MacNative

There are many server hosting companies in the market, in fact I would venture to guess that a new hosting company pops up about every day. I have had a fair bit of experience with some of the largest in the market, RackSpace, Server Beach, Peer1, etc to name a few. But the one that I have been most impressed with, has been 1and1. They are who I use for my hosting and the hosting of my clients. I have been very satisfied with their service and the tools that they make available to me. Great uptime, stellar support, fantastic options, competitive pricing.

So yes this is a shameful plug for their services. 1and1 is my preferred hosting provider.

But also, I might note that I am a die hard apple proponent, but when it comes to general server functions, I am a fan of Linux. I run Linux on my servers locally and in hosting. for their security and ease of administration.

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.

Working in the IT world and being a Mac user, I am constantly asked the question “Should I get a Mac”? As if there was any question. Today I will briefly share my reasoning with you. When someone asks that question the only right response would be to ask a question in return, “What do you use your computer for”? If they only use their current computer to play old DOS games then they should probably stick with the computer that they have. But if they use windows at all, and still have a pulse, then there is a high probability that they could benefit from switching.

With an Intel processor under the hood, the current mac is the most versatile computer on the market, In my opinion. You can obviously run OSX on the computer. You can also run Windows, and Linux, BSD, Solaris, etc. So if there is something that you really must use windows for, Two solutions exist. Either using BootCamp to allow you to dual boot into both Windows (or some other more productive OS) and OSX. Or my favorite solution , using some virtualization sofware like Parallels or VMware Fusion. This software allows you to install and run other Operating Systems right from within OSX. With the virtualization software you have the ability to store your files outside of the windows virtual machine on your Mac, and then clone or make snapshots of your windows OS so that when (not if) windows suffers from malware or spyware or a virus, you can simply restore to your last snapshot, not loose any of your documents (because they were all saved outside of windows) and be back up and running in minutes, rather than days or weeks working with your local IT guys.

In my opinion this provides the ultimate computing solution. Safe, secure, performance in OSX that can be accented with brief musings in the Windows world, and then turned off again. Ahhhh, Computing Bliss.

I have another blog bdoga.com but I commonly discuss items dealing with individual liberties and the proper role of government. I realized though that I could really benefit others by having a place to post my technical discoveries that I make on a daily basis.

They may be small or great but hopefully they will be helpful to others along the way.

And so it begins.