.
This plugin allows you to easily add TweetMeme’s reTweet Button to the content pages in GetSimple. It also includes a settings panel in the settings section of the administration area when you can customize the plugin. Read more…
9
Working with Google Charts and Visualization API
This week I had the chance to play around with Google’s charts API, and let me tell you that I’m loving it. In the past couple of years I’ve had to integrate charts into the different projects. I have used everything from Fusion Charts, to PHP/SWF Charts, and DOJO’s charting engine. But, since I learned that Google provided developers with an API to create charts on the fly, I wanted to give it a try. Read more…
2
Installing Zend Studio on Ubuntu 64-bit
Today I tried to install Zend Studio 7.0 on the latest 64-bit version of Ubuntu (9.10). Initially, it would just throw an error. (exec: 2481: /tmp/install.dir.2855/Linux/resource/jre/bin/java: not found). Since, the error was related to the installer not being able to find the java JRE that came bundled with the installer, I decided to install with the system’s JRE using:
./ZendStudio7_0_0.bin LAX_VM /usr/bin/java
That seemed to do the trick, but, once the installer had finished. Trying to open Zend Studio would give me an error (Failed to execute child process “/usr/local/Zend/Zend Studio-7.0.0/ZendStudio” (No such file or directory)). At this point I was about to give up, until I did a little bit of research and found that the problem was more simple that I imagined. Read more…
15
Best Practices – Displaying Application Messages and Alerts
On my last post I wrote on how to debug and log error messages using Zend Framework and Firebug. Today I wanted to write on how to properly display messages and alerts to users.
There are different type of messages you can display to a user in a web application. From the typical validation messages, to a dreadful fatal error in your app. Here are some rules I tend to follow when alerting the users that they must take an action without causing confusion:
- Use the same massaging system to display all messages
- Stick to 3 different types: warning (yellow), success (green), and error (red)
- On system error, do not display the system error to the user
- Display informative messages when interface can be confusing
21
Zend Framework and Firebug – Log and Debug your Projects
When developing an application there are some important factors that you have to pay close attention to avoid problems in the future. I think one of the most important is logging information on how your application is working and when it fails.
Must of us like to log only big exceptions and fatal errors, but the truth is, that when you are in the development process it’s very important to keep track of not just errors, but important information of when something gets executed. As a web developer one of the most important tools to have is FireBug. If you didn’t know, FireBug has an API that you can use to send console messages for logging purposes, when debugging JavaScript. But, did you know you can use FireBug to debug your php applications? Read more…
