June 16th, 2008
I've been kind of in isolation the last week or so, (more on that in another post) and I've not even taken the time to read my RSS feeds latesy, only skimming a few things here and there, or marking things for reading later. So today, I had a bit of time, and boy am I glad I took the time to re-visit those! Here are a few wonderful things worth your time to read.
- How To Make An IP-To-Country Tool With PHP and MySQL. Mathew Pennel, web monster and editor of Digital Web Magazine has written up a wonderful article here. I find myself linking to one article every month or two that this guy writes and nodding my head knowingly. This guy is great.
- Doctor Jones has completely made me re-examine Apple's Spaces with his article My Day With the New Spaces.
- jQuery for Designers has written up Coda Slider Effect. Its sexy as all get out. GREAT work there Remy. This is super well done. I will be
stealing inspired by you soon!
- Continuing on the jQuery train of thought here is the always excellent jQuery blog. Recently they wrote jQuery UI v1.5 Released, Focus on Consistent API and Effects which contained a few big tidbits in there. Biggest? API standardization. Unless you're a nerd of pretty high-order, that's probably not as cool to you as it is to me, but something that everyone can enjoy - Enchant (the effects library) is being rolled into jQuery proper. I think this is an immensely smart choice if only for marketing jQuery to new users. New users tend to compare feature by feature and make decisions, well now there's a big checkbox in that column. Nice work guys!
- And finally, Block Quotes and Pull Quotes: Examples and Good Practices from Smashing Magazine.
Man, there was some good stuff on tap! Something from each of those will be making their way into my work in the very near future.
Continue reading “Things worth reading”. Posted in
ExpressionEngine, Javascript, Mac, PHP with 2 comments 
May 20th, 2008
EllisLab.com got a bit of an over-hauling yesterday by Rick. The new site is much more spacious and clean, and well… sexier. Now normally a site redesign would be a one line entry, or possibly no entry at all, but this new site brings something very, very cool with it. It features what I consider (without overstatement) to be the greatest company profile pages of all time. Each of the EllisLab staff have been masterfully illustrated as a super hero. The results are positively stunning.
Keep reading to see them.
Continue reading “New look for EllisLab.com, and the GREATEST about us page of all time”. Posted in
CodeIgniter, ExpressionEngine, Noteworthy, Personal with 19 comments
April 16th, 2008
I’ve wrote about my 2008 South by Southwest experiences earlier, but try as I might, one of the things I just couldn’t capture was the fun and excitement I felt when we gave our presentation. For my part, I got to chat for 10 minutes about CodeIgniter and ExpressionEngine, and the communities, and future plans. It was a blast. Kind of like being secret agent revealing stolen plans ;)
After SxSW, I wrote up a blog entry for EllisLab called ExpressionEngine 2.0, fully CodeIgnited, where I tried to outline (on a professional level) all the cool s**t we had in store, and (on a personal level) how excited I was. That excitement part… yeah, didn’t come through. So today I leared that Andru (Dru) Edwards posted the video that he made during one of the presentations. Pure Awesome.
If you want to learn a bit about the future of ExpressionEngine, CodeIgniter, and our plans as a company for opensource, ecommerce, and all points in between, then take the time to watch it at http://video.gearlive.com/video/article/q208-bleeding-edge-tv-expressionengine-20-sneak-preview/.
I hope it captures a little bit of the excitement I get to feel every day.
Continue reading “Video of the ExpressionEngine talk at South by Southwest”. Posted in
ExpressionEngine with 8 comments
April 13th, 2008
So, I just spent the last hour getting a screencast built to show how you can start using ExpressionEngine on your site now, even if you don’t “know” ExpressinEngine yet. Good times. Used Screenflow, had a sexy little video thing going… and then realized that I recorded the blasted thing nearly fullscreen on my computer (it’s a 24inch iMac). I tried to scale it down so that it would fit onto 1 screen for most people, but then so much detail got lost that it looked like crap.
How frustrating.
