Brian Cline

Category: Programming

  • Learning jQuery

    jQuery is a really popular JavaScript library that helps really simplify manipulating HTML with JavaScript whether it be CSS, animations or even doing Ajax. I’ve been using jQuery since at least mid 2008 and have to say that I just love how much easier things are and not having to generally deal with the cross-browser […]

  • Handling Programming Errors

    Error messages should be clear and include what the error is, why it was caused and how to resolve it.

  • MODx How To Properly Link To a Page

    In MODx, it is always preferable to link to another page using the document id instead of using the friendly alias because sometimes MODx Evolution has a package that is appearantly capable of using the alias instead of the document id to provide a working link to another page. The reason you shouldn’t use the […]

  • MODx Revolution – Dynamically Generating Google SiteMap XML

    Google SiteMap and the other web tools provides a way for the owner or webmaster of a site to easily submit all of the pages to Google and keep track of which ones are crawled and indexed. Wikipedia provides a much more detailed description which goes beyond the scope of this post. I didn’t want […]

  • Centering a DIV Horizontally

    Assuming you have a basic knowledge of css and html putting a div in the horizontal center of a containing block isn’t too difficult. I’m going to center a div with only text, but the exact same css may be used for a div containing images,inputs, etc. I’m going to assume you are using html […]

  • Wayfinder in MODx Revolution

    When I first tried MODx Revolution (which I did try before MODx Evolution) I found the documentation to be pretty good except about snippet syntax. The tag syntax has changed from MODx Evolution to MODx Revolution. [Wayfinder? &startId=`0`] has to changed to [[Wayfinder? &startId=`0`]] More information can now be found here for all of the […]

  • Setting Focus to 1st Text Field in jQuery

    Setting focus to the 1st field in jQuery is actually really simple: there are some plugins that also can do it automatically on each reload of a form. I usually just use the following code on any pages where there is a form. <script type=”text/javascript”> $(document).ready(function() { $(“input:text:visible:first”).focus(); }); </script> Hope this helps.

  • How to Center a Div in the Middle of the Screen

    David Tang has written a simple and elegant plugin for jQuery that allows a div to be placed in the middle of a page.

  • MODx – Evolution – 1st Impressions

    I haven’t been using MODx for very long, but I have worked with several other content management systems previously and experienced both the good and the bad with them. MODx appears to be a fairly simple MVC style content management system with a bit of a pluggable architecture. I haven’t written any plugins for MODx, […]

  • Unobtrusive JavaScript And Why it Matters

    Unobtrusive JavaScript And Why it Matters

    Many more senior web developers can remember throwing tags all over the contents of websites and using tables for the presentation of content: these practices are said to be intrusive and a maintenance nightmare especially when the font colour should be pink instead of black on a header. Unobtrusive JavaScript is another best practice for […]

  • PHP Object/Variable Life Time

    Many junior PHP developers seem to feel that PHP objects and variables are retained between requests. In PHP4 and PHP5, no variables are retained outside of the contents of $_SESSION and other stores between requests.

  • Book Review: Code Craft

    “Code Craft” (ISBN: 1-59327-119-0) was written by Pete Goodliffe. The book is relevant to all developers: code is very language agnostic. Code Craft doesn’t just cover the design of the program, but also includes quite a bit of content on the process the program goes through “in the trenches.” The book does include some minor […]

  • How To Post Great Freelance Gigs

    I have been trolling Craigslist and Kijiji lately in hopes of finding some additional freelance work to add to my portfolio before I become a full time freelancer/consultant. Read the advertisements has proven to be a terribly frustrating experience. Advertisers need to always remember that the more details they provide will lead to a much […]

  • Learning Drupal

    For the last couple of weeks, I have began playing around with Drupal because I’m so sick of fighting proprietary CMS. The proprietary CMS suffers from the vendor updating only updating the CMS when convenient for them and this ends up holding the purchaser hostage. Overall, I know that drupal has enough of the functionality that I need in modules and the core to significantly improve the efficiency of my programming and possibly offer a large learning opportunity on software architecture.

  • Drupal + TinyMCE

    I’ve just really began to try and experiment with using Drupal, modules, and really starting to customize how things work. I have really been playing with open source Content Management Systems off and on over the years because I don’t feel that depending on proprietary CMS is the right approach and definitely rolling your own […]

  • PHP Update Finally Depreciates PHP MSSQL driver

    The biggest advantage of the change is being able to better take advantage of Microsoft SQL Server features that probably made you choose to use SQL Server in the first place.Making the change wasn’t overly difficult because I took time and wrote a simple Database Access Layer.

  • Installing PHPUnit on WAMPServer

    Installing WampServer and PHPUnit doesn’t have to be difficult. Check out this post on how to install PHPUnit on WampServer.

  • Book Review:The Passionate Programmer

    “The Passionate Programmer” is an excellent read and that I feel I have learned more about myself than I would have ever thought. I would never say that it is the next Code Complete or Code Craft, but it can definitely help you develop a meaningful career.

  • 1and1.com – Web Hosting Review

    Purchasing web hosting service is extremely easy; however, purchasing great web service is extremely difficult. Some of the web hosts pretty much register the domain and give you access almost immediately to some temporary space while the DNS wait period occurs. I can’t remember how long it took for me to get access to the […]

  • Skype API Basics – Part 1

    What is the Skype API? The Skype API is an easy way to create plugins that can dramatically change the way Skype functions. For example, we could make a program that reads messages out loud as we receive them instead of having to check for new messages. The Skype API is potentially very different for […]