One of the problems I’ve always had when developing websites was finally solved for me today. I’ve tried tons of ways to develop sites: oop driven templates (like phpBB uses), header/footer files (ddrei/dymension), and then times where everything was a custom function call like title() to output the title in some fancy way for the page (completely useless when I learned it could be changed in the CSS much easier). But today at work i spent most the day reading about FuseBox. I still have a lot of learning to go on the concept, but I like the idea. It’s a way of building web applications where everything is independent. You can take out a page and every other one will still work. It has a really nice structure, and once started seems like it would be very easy to expand on. I’ve been working on a test site with it for the last few hours, as i’m sure I will be for much of the weekend

Two other tools that I’ve recently discovered are Web Developer Toolbar and Mozilla Foxfire a simply amazing browser. o.0 The Toolbar simplifies pretty much everything you could possibly think of. You can even do some fun stuff like send new data in with hidden forms, validate the pages html/css/links, and view the css/source in a click. It only works with foxfire, which itself is about the best browser I’ve used. It uses only official standards for output, so it’s the ideal browser to develop on.

The last thing I finally installed at home was Dreamweaver MX 2004. Damn nice program. At home i’ve always had to modify files then upload with an ftp client, or even upload separately in the same program. You hit save in mx2k4 and it uploads and saves it locally. There’s quite a few features i’m only touched on, but it actually renders css pages correctly which is nice — and one of the reasons I hadn’t used graphical editors in so long. Even still i’m just using code section because even if i did look at the page it would only bea small bit of it. I just wish my webserver allowed external mysql connections so i could try out those options. Maybe later when I’m more wise awake i’ll find a way.

First day went pretty well. It’s a very comfortable working atmosphere — and everyone working close by seem very young. Most people there started as UCF co-op students, and i think the other 4 in the web programming team are all current students. I usually seem to have a problem remembering names, but i think i came out ahead today. Spent most the time reading up on javascript which is actually a lot more powerful than i thought. Looks like I’ll be working MWF there and TR at the co-op office for a few weeks. Should be interesting alternating between them. Maybe it’ll give me a little more time to think about what I’m doing. I just hope i don’t get the days mixed up and show up at the wrong office. ^^”

Job interview went OK. They asked me a lot more questions than at previous interviews I’ve been at, but I think most of the answers I gave were right on. Asked questions on what php libraries I’ve used, xml, xslt, dhtml, coldfusion functions, give examples of database queries, explain how certain joins work etc. It really sounds like a great place to work too. They pay all tolls and there’s a 2 week training period which is very nice. At OBP they gave me a Coldfusion book and said i had 3 days to go over the tutorials before assigning me work in the language ;_; The guys that interviewed me seemed very knowledgeable in web programming too, which is inspirational to be around. Before i was a little hesitant about it as it’s so far away, but now I’m hoping i got it!