Blogs

Busy schedules, long to do lists, and deadlines make it tough for developers to get familiar with some of the advanced features their tools provide. This is a shame, because some features, like Eclipse Templates, can really reduce coding time and errors.

You already know that Eclipse PDT provides autocompletion and hints for PHP's built in functions. In addition, commenting your code with PHPDoc adds autocompletion and hinting for your application's classes, methods, and variables. If you haven't already discovered, Eclipse PDT also provides autocompletion of PHP's control structures, class definitions, and methods through code templates.

When inspiration or a sense of responsibility hits me I'll jot down a note or sketch something out with whatever means are available. If I'm at work I'll send myself a to do list or a link to check out later in an email message. When out of reach of digitial devices, post it notes, scraps of paper, and the highly-versatile cocktail napkin receive the rest of my scribbles and scratches. Now if I could just remember where I've squirreled away these bits of brilliance.

Enter Evernote , a new service to help you collect and manage your mental notes in each of their forms. Evernote allows you to send and store notes in text, image, and audio format through a variety of methods. I had signed up for a free account last month but hadn't had a chance to take Evernote for a spin until tonight.

Although my JavaScript development focus is currently on the Yahoo! User Interface Library (YUI) I do try to keep up with some of the other libraries. Here I'll begin to offer up my recent notes and observations on five popular projects, Dojo, Ext JS, jQuery, Moo Tools, Prototype/Scriptaculous, and YUI.

ScrnShots.com is yet another social networking site for the InterWeb. This one targets a small niche market, sharing screen shots. It may seem a bit too narrow of a focus, but I'm going to give it a try for a bit. Specifically, I'm going to start posting new screenshots used in tutorials and posts on this site. I'll also add it to my my list of design inspiration sites to review when I begin a new project.

A common occurrence in Web 2.0 sites, and one that a recent Pingdom study notes, is the concurrent use of multiple JavaScript libraries. One explanation for this is that a required (more often desired) feature or widget may appear to only be available within one specific library.