Eclipse IDE + ESFTP Plugin = radness

By Josh Highland in internet, software

esftptitle.png

I have been using Eclipse as my main code editor for some time now. I have started to really like it as a development environment. Eclipse is very flexible and adaptive to your needs. To illustrate this, I wanted to integrate FTP into eclipse. I wanted the ability to right click a file in the navigator and upload the file to my remote server. I found this with the ESFTP plugin for eclipse. One thing I don’t like is that you have to use sFTP. (I guess life could be worse!)

It’s as easy as unzipping the files from their sourceforge page into you plugins directory and then restarting eclipse. The options to configure it cam be found under the properties menu for each project you have.

esftpusage.gif

Hands down, this is going to speed up my development time. I should make more posts about using eclipse to build the newest version of notPopular.com

iPhone Developer Network

By Josh Highland in internet, iPhone, Josh's Rambling

iphonedn_sdk.gif

I have started a new site, iPhone Developer Network. The vision of the site is to create a place where people interested in creating iPhone applications can get together and share knowledge.

I actually started making posts back in August, but stopped shortly there after. With the looming release of the official iPhone SDK, I feel that its a good time to start getting the word out about the iPhone Developer Network.

Come join us!

The GmailThis! bookmarklet

By Josh Highland in internet, javascript, software, web 2.0

I use GMail as my main email client. Often I’m at work and I see something online that I think is useful, and I want to remind myself of it. I have tried righting down URLS on scraps of paper in the past, but sending an email to myself works as a good reminder for me. As a bonus, I can pick up my GMail form anywhere, including my iPhone.

I’m a programmer, so I am lazy by nature. It’s kind of a pain to open a new browser, and navigate to GMail.com and then copy and paste the URL of the site, and text into GMail and then send it.

Enter the GmailThis! bookmarklet by Doug Ward. Bookmarklets are bits of javascript that you save as bookmarks in your browser. When you click that bookmark the javascript runs. Basically bookmarklets are little javascript plugins that work in almost any browser.

The GmailThis! bookmarklet will open up a new Gmail window in a little popup. The body will have the URL of the page you are currently on, and any text you happen to have highlighted at the moment. All you have to do is enter the recipients name.

You can get the GmailThis! bookmarklet from Doug Wards site, http://contrapants.org/blog/2005/07/gmailthis.html

Doug also made a cool video showing how simple the bookmarklet is to use.

If you are a heavy GMail user like I am, this is a must have.

“CodeIgniter lets you write kick ass PHP programs”

By Josh Highland in coldfusion, internet, php, software

At work, I have been lucky enough to work directly with Luis Majano, the author of an awesome Object Oriented Framework for ColdFusuion, ColdBox (I have blogged about it before)

Using the Coldbox Frame work really took my CF coding to the next level.

At home, I am not lucky enough to have access to a Coldfusion server. I run everything off of a dedicated PHP machine that I have had for some time now. Mostly due to the cost of the CF licenses, and the investments I have already made in the running so many sites in PHP.

After using ColdBox, I wanted to find something similar that would really help me write better code, and do it more quickly. I first looked at cake and wasn’t that excited about it, it seemed more complicated then it should be.

After doing some more research, I came across Code Igniter. Code Igniter has turned my PHP world upside down. Its easy to use, straight forward, and has a lot of build in functionality that would take me forever to achieve on my own.

Working in an object oriented frame work just makes me feel like a more effective programmer for some reason. Maybe its because I feel more organized and can really see how fast I can put applications together using it.

The user guide, video tutorials, wiki, and forums for code igniter all rock. There is a wealth of information in there that I can draw off of.

I am re-working notpopular.com 2.0 once again (at this point maybe i should call it notpop 2.5), and I am using Code Igniter to do it. Lets hope that my newly peaked interest in object oriented PHP development will carry me though the development and launch of notpop 2.0 (2.5?!)

NASA adopts the Coldfusion framework – Coldbox

By Josh Highland in coldfusion, internet, software

coldbox_400.png

WOW! NASA just adopted the Coldfusion Framework, ColdBox as their official web development framework. NASA!

I’m excited about this for several reasons. I have been using the Coldbox framework for about a year now. Before Coldbox, I was using Fusebox. Fusebox isn’t bad, but it just doesn’t compare to the features that I get out of Coldbox. I suggest that all serious Coldfusion developers take an in depth look at Coldbox as an application framework. Heck if its good enough for government rocket scientists, its got to be good enough for anything that you or I are doing!

Coldbox is developed and maintained by Luis Majano. Please stop by his blog and encourage his to continue the development of this software.

While you are at it, please stop by DIGG, and digg his blog post about NASA adopting ColdBox!