MacNative

If you are like me, you have spent many many hours creating database layouts on legal pads, notebooks, and whiteboards, only to have to recreate the layout again to actually create the layout in the database. This process can consume many hours of additional time in a development project. But thanks to Malcom Hardie we can streamline our SQL database creation process with the use of SQLEditor.

SQLEditor provides the best interface that I have seen to create your database layout in a very visual format. It allows you to build your

tables specifying the column types, linking with foreign keys, and dragging the table layouts around the canvas so that you can easily understand what you were building at a glance when you come back to a project after an extended period.

But the best part comes after the database design is complete, you can export it to a PDF for distribution around the office, send it to a plotter to print a large wall size copy for reference.

But then comes the fun part, after you have made all of your changes to the database layout you can either export the contents directly to a txt file in the SQL dialect of your choice (MySQL, Oracle, Postgresql, etc…) or even connect directly to a database using JDBC drivers and propagate your changes directly to the running database server.

SQLEditor has full support for Mac OS X 10.6 and is ready to run on your Mac Development System.

Although this solution is not freeware or open source, it is an essential tool for every developer who designs or develops database integration strategies. I highly recommend this product and it is well worth the expense to purchase it for the time it will save you. But don’t worry like most software applications it comes with a hassle free 30 day free trial period so you can see how effective it will be in your development workflow.

Here is an extended list of features:

Product Homepage

Every developer knows how important it is to have the right tools. And by having the right tools I mean a text editor. Because ultimately that is all most developers really require to get things done, Developers have been doing it for well over a half century and although the languages and methods for execution have changed, much has remained the same.

For those who are fortunate enough to find themselves doing development on the mac platform, there is an alternative, which although it may not be the newest game on the block, it is one of the best all around. Sissy FauxVelopers need not apply to use this app. It has no build your app with one click buttons. It is designed to take the development experience to the next level for those who like to get their “fingers” dirty and actually do some major textual manipulations.

From the first launch it’s basic simplicity and power are immediately perceptible. It is feature packed enough to quell the pining soul of the most advanced developer, but simple enough to handle basic text document edits. From customizable coloring of the interface (I prefer the “All Hallow’s Eve” scheme) to the elegant line numbering and code folding features in the applications “trough”, this bad boy was built to move mountains and work minor miracles.

With built in support for dozens of predominant document formats, it provides out of the box streamlining of your developer workflow while also allowing you to add your own file format specifications should you happen to be crafty enough to have come up with your own file formats and specifications.

Additionally you can create functions to validate your files layout and formatting right into your file specification. Giving you on the fly access to all the features you want when you are developing.

This great product has seen me through many development projects, and has greatly increased my development capacity through it’s simplistic yet powerful functions.Although this product isn’t free, it is well worth the €39 purchase price, and it comes with a 30 day trial for all parties that may be interested, but not yet committed to the purchase.

Go give it a test spin. All you have to loose is pain and frustration.

Download Demo

Homepage

There are a ton of tools out there that web developers can use to create dynamic and engaging websites. Every once and a while one tool will stand out above the others in it’s usefulness and design.

Fancy Upload is one of those tools. Providing a slick interface and some dynamic classes, Fancy Upload leverages the abilities of the Mootools Javascript library and ties that with some flash integration to create a great solution with an infinate number of uses. Go check it out.

http://digitarald.de/project/fancyupload/

When working with Dynamic Site Development, it is often necessary to give the client some kind of message to inform them that their action has been either successful or not successful or not so good or…you get the picture. I have used several different methods of dealing with this over the years. but I just found this tutorial that has a quick lightweight nice solution to attractively solve this problem.

Check it out

Css Message Boxes

I recently came across an article online, that talked about and showed many examples of using the space in your web pages footer more effectively. Wow talk about insighteful, and the examples on the site give you a great feel for what some other web developers/designers are using there footers for.

Elements of Design

I have worked with many different e-commerce platforms over the years, From very basic to extremely complex. I have recently come across a relatively new e-commerce platform that has got me hooked.

FoxyCart has created a great set of e-commerce tools that allow you to easily set up a fully functional online store/shopping cart with very minimal effort.
Foxycart offers support for either Paypal payments pro (for credit card payments only at the moment) or some of the more popular payment gateways. as well as support for live shipping rates from Fedex, UPS, etc.
All in all, foxycart packs a nice sales punch. And is my shopping cart solution of choice.

www.foxycart.com

Foxycart Demo Store

I have been working on a project with a couple of partners, to hopefully create a little additional security for individuals. The problem that we analyzed is that when people get Insurance, or create a family trust, they are told to document all of their assets. Take photos or video of the items in their home and then store them. Usually the only time that that documentation is used is in the event of a disaster, ie: The Wild Fires in California, or Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. If that documentation (pictures/video) are stored like most people store them they will either be a molten pile of goop, or float away with the flood, etc. Even those that store their information in a fireproof safe may still find it a pile of goop if the fire is hot enough. Have I painted a vivid enough picture for you?

People every day find themselves without the ability to easily produce that documentation, and may not get their assets replaced by their insurance company, because they cannot prove the exact assets that they owned.

Treasurebox is built to provide a safe secure online storage location for that documentation, very accessible, and easy to use. The MooTools framework and extentions to it are used extensively to increase the usability of the product.

The initial release is currently in public beta. I would love any readers to sign up (No Credit Card or billing information required) and leave some comments here about your thoughts.

Treasurebox
Twenty Cent Productions, LLC

One of my biggest concerns when building a dynamic website is, “How do I validate the users input?”

Obviously there are many different ways to do this, you can validate the data on the back end as it receiving script is processing, and send an error, requesting that the user input correct information. Or you can do Front end processing on the data when the form is submitted and through JavaScript tell the user that the data is not correct, or you can validate the data as the client is inputing the information, thus allowing the client to correct the error before continuing on (especially useful in large/long forms). Or a combination of the 3, validate on the fly, on submit, and on return.

There is a myriad of different front end scripts that have popped up to handle the front end/live validation, one that I started using was LiveValidation, It was a useful library, but Since I was already using MooTools anyway, there was additional overhead to use this additional library, as well as the validation messages all appeared inline with your other content, and this tended to be a difficult thing to work with in cramped conditions.

This led me to search around a bit more and I found Formcheck, A live validation script based on mootools. It was lighter weight, since it was using the library that I was already using. The configuration/integration was about 100 times easier to implement and manage. And the notification appeared as a hovering box rather than and inline notification, which was just the icing on the cake.

Light, Easy, and Pretty, who could ask for more.

Formcheck Demo

Formcheck Documentation

Formcheck Download

http://moo.floor.ch/

My JavaScript framework of choice is MooTools. MooTools is a very compact, useful, and extensible JavaScript framework. I have used it on several sites that I and my codevelopers have created, I have been impressed by how easy the integration is, the speed of development with MooTools is amazing. It doesn’t carry the bloat that similar frameworks carry with them, ie: Prototype. All in all a very exciting platform to work with.

I look forward to the enhancements that will be made available with the 1.2 release. Exciting.

In later posts I will share and discuss scripts that use/extend the base functionality of MooTools to create some very amazing, usability enhancing, tools and effects.

When I started this blog, I figured that I would share my enthusiasm about Apple, Inc. and the OS X Platform. And while there is plenty to share about that, my focus in employment has been in Web Development and Design. So The focus will be Web Development and Digital Goodness from an Mac Perspective.

This should provide ample material for me to clog your internet pipe with.