the revolution will not be televised…
Software Development
Code snippets in WordPress
Aug 20th
I’m planning on posting more coding examples here in the near future so it’s time to test out some code snippet plugins on wordpress…
I tried out a few different options:
- The Code Markup plugin
- The Code Snippet plugin and
- The Syntax Highlighter and Code Colourizer for WordPress plugin
It’s hard to show the outcomes of trying these plugins out here in one post, so you’ll just have to take my word for it! After testing out the three, I found the Syntax Highlighter and Code Colourizer for WordPress to be the best for my needs. Below is a sample of some test code I wrote to see how different Ruby syntax would appear.
#A class
class Cat < ActiveRecord::Base
def meow
return "meow!"
end
#An array (class variable)
@array["moo"] = "you"
#A hash (local variable)
hash = {:abc => "def", :hij => 1}
Getting into Android Development
Jul 27th
I few weeks ago, I decided to try my hand at Android application development. So I began searching around for some beginner level tutorials on getting into Android. To my surprise, I was immediately struck by how developer-unfriendly most of the resources available on the web are. (Including the Google ones)
I’m worked developing software for a few years now (though I admit much of that has been in the web development world) and I’m not new to Java, but I haven’t tried programming for mobile devices before. Still, I found even setting up Eclipse and my development environment a challenge with lots of messing about to work around the vagaries in the documentation.
After several hours spent setting up my development environment, I finally managed to get through the “hello world” tutorial on the android developers blog but while it was straightforward I felt that the only skill I really honed in the process was copy/pasting.
So I spent a few more days trying tutorials from other sources with varying levels of success until I finally found what I feel is a really good entry-level tutorial for people who can handle a bit of Java but are new to Android. If you’ve set up your development environment (ill probably post a helper on that soon) and don’t know where to go next, check out this excellent screencast, it really put me on the right track…
Making a USB web development kit – Part 2
Nov 9th
Continuing on from my last post, today we’re going to cover some of the different applications which you can install on your USB drive to create a web development kit. There are a number of different applications which you can install and run from a USB drive and the best place to find most of them is at PortableApps.com.
The particular applications we are interested in for creating the web development kit are:
- XAMPP – A package installer of Apache, MySQL, PHP and some useful tools (such as PhpMyAdmin and the XAMPP control panel)
- Notepad++ Portable – an excellent text editor with syntax highlighting
- Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition – a portable version of the popular web browser
- Filezilla Portable / WinSCP – FTP clients (yes, you have a choice!)
This set of applications should be enough to get any developer off the ground and coding away. However, there are a number of other portable applications which can add even more value to your USB web development kit such as:
- PuTTY Portable – A portable version of the popular telnet and SSH client
- NVU / Kompozer – A WYSIWYG editor, useful for those developers who don’t live their lives in text editors
- GIMP Portable – The popular image manipulation program and a handy tool to have when web programming
- 7-zip/ PeaZip portable – File archivers and compressors
- WinMerge Portable – A file comparison and merging tool
- Toucan Portable – A backup utility (not really a web programming tool, but I’ve lost many lines off good code in the past due to a failure to keep regular backups… Learn from my mistake!)
There are a heap more applications of all types onPortableApps.com but as they are not relevant to the web development toolkit we’re creating I won’t be covering them in this article.
Ok, now we’ve got the software tools we need for our USB web development kit. In the next installment, I’ll take you through a bit about the hardware requirements and how to install and configure your apps.
Making a USB web development kit – Part 1
Nov 7th
It might seem like a strange idea but a USB web development kit can be a handy little item to have. Think of it as the web developer’s Swiss army knife…
I built my first USB web development kit when I was at university as a means to get around the fact that I’d never know which computer in which lab I’d be working at. It also came in very useful as I was able to maintain a consistent development environment and carry a handy bunch of tools (which I couldn’t just install on the lab computers thanks to the paranoid university IT policy) around with me.
So, how do you make one for yourself? Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll take you through how to select the right tools for the job and create your own USB web development kit!