Chris Wiegman

Archive for July, 2008

Tomorrow morning I leave for EAA Airventure Oshkosh, WI. A show which is often said to be the world’s largest air show and home to all of the latest and greatest in technology for general aviation. Going up there this year I have one question I want to look into first hand. That is, how has the internet changed general aviation? Has it completely revolutionized the industry like it has for music and others, or is it under-utilized like so many other technologies in this heavily regulated world.

I’ll ponder these questions over the next 4 days. In the meantime, let me know your thoughts on the matter.

OK, so I know there are a million Top-10 lists out there. For the ones I’ve seen devoted to web code and other development products nearly all of them point you to some incredibly limited code that takes more to integrate into your project than its worth. This top-10 includes the best products that can be incorporated for a wide range of situations with very little extra configuration necessary, and best of all, they won’t break the bank.

1.) FCKeditor

This free WYSIWYG editor is the best product of its kind on the market. It supports nearly every major framework, and works on nearly every browser. It is powerful enough to handle some very detailed CMS editing and can be scaled down to provide a secure WYSIWYG editor for users all with the same installation. At this point I have used this product in nearly every web project I’ve worked on.

http://www.fckeditor.net/

2.) FPDF Library

As nearly everyone can handle a PDF file wouldn’t it be nice if there was an easy way to publish your own data as a PDF? The FPDF library makes this easy. It can convert all types of data to PDF format using PHP. I’ve used this on a couple of projects to integrate various websites with other office functions such as the publishing of phone lists and other similar tasks. In the future I’m planning on integrating it into numerous parts of my sites for printer-friendly web pages and other data.

http://www.fpdf.org/

3.) Greybox

With all the restrictions on pup-ups these days getting data to users without sending them away from your site can be difficult. Greybox is a free solution to this problem which uses AJAX to display a pop-up like box within the parent window. It functions like a pop-up but because it is really a part of the parent window is not an actual pop-up and therefore not subject to the restrictions imposed by all the pop-up generators many users employ today. Although this can be a very handy technology, I must point out the obvious abuse of this product to spam the user can also make it one of the most annoying products out there. I post it because of its’ usefulness in providing relevant data requested by the user. I, like many others, hate these types of pop-ups when they are used to spam me every time I try to read the news, check the weather, or do any number of other web tasks.

http://orangoo.com/labs/GreyBox/

4.) DateChooser

DateChooser is an easy to use PHP script that allows for integrated calendar boxes in forms. It is easy to use and can really help out when you’re trying to remember a date to submit on a form. I use it to enter deadlines and other similar data in a number of projects.

http://yellow5.us/projects/datechooser/

5.) GSiteCrawler

While not exactly code, GSiteCrawler is one of the easiest to use sitemap generators out there. It includes powerful filters, an FTP function and more to update sitemaps on sites in which another solution is not available. Currently GSiteCrawler is available for Windows.

http://gsitecrawler.com/

6.) Coppermine Photo Gallery

If you have a lot of photos to put online, Coppermine Photo Gallery is one of the easiest ways to do so. It’s written in PHP and uses MySQL to store and organize photos while allowing for comments, ratings, and all the other features one would expect from a good photo-gallery software. This one however does not require anything to be installed on a local computer and can be updated from any computer with an internet connection so there is no need to wait until you get home to upload a bunch of crazy vacation pictures if you don’t have your computer with you.

http://coppermine-gallery.net/

7.) Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free statistics analyzer that makes up for what many hosts fail at. With a little bit of code on the bottom of each page it can show all the tracking data an ambitious webmaster could want and will make justifying new features easier with goal tracking and integration with other Google services.

http://www.google.com/analytics

8.) Dreamweaver

I’ve been back and forth on whether to include Dreamweaver in this list, not because of any concerns over the features and support of the product, but because of its’ price and corporate nature. In the end I just can’t justify my list of favorite web development products without including it. Whether coding in PHP, ASP.NET, or whatever other framework you can think of,  Dreamweaver does it all. Personally I don’t make use of the WYSIWYG features, preferring to hand-code everything myself. Dreamweaver’s site management and syntax highlighting though are features I can’t do without and no matter how many times I try switching to an open source solution, I always find myself coming back to Adobe in the end.

http://www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver/

9.) Sitepoint Forums

Once in a while we all get stumped and Sitepoint Forums has enough experienced users to give you pointers in everything from the most basic to the most advanced of problems. In my own experience most threads seem to receive a meaningful response within a few minutes and the advice given is often useful and pertinent (something other forums tend to seriously lack). Best of all, it’s FREE.

http://www.sitepoint.com/forums

10.) VBulletin

Although not free like the rest of the code in this list, VBulletin is well worth it for anyone who is seriously thinking of starting an online community. It is written in PHP and allows integration with nearly any site layout and enough customization to make it work in nearly any situation. I’ve tried a number of the free forums software packages out there (Web Wiz Forums, phpBB, etc) and none of them even come close to VBulletin.

http://www.vbulletin.com/

While there are numerous other code and other products I’ve tried I always seem to find myself coming back to these 10 products for their usefulness, ease of integration, and in most cases, their price. Currently I am running them all in one fashion or another using Windows Vista Enterprise on my personal workstations and in both Windows IIS and Linux Apache servers using both PHP 5 and MySQL 5.