Mike The Coder

Getting ready!

2010-03-18T18:53:15-04:00

Getting ready!

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2010-03-18T20:17:40-04:00

mcrittenden: A really cool and useful cross-browser CSS3 rule generator and tester: http://css3please.com/

Some people, when confronted with a problem, think “I know,...

2010-03-17T09:17:38-04:00

Some people, when confronted with a problem, think “I know, I’ll use regular expressions.” Now they have two problems.

Jamie Zawinski

Fix for IE not interpreting negative text-indent on submit buttons

2010-03-15T00:31:38-04:00

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2010-03-12T09:00:31-05:00

mcrittenden: RT @markboulton: My book, ‘Designing for the Web’ is now online, completely FREE! http://bit.ly/at7DcI #fivesimplesteps #mbd

Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule (or, Why Programmers Hate Meetings)

2010-03-11T10:15:13-05:00

What happens when you tickle a koala bear.

2010-03-01T15:39:20-05:00

What happens when you tickle a koala bear.

Music for coding

2010-03-01T09:52:47-05:00

I’ve been steadily building up a collection of good background music for coding. If you’re interested, here are a few bands/artists I’d recommend:

This Will Destroy You
The American Dollar
The Album Leaf
Amiina
Eluvium
Philip Glass
Brian Eno
Harold Budd
Aphex Twin (the ambient stuff)
Boards Of Canada
Carbon Based Lifeforms
Explosions in the Sky

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2010-02-26T11:08:34-05:00

mcrittenden: “Mad Libs style forms increased conversion across the board by 25-40%” - http://SFW.im/1D

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2010-02-25T11:12:23-05:00

mcrittenden: Everyone needs to go view the source of http://theoatmeal.com.

How To Learn Drupal

2010-02-24T11:44:05-05:00

People seem to ask this question a lot. When you’re learning something, it’s comforting to know that you’re doing it correctly and efficiently and that you’re not learning the wrong way or the long way.

Therefore, once and for all, here’s my official 1 minute guide to learning Drupal.

General Advice

As with most things programming related, the best way to get up and running is just to do it already. Download Drupal, install it somewhere, and build a blog just to learn the ropes. You’re going to see terms like “node”, “taxonomy”, “module”, all kinds of words you’re not familiar with. They key is to research stuff like this as you come across it, and make sense of it all as you go.

I’m completely against reading all about something and trying to learn it before actually doing anything with it yourself; it makes a lot more sense to start doing it yourself and use the resources to help you along the way.

If you’re still going to read something before you get started no matter what I say, then read What Is Drupal by Tim Millwood.

Recommended Steps

There are, in my opinion, four basic steps to becoming a Drupal expert. Those are:

Learning to use Drupal core for content administration. To learn: build a multi-user blog using only Drupal core.
Learning to use the big boy contributed modules (such as Views and CCK). To learn: build an image hosting site complete with image resizing, a lightbox, categories, etc.
Learning theme development (including the cool stuff that goes on in template.php). To learn: Build a theme suitable for releasing on Drupal.org.
Learning module development. To learn: Find something that no contrib modules handle (something really weird like a mortgage calculator for California residents), and make a module to handle it.

Once you have a good hang of those four, then you can start cranking out some truly awesome stuff with Drupal.

As for some resources to help you along the way…

Books

If you like books, there are two great ones to pick up.

Using Drupal - a really good intro to both Drupal site building and content administration with Drupal.
Pro Drupal Development - the big boy in coding Drupal sites, complete with loads of info on creating modules and themes.

Screencasts

If you’re like me, you’d much rather see something done than read about it. If that’s the case, then the following sites have some really good Drupal screencasts for you to get up and running with.

Drupal Therapy
Learn by the Drop
Mastering Drupal
Finally, there’s a collection of slightly outdated but still good screencasts.

Getting Questions Answered

You’re no doubt going to have questions along the way. Whenever I have questions, here’s my typical process:

Google it for at least 5 minutes, and if you can’t find anything…
Ask in IRC. The #drupal channel at irc.freenode.net usually has about 500 people at any given time (although most of those people aren’t active at any given time), and that’s the hangout for core and contrib devs, so you’ll often get some really good help.
If it’s related to a specific module, then ask your question as a “Support Request” in that module’s issue queue on Drupal.org.
If all else fails, ask on Stack Overflow. There’s about 3 or 4 active contributors to SO that are more or less Drupal experts, so you’ve got a good shot at some help here.
Post in the Forum on Drupal.org. I’ve never had good luck with this so I save this as a last resort.

If, at the end of this process, you still don’t have the answer, then my advice is to go back into IRC and ask your question every 3 or 4 hours until someone answers it or points you in the right direction.

