Tagged with " programming"
Feb 17, 2010 - Development    Comments Off

Bad Zend – Buyer Beware

I recently had to reinstall my OS, which led to me upgrading to Windows 7 (from Vista), which led to me reinstalling all of my software, which led to me upgrading some of my software. I decided to purchase and download the latest version of Zend Studio which I use for PHP development. It’s not cheap, $399, but I use it often enough that I decided if I can make my PHP development IDE better, it’s worth it (I was wrong).

Zend Studio 7 is Broken

I download and install 7.x, I previously had 5.5, and at first I’m just out of my comfort zone because it’s different. I decide to just learn the new interface and spend the next few hours getting it set up with my websites. I remotely develop via FTP. In 5 I was able to simply add the FTP servers to my left-hand pane and work with the files. You can still do this in 7, but they removed some of the features they had in 5. In 5 I could set the Initial Directory of my FTP servers. If I do not set this I have to expand 2-3 directories before I get to the actual root of my webserver. It’s not only a pain to do when you work on multiple servers, but it also increases the width that the content of my left-hand pane, making me have to scroll to the right to work with files, and back to the left to open another server. It’s just not ideal, and it’s not the same, or better, than 5.

I put up with this inconvenience and started to write some code. I had a programming task I wanted to complete and decided to jump in and perform it. As I started to type in Zend Studio 7 there was a significant delay in the screen response. As I typed the cursor was 2-3 letters behind. Because I’m a programmer, I know what is going on here. Zend is validating what I’m typing, and not doing it very well. I spent some time in the settings and turned off all of the validations (that I could find). It got better but there was still a delay, enough to bother me but I moved on. Then I noticed that when holding down the backspace key nothing happened. I could not hold down backspace and delete a few words or a complete line. The cursor would disappear and nothing would happen. I had to hit backspace over and over and over to delete a word or two.

No Refunds

I accepted that this wasn’t going to work out, and that I was 100% happy with Zend Studio 5, so I should just downgrade and give up on 7. I uninstalled 7, reinstalled 5, and submitted a refund request on the Zend website, and that’s where it got hairy. In an email response from Orly Maman from Zend I was told that since Zend offers a 30 day evaluation version and I had the opportunity to review the new version of the software.  Because of this there are no refunds. You’ve got to be kidding me. Who in their right mind is going to test-drive an upgrade of their current software? No one. I responded that this was not acceptable, that I was not ever going to use 7, had already downgraded, and that I just wanted a refund. Same reply. So I decided to call the main U.S. office. On the phone I got the same reply. I was told that I should have read the user agreement which says there are no refunds for any reason. Completely ridiculous.  I don’t even have to expand here how horrible it is for a company to operate this way, so I’ll leave it at that. Needless to say I submitted a chargeback with my credit card and the money will be returned in the end but Zend has lost a customer for sure.

Orly MamanOrly Maman
Feb 5, 2010 - Development    Comments Off

How To: Delay JavaScript Source Load

I recently ran into a problem with a 3rd party JavaScript source call slowing down the load of one of my sites. I decided to change the code to perform a document.write of the external source tag when the page’s initialize JS code ran. Apparently the 3rd party developers wrote code to test for the correct insertion of their code, and whenever I made this change the script suddenly stops working, and instead pops up a JS alert saying that you need to place the code between the “<body></body>” tags. Their validation code is erroneous, but that doesn’t help me. I ended up finding a solution to my problem in the following script I found online. Somehow adding the code dynamically do the head tag doesn’t trigger the same warning, and the script still works.

var head= document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)[0];
var script= document.createElement(‘script’);
script.type= ‘text/javascript’;
script.src= ‘http://www.example.com/script.js’;
head.appendChild(script);

Jan 22, 2010 - Development    Comments Off

Firefox Plug-Ins for Web Developers

I have 6 Firefox plug-ins, or “add-ons“,  that have made my life as a web developer much easier. Some of them I don’t know how I ever got along without. Here’s a quick rundown of the plug-ins I use every day. We’ll start with the least useful and move the most useful tool I have, period, for web development.

Window Resizer

It’s a simple tool for resizing your application window to common screen resolutions. Once installed you right-click the page and bring up the dialogue. Choose your screen resolution and the application window resizes. Great for making sure your website fits in various resolutions.

