Tweeting. TweetDeck versus Twhirl

Well, this is actually more of a test post than a "real" one. I just read a post on how to integrate the JavaScript library, SyntaxHighlighter, into Blogger.

To illustrate my efforts, I'm going to use some ActionScript 3 code I worked on today. It's nothing crazy, I wanted to limit the types of files a user can open when calling FileReference.browse().

private var fileReference:FileReference;
private var fileFilter:FileFilter;

// create a FileFilter to limit file types
this.fileFilter = new FileFilter("Spreadsheets", "*.csv;*.txt");

//Create FileReference object
this.fileRef = new FileReference()
// Add Handlers (not shown)
this.fileRef.addEventListener(Event.CANCEL, cancelEvent);
this.fileRef.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, completeEvent);
this.fileRef.addEventListener(Event.SELECT, selectEvent);
this.fileRef.addEventListener(IOErrorEvent.IO_ERROR, ioErrorEvent);
this.fileRef.addEventListener(ProgressEvent.PROGRESS, progressEvent);
this.fileRef.addEventListener(SecurityErrorEvent.SECURITY_ERROR, traceEvent);
this.fileRef.browse([this.fileFilter]);

The code above was copied from different parts of an MXML component to use as an example. That said, take a look at the FileFilter class if you need to allow uploads from a Flex application. It's pretty sweet and eliminates some of the "dumb" user moves (i.e., loading an XLS file when it's supposed to be a CSV).

I mentioned a bit ago that I got pretty sick in January. Turns out I had the flu, and it was pretty bad/crappy. I finally started feeling better late in February (and am now getting back to 100%) and have been working my way through a backlog of projects.

In the evenings, I've been working on a pro-bono project for some friends. The project consists of migrating a ColdFusion web application to PHP. The old site/application was powered by a custom Flex CMS. The new site/application will no longer use old CMS; rather, a new one powered in PHP.

Being a framework whore, I did a little research on some popular PHP frameworks that could make it easier and faster to complete the project. In addition to all the standard benefits of using an established framework (faster development time, easier debugging, scalability, etc.), I also wanted a framework that tightly integrates administration functionality.

In the "finals" of my framework review, I picked CakePHP over CodeIgniter. Both frameworks are from the Ruby on Rails family and seem to be excellent tools for any developer. In the end, I chose CakePHP primarily because it has a larger base of developers in its community. I've just gotten into the framework itself and don't have a lot to offer (code samples, etc.) just yet but plan to add some soon.

However, I've had such a good experience starting with CakePHP, that I wanted to post a positive entry on CakePHP. Why? Because I've never really liked PHP and CakePHP is changin that. I've considered PHP an evil necessity in my professional life; one of those languages one "has to" know but doesn't really enjoy coding it.

CakePHP might be changing all that for me. It's been incredibly easy to delve into CakePHP and, tonight alone, I was able to solve a few programming problems incredibly quickly and easily with CakePHP. It was pretty amazing.

If you're in the market for improved PHP skills or looking to get more productive with your PHP, check out CakePHP (for that matter, check out CodeIgniter, too, it looks pretty excellent as well).