iT Design NZ

Resources :as

Phil — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 20:54:00 +0000

map.resources :people

generates URLs like:

/people/

map.resources :people, :as => ‘who-we-are’

/who-we-are/

Firebug Lite – ie6 debugging

Phil — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 22:13:22 +0000

Stuck having to develop apps compatible with Internet Explorer 6?

Firebug Lite.

Download the latest version.

Include in your application layout:

/javascript/firebug-lite-compressed.js

Use F12 in ie to open the firebug console.

DB Adapter specific code in migrations

Phil — Sun, 24 May 2009 20:30:45 +0000

adapter = User.connection.instance_variable_get(”@config”)[:adapter]

if adapter == “jdbc” # Oracle

# …

elsif adapter == “postgresql” # Postgres

# …

end

NZ on Screen wins Best Entertainment Website

Phil — Wed, 20 May 2009 22:19:41 +0000

NZ on Screen won the Best Entertainment Website award at the 2009 Qantas Media Awards.

Submarine Cable

Phil — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 08:17:39 +0000

At last it appears there may be some competition in the broadband market. Pipe Communications and the Kordia Group are teaming up to lay a submarine cable to link NZ with Australia, Japan, and the USA. Cheaper broadband, more capacity, more competition.

Mainstream Agile?

Phil — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 23:59:51 +0000

It is interesting watching organisations make the transition to the Agile Development Methodology. Inevitably seems to lead to a bit of a cleanout of staff. Some people just don’t get Agile, and probably don’t want to. Fair enough.

Part of the problem in my opinion is that often the change will be made to ALL an organisations projects. To me, that’s overkill. Just like choosing the right programming language for a job, you also need to pick the right methodology. Agile works for some projects and not for others.

Go PHP5

Phil — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 23:51:17 +0000

When I first heard that PHP were setting a date to drop support for PHP4 I thought it was a great idea. Surely this would prompt web hosting companies to upgarade their systems to PHP 5, and we could start using some of the features of PHP 5 in mainstream deployed apps.

Well, the deadline has passed (Feb 2008) and still it seems many hosts are still offering PHP 4. Worse still, they dont seem to know how or when to upgrade existing clients without breaking PHP applications. Can’t say I blame them. Upgrading apps from PHP 4 to PHP 5 needs to be done on a case by case basis.

PHP 5 is 3 years old now. It’s taking a long time to shake off PHP 4 and all the problems associated with it.

OpenID

Phil — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 23:42:16 +0000

Who is using OpenID? I know Yahoo! have implemented version 2, so there are plenty of potential users. Seems to me its far from mainstream yet. Clients don’t seem to be interested in it. I haven’t needed to get an OpenID… and yet I like the idea of it.

Google Apps

Phil — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 23:30:58 +0000

We use Google Apps at work. With this system you can choose whether to receive updates to the software as they are released, or wait until the general public have thoroughly tested them (through gmail, etc). Google Apps are then updated at a later date.

So, do we trust Google to get it right first time, or wait until new features are thoroughly tested?

PHP Web Development

Phil — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 20:30:52 +0000

PHP is a scripting language widely used for web development.

References:

PHP [wikipedia]