Rob Lowe

Aptana Studio 1.0

My web development IDE of choice, Aptana released version 1.0 today! They released both a Community (free) and Pro ($99) version.

What's New?

The name of the package has been changed from Aptana IDE to Aptana Studio. Aptana Studio has been given a bit of a face lift, the menus and tabs are cleaner looking. The Community Edition of Aptana Studio offers html, css and JavaScript code assist, FTP support, Gecko JavaScript Debugging and an integrated Visual Script Doc for starters.

Are you just starting out with the Smarty template language? Are you trying to install it some place other than in '/usr/local/lib/Smarty-xxxx'? If so and you are having problems, you are not alone.

Here's the series so far:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5
• Part 6
• Part 7

Abstraction

• 456 Berea Street
• A List Apart
• Accessites.org
• Best of Craigslist
• Bigger Than Cheeses
• Boing Boing
• Capitalism Magazine

In case you haven't been reading, here is the series so far:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5
• Part 6
• Part 8

Getters and Setters

How that our classes are getting more secure we should consider preventing direct access to properties. To that end, we can set getter and setter methods that will, well, get and set the data members.

In case you haven't been reading, here is the series so far:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5

Class Access Modifiers

Hey, remember access modifiers? Well, we can use that same concept for more than just properties. Just like before, you have public, protected and private modifiers for classes.

In case you haven't been reading, here is the series so far:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4

Inheritance

Inheritance is the method in which a class is derived from another class, called a parent class.

What I Wanted

On occasion, I write code and publish it here, so I wanted a way to format it nicely. Fortunately for me, I didn't have to look far before I found exactly what I want, I found it over at Roger Johansson's 456 Berea St. With what I wanted in mind, it was just a matter of doing it.

Here's the cool stuff I ran across this week:

• Ever wonder what Google would look like if Google had to design Google to be indexed by Google, or just like the word 'Google'? Check out Mean Gene's rendition of how Google would look if it designed it's UI for Google.
• A List Apart just published the results from their first Web Design Survey, it's very enlightening.

The Freakonomics Blog at the New York Times is running a great piece called 'A Case for Open Immigration'. One of the most poignant statements for me is,

'...by trying to protect the country from the phantom menace of immigration, officials could end up turning the U.S. into a police state.'

That is what the AP is reporting, but I think the findings are dubious. Consider for a second that it's true, though I am in no way trying to prove that statement wrong, is it because there are more deadly staph infections or because fewer people are dying from AIDS? My guess is that it is the later or at least a combination favoring fewer AIDS deaths over increased Staph deaths.

What I have been reading this week:

• Flex and PHP are cooler than a mullet, says Cal Evans at the Zend Developer Zone
• Learn jQuery in 30 minutes or less with Nathan Smith's primer at Digital Web Magazine
• Brendan Sinclair tells us to Learn to Love Complaining Clients over at Sitepoint

After recovering from the red ring of death 3 weeks ago, I am happy that my Xbox 360 is waiting for me at home to be unboxed tonight. The bad thing now is that between now and the end of the year, there are too many interesting games being released:

• Orange Box is currently available,
• Oct 15 - Beautiful Katamari
• Oct 15 - Fighter's Stronghold expansion for Oblivion
• Nov 5 - Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
• Nov 6 - F.E.A.R. Files
• Nov 13 - Army of Two
• Nov 13 - Assassin's Creed
• Nov 20 - Kane & Lynch: Dead Men

In case you haven't been reading, here is the series so far:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 5

Object Type Hints

In most programming languages, you can pass a value to a function. PHP is no different.

I am so excited! I know I should not care about SERP (Search Engine Results Page) placement as an end in of itself, but to me, landing on the front page and in a few cases number 1 or two rocks my socks!

As of 6 October 2007 I am placed in the following spots for their respective key phrases:

• 6th for 'San Diego Freelance Web Design'
• 2nd for 'San Diego Web Development Contractor'
• 1st for 'San Diego Freelance Web Development'

Interesting Links for the weekend.

• Gologotha at Search This says to stop focusing on SEO and to work on producing quality content
• Brendon Sinclair teaches us how cheap and easy marketing your freelance should be.
• Leo Babauta at Freelance Switch explains 'How To Create Multiple Income Streams'

Thank you to Stefan Schlott for writing the Multiping Module for Drupal, the time I will save not manually pinging is much appreciated!

The obsession lives on! I just submitted to several more sites!

• Directory World
• Directory organized by subject, including Information Technology

Also there were several more that...

• File Recovery

I'll admit it, I am obsessed with the traffic to this website. Although that alone probably won't do me any good, I see traffic almost as an end in of itself. To that end, I submitted my site to the Level10s Web Directory. Level10s Web Design & Development Sites - Level10s is a human edited website directory of qualified sites.

My favorite presidential candidate, the only man that can get me to vote in the 2008 presidential primaries at all and the GOP's only real hope for the futureis Ron Paul, so he gets a haiku!

In case you haven't been reading, here is the series so far:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 4
• Part 5

Another haiku, about a girl on the bus

My first haiku, about freelancing