So I’ll re-build it at some point in the near future, and for now, you can admire all my hard work in static, useless, image form ;)
Continue reading “failed screencast”. Posted in
ExpressionEngine, How-To with 11 comments
March 19th, 2008
Exciting news, EllisLab is hiring 2 new technical positions. You can read more on the EllisLab jobs page, so I won’t rehash things here, but they are 2 great opportunities to get in with a cool company, working on exciting stuff, with a bunch of smart, interesting people.
If you’ve been thinking about it, and are interested in working with ExpressionEngine, CodeIgniter, and the amazing communities around each, we’d love to hear from you.
Continue reading “Want to work on at EllisLab?”. Posted in
CodeIgniter, ExpressionEngine with no comments
March 14th, 2008
There’s been much discussion about ExpressionEngine 2.0, and a big part of the excitement is the new CodeIgniter base. I’ve written a bog entry at EllisLab entitled ExpressionEngine 2.0: fully CodeIgnited! that deals with some of the implication of this great news.
I’m closing comments on this thread, but if you’d like to comment, please comment on the blog post itself.
Its a great time to be a nerd!
Continue reading “ExpressionEngine 2.0: fully CodeIgnited!”. Posted in
CodeIgniter, ExpressionEngine with no comments
March 10th, 2008
Three weeks of late nights, (and about 5 days of being extraordinarily ill) have started catching up with me. Catching up with all of us actually. Saturday night was a blast, but it also meant hardly any sleep again ;)
We sponsored a brunch Sunday morning, lots of great casual interaction again, this time without loud music and beer (I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing). In fact, a number of good ideas came out of it, and even though the coffee tasted like burned sawdust, it was worth it just for that.
I had a chance to hit the big trade show. In general, it was a disappointment. A new company tried to sell us on their “mashup” social site… Paul and I sat through about 2 minutes and then excused ourselves, and Paul membled “moblog module” as we were walking away. Yup, EE does everything they were bragging about out of the box. <sarcasim>OHhhhhh…. I can post blog entries from my cell phone. Dude, you just blew my mind</sarcasim>
Also had an odd experience at the booth for the Opera web browser. They had these big posters advertising their “next big thing” called “Dragonfly”. I asked the guy attending the booth what it was, and he said he couldn’t tell me. WTF! The entire point of their display seemed to be to advertise a product that they “couldn’t talk about”. I repeat. WTF. It would be one thing if I asked him, so what’s the next big thing you’re working on? It’s entirely different for him to come to me and do that.
While I’m venting… allow me to indulge for another moment. There was a booth there advertising their new web-framework. Since I’m kinda involved in a round about way (sorta) with a web framework myself, I thought I’d see what they were about. So I asked the guy “so what’s this all about”. The conversation pretty much went like this (note the pattern, I ask a question he gives an answer that doesn’t make sense, or doesn’t make sense without a lot more context):
- ”We’re a web framework that runs on javascript”
- ”oh, so you’re a client side framework?”
- ”No, you need our server.”
- ”So are you a hosted service then?”
- ”No, we run on your server. We’re a web framework that runs on javascript”
- ”So you’re an Apache module?”
- ”We’re built in Java so we work anywhere. You write pages in javascript and we interpret it for you.”
- ”How do I get your interpreter onto my server?”
- ”oh, you’ll need our server.”
- ”Uh huh, how do I get your interpreter onto my server? FTP?”
- ”No, you need our server installed”
- ”OK… buh-bye.”
- ”Want a tshirt!”
Jeez, go sell crazy somewhere else.
The night was spent enjoying some ultra nerding out over a great dinner (Derek and Paul ordered some very fine… very costly, but very fine… wine), and then retired to my room for some fine ale generously sent to us from Steven Hambleton of Hambo Design, and a nice bottle of wine sent from Lee Tengum of Made by Fresh. Thank you both so very much!
I’m returning to Toronto with a renewed sense of excitement and energy and the possibilities before us, and the communities beside us.