Screengrab

What is it about Windows screen capture that CRASHES it if you do not reboot your PC often enough? I’ve had this problem on countless computers across at LEAST 3 different OS’s and don’t know why Microsoft cannot get this fixed. Either through the Print Screen key or using Vista’s Snipping Tool, the core application for screen grabbing crashes and you’re stuck without being able to get a screengrab without rebooting. I often send customers screengrabs when they simply cannot understand what I’m talking about. Sometimes, “Select the item and click ‘delete’” doesn’t come across correctly in an email, and a screengrab always ends the conflict. The Firefox add-on Screengrab works even when Vista’s print screen feature has crashed! I actually downloaded this add-on right after discovering that Vista’s screen capture was not working that day, installed it, and immediately made the grab I needed. You can choose to grab the whole page or just a selection. You can either save or copy the grab to the clipboard. Most of the time I take a screengrab into Photoshop and add comments, so this is a great tool for me.

Colorzilla

Colorzilla is a simple color picker tool that will give you the RGB and HEX code value of any color on a web page, even images. Drag the cursor over the element and your status bar now shows the color values of whatever color you are hovering over. Great tool for when you forget what colors you used on a certain page or want to use the same colors as another site. I don’t use this a ton but it’s an awesome tool for the times when I want to do this.

IE Tab

No more needing to open a new Internet Explorer window in order to test your design in IE. IE Tab allows you to open a new Firefox tab that runs the IE rendering engine inside of it. It will load the address of the current tab so that you can see how your current design is working out. Of course it cannot share cookies between the two browser engines, so you might have to sign in if you’re checking out a secure section of your site.

MeausureIt

This awesome tool allows you to draw rectangles over a web page and it gives you width and height measurements of your rectangle. I use this all the time. Whether I’m checking to see if an element is displaying as wide as I specified, or trying to figure out how much room I have for an icon, I find many uses for this tool.

Firebug

Hands down the most important add-on there is for a web developer. Especially if you write JavaScript. Browsers have been notoriously poor at giving developers information on JavaScript errors. They will tell us when and where the error occurred, then leave us to search through the code for line #1304. And why was it that older versions of IE were ALWAYS off by one line? If you develop with some type of server-side scripting language it can make it harder to find the bug because you have to View Source since your actual code lines will not line up with what is rendered by the browser. And Firebug will crawl deep into your included/source JavaScript files for you. Firebug allows you to click the “# errors” link at the bottom of the status bar to jump right to the line (in a small window) that caused the error. Although I don’t use, I believe you can even view the value of some variables at the time of the error (don’t quote me on that). Beyond JS you can use Firebug to view the HTML of any section of a website. Firebug’s Inspect Element feature allows you to mouse over sections of the web page and view the HTML for that element. And in reverse, you can run through the HTML of a page and click on a tag to see the element highlighted on the page. This is huge for looking for HTML bugs of any type, and DHTML/CSS developers like myself need this. There are other features but that’s mostly what I use it for, and it saves me a ton of time.

Jan 8, 2010 - Business, Development    Comments Off

Google Analytics “Intelligence”

analytics_logo

On many occasions I have noticed an increase in activity on one of my websites and had not know what was causing the new traffic. It could be a TV news report, a blog post, a forum post, or any number of events. I always thought that Google Analytics should tell me What Has Changed. But, it never did…until now! Google has a new feature in beta called “Intelligence”. The Intelligence report shows different variables that have increased or decreased significantly over the selected date range. It’s an easy way to find out What Has Changed in regards to traffic, goals, and commerce on your website. It’s a great feature and it should help many website owners to not just identify traffic trends but to help find bugs and other changes on their website. I’m glad they finally realized how valuable this information can be to us.

Oct 29, 2009 - Development    Comments Off

Obfuscation

Obfuscation, it’s not just a fun word…it’s useful! Every once in a while you do something that is so simple, yet so valuable, that it just makes you feel good – like you actually did something complicated and are reaping the rewards. Today I had the need to obfuscate some JavaScript and I found this online JavaScript obfuscation tool. I had tried one already and it had failed to work with my code, but this one worked like a charm. It is possible to de-obfuscate obfuscated code, but the casual HTML coder won’t even understand what they’re looking at. You’re preventing a person from looking at your HTML and saying, “Hey, this is nice, I can use this!” but not preventing someone from deciding to copy your site outright.

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