Ben Allfree :: Painless Programming

I like what ExtJS is trying to do, and all the JS frameworks really. But is the browser really the right medium for rich applications? For that matter, are rich applications even the way to go? These are the big questions I ask myself when I work in frameworks like ExtJS that seem to have [...]

I’m building PrestoScript in Ruby and the more I get into it, the less I am in anyone’s framework but my own. Why is that? Is there a certain class of problems that are frameworkless? I’ve been thinking lately that generalized frameworks could be a farce. I always explain to clients that Ruby on Rails [...]

I’ve been talking with more clients lately about Joomla. The Content Management System (CMS) is not dead, oh no, not dead at all. I’m not sure how PHP’s Joomla compares with a CMS like DotNetNuke, but my suspicion is that Joomla is far more widely used and probably has more modules and plugins too simply [...]

Well, this looks pretty interesting. Google has released a scalable “app engine” where you upload your web site source code and it runs on their infrastructure.

I will be creating custom DotNetNuke modules in ASP.NET 2.0 for a new client. DotNetNuke is the premiere open source portal framework for ASP.NET. Early last year, I wrote a book for O’Reilly on the topic.

Well, it looks like Akelos (http://www.akelos.org/) is taking the lead in the “Rails for PHP” race. It seems to have a better MVC architecture than cakePHP, especially where ActiveRecord is concerned.
MVC frameworks are an important design concept for modern Web 2.0 applications. I frequently consult on this topic and have a lot to say, too [...]

I like cakePHP, but it’s not as testable as I would prefer. So, I made my own.
As it turns out, ADODB for PHP supports the ActiveRecord pattern, which is much more to my liking than cakePHP’s data model solution. Also, cakePHP requires .htaccess support which I do not always have when hosting on IIS. Third, [...]

EcoPerks raises ecological awareness. Ben is working with them to revamp the web site and add a ton of new features in a hurry!

Here’s a fun thought: who is already working on a platform-independent social widget framework?
This would be something where you can target both Facebook and OpenSocial apps using the same common code base. Our last attempt ended up being pure Facebook because there just wasn’t enough overlap. It seemed easier to make the app twice and [...]