TRINIX

I needed a handy tool that made certain directories acted like a separate drive.

After a bit googling i found this neat, free tool.

http://www.ntwind.com/software/utilities/visual-subst.html

The tool explains itself. It works like Daemon tools, I allows you to set a Directory as a Virtual Drive.
You can save your dictories to these Virtual drives and  let  the drives be loaded during startup.

More info you ‘ll find on the website self. And of course this is TOTALLY FREE!!!

With this topic I’m going to write down some useful tips when you want to start professional development and/or start working in a development team.

When going pro there are a few issues you always have to keep in my mind.

Your project should be:

• easy to manage
• comprehensible by out-side developers
• build logical
• structured
• well documented & commented
• set-up naming & coding standards

Structure
When building web applications you get a lot of files of all kinds (CSS, PHP, Classes, JS,…)
It’s important to keep a clean structure. There could also be a difference between a public and a secured interface. So I advice to setup your directory structure in the following manner.

WEB_APP
===|——— gui
===|=======|——- js
===|=======|——- css
===|=======|——- icons /images
===|=======|——- rss
===|=======|——- config
===|=======|——- tpl
===|=======|——- class
===|=======|——- modules
===|=======|——- export
===|=======|——- service
===|——— system
===|=======|——- js
===|=======|——- icons /images
===|=======|——- css
===|=======|——- config
===|=======|——- tpl
===|=======|——- class
===|=======|——- modules

We work in a multi-tier manner. This means that we try to separate the visual,coding and database. Our web application consist out of 2 big parts, gui and system. The gui stands for the public part and system consists out the secured admin section. Of course there can be more parts needed, this is just an example case structure, which I consider a good start for a basic web app.

Explanation of directories:

• js:contains all javascript libraries
• icons / images: contains all necessary images and icons needed by the gui
• css: contains all style sheets
• rss: is the public rss feeds directory
• config: here are all configuration files placed, like your DB login data, general application settings, … files that need to be included in every page
• tpl: we work in a multi-tier environment, the tpl directory keeps the HTML templates (the pure visual part)
• class: contains all general classes, like the DB class, the HTML email class, …
• modules: consist out of all the specific application written modules, divided in directory per module.
• export: contains all the possible export files of the application
• service: is the web service part, here you place all the code for your web services.

This is just a simple case, but I find the structure clear and easy to expand.

Coding & Naming Conventions
When building applications or work in a team. You should definitely need to have this. The coding and naming conventions are the rules to follow while programming, more specific for the usage of file and directory naming and the manner variables,functions and classes our declared. This prevents each programmer of using his own specific manner of writing code and so afterwards really difficult for other developers to understand his code. And let’s say one year later the programmer still understand his own code and still works in the same way.

1. Directories

• Short names
• All in lowercase, no studly caps
• Prevent usage of points (.) and spaces
• More then 1 word use underscore (_)
• For related content use a prefix with an underscore. (ext_dir1, ext_dir2,…)

2. Files

• Logical names
• All in lowercase, no studly caps
• Prevent usage of points (.) and spaces
• Function specific files (class,func,…), use prefix followed by an point (.) (class.name.php, func.name.php)
• More then 1 word use underscore (_)
• For related content use a prefix with an underscore (adm_file1, adm_file2,…)

3. Coding Standards
Here for I would like to refer to the PEAR Coding Standards (http://pear.php.net/manual/en/standards.php)

Documentation
Another important step in becoming a pro developer is to learn to document EVERYTHING.
Write down your Application sturcture and explain what and why.
Also write down your Coding & Naming Conventions.
Everything you do or use, explain in documentation how, what, why.
This seems a waste of time but if you have a lot of projects and you need to expand an older project you can simply read your documentation and you know the structure of your application without having to figure everything out again.
Another plus is to pass your project on to another developer, you wont feel like an help desk if he don’t email you every 5 min for info over the project. Because you can just give him all the docs and he can start reading reducing the number of question greatly.

Even Cisco have noticed the importance of Webbassed tools like wiki’s, applications, …

Cisco CEO John Chamber talked at the Interop Conference in Las Vegas, about how the Web 2.0 (r)evolution is necessary for Business to increase their productivity and thus their profit. Web 2.0 has become an essential tool for Business to promote them selves and to enable better availability. He ’s a strong believer of the Web 2.0 possibilities.
Check out the video and read the complete article (see links below)

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awkk4Xa9deQ

Article:

Cisco CEO John Chambers proclaims the future is Web 2.0 by ZDNet’s Dan Farber — Cisco CEO John Chambers ran on stage and then strolled throughout the crowd giving his vision of the networked future during his Network + Interop keynote presentation. As he walked and talked throughout the ballroom with the verbal passion and polish of a televangelist, Chambers proclaimed that Web 2.0, which he defined broadly as collaboration, [...]

