The art of finding information

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For a programmer, finding information is important. Not just finding information about code, such as while debugging, but finding information in general.

Suppose you need to write a client which talks to a server with sockets, but you don’t know how sockets work in your programming language of choice. This is something quite typical, and even if you’ve been programming a language for a long time, it’s possible that you forget things. I have problems remembering the order of parameters for some rarely used PHP functions, for example. Not to mention various libraries that you may encounter.

Finding information on the internet ought to be easy, right? We have Google, and using Google is as easy as keying in a search word… right?

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A programming track record

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Anyone who has been programming for a while probably has written tons of code. For example, I began working with PHP somewhere in 2001-2002 I think. That’s 6 years ago.

As you can guess, I have written a lot of PHP code. I also happen to have some of my early works saved.

What does our old code tell us?

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Scripting in Windows

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Many people probably know Linux and its various easy to use scripting languages, like Python, Perl and Bash Script.
They are available on most systems, and it’s very easy to write little command-line scripts with them to ease various tasks.

Often you could use a small scripting language like the above on Windows, and sure, it is possible to install a parser for Python for example on Windows. But what many people don’t realize is that Windows actually does have built-in scripting support, known as Windows Scripting Host, which is also very powerful!

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Ext JS impressions

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I’ve lately been using Ext JS in a project.

Ext is basically a big JavaScript UI framework – like their site says, “a foundation you can build on”. It comes with various interface widgets like Windows, tabbed panels, accordion panels, menus, toolbars and forms to name some. It also has various other things such as nice Ajax tools.

But what is it good for?

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How to get code-assist for your classes in Zend Studio and/or Aptana

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First,

<insert your favorite holiday greeting here>

Been slightly quiet here now because I’ve been feeling a bit lazy, but on this time of the year it’s allowed, right? ;)
I think I will start posting more regularily again after new years as I’m working on some interesting things.

Now with that out of the way, we can look at todays post!

If you use Aptana or Zend Studio for your codings, you’ve probably noticed they come with pretty good code-assist features which can tell you which methods etc. the classes have. But what if you define a variable and want to get assist for that? Or what if you make your very own class and want to enable descriptions and parameter lists etc. when you work with them?

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Why Object-Oriented JavaScript is so confusing

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Any of you who has used OOP in any “traditional” language, such as C++, Java or PHP and then tried to apply the stuff you know in JavaScript probably know that… things just don’t work like you’re used to.

But what are the things that actually are causing the confusion and how to avoid the problems?

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Find an application’s icon with WinAPI

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I was working on some C# code today, and had to figure out how to find a specific application’s icon.

There’s a lot of basic information on this, including messages like WM_GETICON in MSDN, but it just wouldn’t work.

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I like pie… menus

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Pie, just like pie menus, is great.

What is a “pie menu”? If you don’t play games, you might not be very familiar with this great type of menu, as it isn’t really used anywhere outside games as far as I know.

Pie menu is a menu, which opens around your cursor, or crosshair in games, and shows menu items around it in a pie-slice like fashion.

What makes pie menus good? How about making a pie menu with JavaScript?

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Getting rid of Ajax development nuisances

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Everyone who has worked with Ajax probably knows how annoying it used to be sometimes to get the code working in some browsers (*coughiecough*)

This thing is now mostly a thing of the past, thanks to various great JavaScript libraries/frameworks providing excellent Ajax-functionality.

There’s another thing too, though. A lot of people don’t realize it, but often making a website which needs to work both without Ajax and with it, can have some nuisances. The biggest of them all is that you often have to write code specifically to handle situations, where the request was made with XMLHttpRequest.

I don’t want to write my controllers and actions twice, so I’ve been trying to come up with a nice solution for it…

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The future of browser widgets

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My definition of a widget: a small web application inside your browser. Opera has had widgets for a while now, and I’m sure Firefox has a plugin which provides similar features. But what is the future of widgets?

I’m a widget developer – I have made quite many widgets and even made money with them – yet I don’t even use any widgets. A lot of more “techy” users I know don’t use widgets either.

Is the feature which was introduced with much noise going down the drain?

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