Blog

Yahoo's ySlow & Google's Page Speed online private data capture portal

I know a few of you have heard of and are using Yahoo's ySlow and/or Google's Page Speed tools which are Firefox plugins. These are good tools to improve the speed/performance of your website. The results are presented at the bottom of Firefox. What about if you want to save this data for historic reasons etc? Well there is showslow; showslow is an open source portal that one can download and inst...

Open Source Web Magazine

I was looking for an 'Open Source Web Magazine' that specialised in 'Open Source Web'. Unfortunately the closest I could find was 'php architect magazine', albeit a good magazine but it only specialises in php. Although I am a PHP Developer I am still interested in other 'Open Source Web Languages'; mySQL, javascript etc (and let's not forget frameworks: jQuery, Zend Framework, Rails etc). As this...

Google Chrome Plugins & Extensions Brief Overview

At the time of writing this Google Chrome Plugins are not yet supported on the stable release of Google Chrome (standard download). Therefore to develop or use any Plugins/Extensions one needs to download and install the developer's version, also known as the dev-channel. I have been using this for a couple of weeks now and I have had no issues with stability - well done Google Chrome Developer Te...

SVN Subversion:: Quick CheatSheet

I have been asked by so many people for a quick reference cheatsheet for SVN Subversion for the command line. So here I go, below are the most commonly used SVN commands on the command line.

# svn checkout/co #
# notes...
# checkout = co
# [project] is optional, if not used svn will create a folder using the project name in the repository
> svn checkout http://svn.jaoudestudios.com/project ...

Release of PHP5.3,...finally. Great news, but what is this GOTO

Finally PHP5.3 has been released (it was way overdue). However, in the release notes there is GOTO functionality. Not the GOTO we remember from BASIC days with the use of line numbers; but with anchors, similar to html anchors and jumping up and down the page. We have managed so far without it, is it really needed? Some might say yes; and I would not argue too much - the danger here is it is open ...

Google Wave:: Bringing email, msn, facebook, twitter all together!

A month or so ago, my Colleague sent me a link to Google Wave. I was really impressed and could not wait to have a play with Google Wave and also their developer section as this seems to be a big part of the system - to allow developers to develop plugins & addons with plenty of scope to link it with their websites. Unfortunately, there is a limited amount of SandBoxes available for developers at ...

Linux Game Publishing :: Michael Simms, AKA Comic Book Guy, AKA CBG

On my way back from Porto, Portugal, I was in a Newsagents looking for a Developer or Linux magazine to read on the plane; when I noticed on the front of Linux Format is my colleague CBG (Michael Simms) - wearing a suit and tie I might add. Totally shocked I bought the magazine and could not wait to read the artical. CBG's company Linux Games Publishing, AKA LGP, ports Windows games over to Linux;...

Weekend Hack Fest 2010 :: The Next big thing!

Reading about Yahoo's 24 hour Hack Fest May 2009 in London got me thinking. Why not arrange our own Hack Fest well in advance so all interested Developers can take part? Nothing too crazy, just a Friday night until Sunday night - with a bit of sleep and food in between of course. The schedule would be simple; start off easy Friday night with the planning of what we are going to develop and build w...

PHP to Ruby on Rails

While away on my anual leave, I read the book 'Rails for PHP Developers'. What a mistake! Not because the book was bad, actually I thought the authors did a great job - well done guys! However it made me realise how incomplete and childish php is as a language. I appreciate there are many great web applications out there built with PHP and they are doing an excellent job; I mean going down to a lo...

Do we really need to continue developing for Internet Explorer 6 (IE6)?

IE6 was released at the end of August 2001 and yet is still being used by so many today 8 years on and even after Internet Explorer has gone through two major releases since then. It suffers from many weaknesses: slow, insecure, not compatible with modern technologies. An upgrade is completely free, so why is it still being used? This is a good question and a difficult one to answer; it could be b...

What do candidates look for in a job interview?

When candidates go for a job interview they are interviewing the company just as much as the company is interviewing them. The candidate has an ideal role set in their mind, the chances of finding the perfect role area extremely slim. However finding a role that ticks most of the boxes is highly likely.

What does a good enthusiastic Web Developer look for? What does any employee look for? The ...

What do employers look for in a Web Developer?

The Web Development market is saturated, even with new languages coming into play all the time. What is the best language to learn to make you more in employable? I will address at a later date. Putting the languages aside for now, employers also look at the candidates from various other angles. Are they team players? Can they collaborate? Are they continuously learning?

In our industry the to...

Do you want to become a Web Developer/Designer?

There are many new Web Developers/Designers out there who do not know where to start. It is difficult to find a good starting ground; Server-side, client-side. Even these two categories then break down further into multiple languages and it is impossible to learn all at once and in trying to do so could make you a Jack of all trades and a Master of none.

I suggest and highly recommend starting ...