You can now vote for your favorite Web Application of 2007.

You can choose from 250 nominees.
All the nominees are divided in Categories.

You can have a look at the whole list, perhaps you will find something new.
Because there are a lot of great Web Applicatios that get to little attention.
So check them out and vote to support them.

http://www.webware.com/html/ww/100.html 

Everybody who has ever used a Mac, have certainly liked the Dock menu with the nice Mouse-over effect.

This effect is called fish-eye, and the people at n-design-studio have made an nice looking HTML/CSS version of the Mac Dock menu. They used JQuery as Javascript library. JQuery has the Fish-eye effect build-in.
It really works and looks nice, so perhaps you can use this in a Web Application or website.

Example: http://www.ndesign-studio.com/demo/css-dock-menu/css-dock.html 

Ever wanted to re-create your own YouTube like clone.

Well read this article. It describes perfectly how you can achieve this.

http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/php/2007/05/24/creating-mytube-with-flex-and-php.html

It explains how to set-up an PHP back end, with the FFmpeg video converter tool for converting the uploaded movies in a Flash Video (FLV) file and 2 version of a Flex GUI for the users.

Fabio Zendhi Nagao has taken the time to write out Javascript library for Validating and masking form input, called fValidator. This library is written in unobtrusive javascript and really easy to use.

He has put a whole range of validation and masking in this library. It’s definiately worth of checking this out.

More info at: http://zend.lojcomm.com.br/fValidator/

I recently wanted to add an item to my context (Right-mouse) menu for opening a JPEG file.

If you want to add an entry on a Context menu that appears on just one type of file or a few different types of files. I will show you how to easily to add (or remove) it using the context editor in Folder Options.

1. Open up My Computer.
2. Click on the Tools menu, select Folder Options, and click on the File Types tab.
3. Scroll though the list of file types and select the extension that you would like to modify.
4. Click the Advanced button to bring up the Edit File Type window. This is where you will see a list of all of the different entries that will show up in the context menu, shown here:
5. Just press the New button, give the menu item a description, then select the program you want to use and click OK.
6. Click OK and you are finished.

Ever wondering what’s the difference between Apollo, Silverlight, Flex and JavaFX.

Here you will find your answers.

http://ttlnews.blogspot.com/2007/05/test_22.html

I found more interesting notes on ‘Future of Web Apps SF 2006‘ conference.
Special thnx to Juixe for providing the Conference Notes (PDF).

This time it contains information on “Funding and Selling a Startup” from Evan Williams, the man behind Blogger (now part of google services) and Odeo.

Quota : “Evan was at the Future of Web Apps
conference in San Francisco to talk about his experience with web
entrepreneurship. Evan’s talk was titled Selling and Funding: Pros and Cons of
Bringing in a Third Party.

During his talk, Evan noted several rules for a web startup. These rules
included: be user-centric, be self-centered, be greedy, be tiny, and be
balanced. Having given out a few rules for a startup, Evan spent most of his
time talking about his five best Odeo screw-ups.

Evan’s first mistake when building Odeo was to try to build too much. He
talked that mentioned that they had written large number of verbose specs and
in the end they were not the first in the market.

Evan’s second screw up was building a service for people not like themselves.
In an essence, Evan stated that they did not ‘eat their own dog food.’ In general,
it is a good idea to use the freaking service you are building!

The third major screw up that Evan learned from his second entrepreneur endeavor was not adjusting fast enough. All these web 2.0 applications are all trying to keep up with the Joneses. Someone integrate with Google Maps, your web application needs to integrate with Google Maps. They start tagging your service start tagging. Evan
reminded the audience to try to be a purple cow, not a mee too application.

Another screw up mentioned by Evan of Odeo was raising too much money,
too early. Raising too much money almost seems counterintuitive. Raising too
much money was not heard in the web 1.0 era when champagne bottle was
served for breakfast and companies had a $10 million burn rate a month. Evan
said to “think of money as fuel.” If you have the fuel before the engine, you
start thinking about the fuel. He said, “What do you do with soo much fuel,
you drop some on the floor and light it on fire.” Kevin Rose and Michael
Arrington echoed Evan’s thought on raising cash, raising money is about
timing.

The last screw up mentioned by Evan of his experience from building Odeo was
not listening to his gut, his techie intuition, in hiring, raising moola, and building
the ‘right’ product. Evan quoted Markus Frind of Plenty of Fish who said, ‘The
enemy was thinking.’”

This is my conclusion of what Evan is saying:

• be unique, think out-side the box
• be up-to-date,watch the market and study trends
• grow step by step, take the time to evolve
• follow you instinct