This month I had the privilege of attending the CMS Expo in Evanston, IL, just outside of Chicago. This was my first time to Chicago and I know now why they call it "The Windy City." No, the people there are not full of hot air, it really was very windy.

Troubleshooting PHP and the Elusive Missing Curly Brace

I've been working on a project that involves some fairly complex PHP code. The code creates an HTML form based on values inserted in the database. Getting the form to display was fairly simple, but getting the results to be inserted back into the database proved to be a much more complex task. I had several parts of the insert working correctly, but the last step was just not working. Whenever I tested the page, all I got was a blank screen. In PHP this usually means there is some syntax error, such as a missing semicolon or of course the elusive missing curly brace.

I won't get into the argument of why I think Firefox is the best browser for now, but I will list some great development tools that can be found using Firefox Add-ons. Some of these are amazing and I use them daily and some are just fun to have.

In my last post I addressed the need to troubleshoot as a web developer and mentioned a few sources for finding information. Continuing on that subject there are some sites that a web developer would be lost without. These are like the dictionaries for web developers. We generally use various different programming languages and we have to be able to find the correct words to use for the language we are working in.

One of the most important skills that has helped me as a Web developer I learned while attending college. My professors repeatedly stressed the importance of learning how to learn. In my current position I’m finding that they may have actually been on to something. Whenever I find myself stuck on some issue or error in a project it is usually because I’m trying too hard to rely on the knowledge I’ve already gained instead of seeking further knowledge and insight from others who have probably come across the same issue and already solved it.

While recently testing a website I was reflecting on how powerful the combination of the DOM and JavaScript can be for making websites user friendly. When I was introduced to these technologies, my interest was really sparked. These technologies give you the ability to dynamically manipulate content just about any way you would like and they are also, in my opinion, extremley fun to implement.

I recently made some changes to my cell phone plan with Verizon Wireless. While at work I received a call on my cell phone inviting me to take a "one question" survey. Normally I would just hang up, especially since I was busy working, but it appeared to be a simple task and so I figured I would humor them.

I created a dynamic select list for a website that contains various markets populated by a SQL Server 2000 Database. There was an option in the select list for "All". The client wanted to be able to click on "All" and have it automatically select the remaining markets in the select list.