Conclusion

Drupal is what some have called a “wall” project. That means, some projects have learning curves, and Drupal has a learning “wall” that seems impossible until you all of a sudden jump it (i.e., the lightbulb moment) and it all makes sense. Just stick with it until it starts to make sense and you’ll be just fine.

An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in...

2010-02-23T13:15:14-05:00

An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a very narrow field.

Niels Bohr

Priss - a CSS print framework

2010-02-23T09:54:27-05:00

You maybe have heard of Hartija or perhaps even used it at some point. I use it all the time, but noticed that maintenance on it had pretty much halted.

Therefore, like I tend to do, I forked it into Priss.

If you’re looking for a best practices print stylesheet, Priss is the way to go. Feel free to give it a whirl.

By the way, the name is a cheesy mashup of “Print” and “CSS” …please pretend it was named something cooler.

What not to say to soon-to-be parents

2010-02-23T09:02:29-05:00

As a dad to be, I’m more or less a trained expert on this now.

Aren’t you SO EXCITED?!?!

Sure, we’re excited. We’re also nervous and stressed and paranoid and freaking tired of people asking if we’re excited.

(To the mom) Oh, you’re feeling [insert some horrible pregnancy related condition here]? Well just try [insert stupid home remedy or food here]! It works wonders!

No it doesn’t. Go away.

Oh, you’re going to name it [insert name here]? Well, what about [insert completely different name here]? I like that a lot better.

Hey, great! Let’s drop the name we love and decided on in favor of a random name from a stranger!

[Person starts rubbing the mom’s belly]

Good idea! Here, let me pick your nose.

[Upon seeing a random kid misbehaving] You better get used to that now! You’ve got one on the way!

WTF! I do?! And you’re telling me kids are bad sometimes? I want out!

Were you trying or was it an accident?

Don’t know what to say about this one. It’s just really really awkward to be asked that.

Are you going to have another one?

We were kind of hoping to have this one first, and then decide. Is that ok?

This Chyrp theme now at GitHub

2010-02-22T11:04:00-05:00

Just a quick note that I put this site’s Chyrp theme up at GitHub. Visit it here.

It won’t be useful as an install-and-go theme since it’s customized for this site, but it could provide some good examples of how to style individual aggregates or feathers differently, or how to implement JS libraries such as Fancybox (although this should probably be done at the module level, in reality, that rarely happens).

The easiest way to get someone’s browser and OS stats for when you’re trying to replicate a bug

2010-02-19T17:02:54-05:00

My top 10 Gedit plugins

2010-02-19T11:27:01-05:00

Gedit can be a really awesome editor if you give it a few plugins and an open mind. Here are a few of my favorites.

MultiEdit - This bad boy lets you edit in multiple locations by only typing once. You would be AMAZED at how useful this is.
Snippets - One of the default plugins, this one is sort of hard to explain because it does so much. It lets you create shortcuts for code that are expanded when you hit tab, but it also includes support for placeholders, wrapping text in tags, and lots of other crazy stuff.
Zen Coding - This one’s my own, but the magic really comes from the Zen Coding library. Zen Coding lets you write a sort of HTML and CSS shorthand which is evaluated and expanded. Here’s a video to explain.
AutoTab - A really simple plugin that tries to figure out the tab width of the current document, and sets Gedit to use that.
Line Tools - Gives you some shortcuts to do stuff like delete current line (CTRL+D), duplicate current line (CTRL+SHIFT+D), move selected lines up/down (ALT+UP/DOWN), etc. Really, really useful.
Save Without Trailing Space - Automatically strips any whitespace from ends of lines when you save, and can also add a blank line at the end of the file upon saving. Really useful for patches to projects like Drupal which reject patches with extra whitespace.
Tab Switch - Lets you switch between tabs using the commonly used CTRL+TAB and CTRL+SHIFT+TAB.
Todo - Gives you a little window that displays any TODO items in your code comments, among other keywords. Really handy for catching up on what you were working on the day before or keeping track of places to improve.
External Tools - Gives you the ability to execute any command on the current document or selected text. The possibilities are endless with this one. Perhaps you want to validate your PHP syntax or run your HTML through HTMLTidy or check your JS with JSLint, etc.
Pastie for Gedit - Lets you create a pastie (see http://pastie.org) out of the currently selected text. Great for sending snippets to people quickly.

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2010-02-18T14:46:23-05:00

mcrittenden: OH: When interviewing a DB admin applicant, we asked “what do you think of MySQL?” He replied “how would I know anything about your SQL?”

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2010-02-18T12:50:27-05:00

mcrittenden: Zen-coding Gedit plugin now supports CSS snippets and automatic tab detection: http://github.com/mikecrittenden/zen-coding-gedit

Random flower somebody gave us.

2010-02-18T09:46:40-05:00

Random flower somebody gave us.