Continue reading “South by Southwest 2008 : Day Three”. Posted in
ExpressionEngine, Noteworthy with 5 comments
March 09th, 2008
Last night was a bit of a late night for us, as we polished our message a bit, and tried to make sure we were delivering everything as consistently in real-life as we were in our heads.
We gave the same session three times, which was the presentation of ExpressionEngine 2.0. The big news of the day in my mind, is that ExpressionEngine is now built on CodeIgniter. The implications here, whether you are a CodeIgntier-er, or an ExpressionEngine-er are substantial, and I will write a bit more about these in the upcoming weeks, but sufficed to say that this is very good news for everyone involved; EllisLab, and end-users.
The big “wow” moment, was Derek Jones demo-ing our new control panel. It was inspiring to see the general reaction of the crowd. Frankly, it kicks ass (as I said in my slide-show ;) )
By the afternoon, I was wiped. A single large coffee and a cinnamon bun does not a meal make. Nevin and Neal brought a great lunch around for us at 2:30 (thanks guys!) and I got significantly “picked up” for our afternoon question and answer session. The session was incredible, with many people sharing their stories of how they use ExpressionEngine, and how they use CodeIgniter. Its nice to get perspective from time to time, the tools I help built impact people in a very real way. Very rewarding!
After that, party at the Moonshine grill. Tshirts, booze, music, friends. Is there anything else needed for a great evening? It was a huge success, and I had the opportunity to hang and chat with lots of CodeIgniter and ExpressionEngine users (and now, they are sort of “one and the same” aren’t they).
One of the things that’s really struck me over the past 2 days is how passionate our users are. Interested and involved, and overwhelmingly supportive and positive. Its fantastic getting to put faces to names (and forum names), and I’m glad people had the opportunity to chat with me directly.
One of the things you’ll notice about all of the EllisLab folks is how accessible they really are. When else do you get to walk up to the vice-president and ask him about how the company works? When else do you get to chat with the CTO over a beer? When else do you get to ask the founder of the company what type of motorcycle he rides? A great environment, and a great time.
And the night kept giving! Michell (Solspace) a prolific ExpressionEngine contributor hosted a nightcap, and treated me a few nightcaps.
Day 3 is much less packed, and I’m looking forward to relaxing and nerding out a bit.
Continue reading “South by Southwest 2008 : Day Two”. Posted in
ExpressionEngine, Noteworthy with 4 comments
March 08th, 2008
There’s been a lot of speculation over what our big secret was, and what EE 2.0 would look like.
I’ve very proud to announce that ExpressionEngine is now built on CodeIgniter, and each is able to share resources with the other. You an ExpressionEngine developer? This represents an instant expansion of EE’s capabilities. Faster, easier, more modular code, with a huge number of libraries and functions. You a CodeIgniter user? How about instantly being able to drop ExpressionEngine on top of your codebase, and have fully accessed, fully shared information between each. Instant forums, instant wiki, instant EE - on your existing code… now. Its VERY exciting.
We’re still in development, but I wanted to take a moment to post some “official” screen captures of our new Control Panel. Now I want to make it very clear that this is a work in progress. While things are largely “in play”, its entirely possible that it will undergo so minor, or major, changes between now and release. Oh, and on the topic of release, we haven’t announced a date, and truthfully, I don’t know. We’re working our asses off, and we’ll get it out as soon as we possibly can.
I will write more about the development, and post more information when I find a bit of time. Read the full entry to see the images.
Continue reading “ExpressionEngine 2.0 “official” screenshots”. Posted in
ExpressionEngine with 47 comments
March 08th, 2008
Preamble: Since I had my laptop in front of me all day, I decided on a stream-of-consciousness post. If you’re looking for juicy CodeIgniter or EE news and not interested in my comings and goings then I’d advise you to skip today and read tomorrow. ;)
5:31am
Getting to Austin was much nicer this year. Specifically, customs was much nicer. In fact, it was downright uneventful. I got to the gate uneventfully, and opened up lappy and started hacking away on EE for the demo. A little voice in the back of my head was telling me that its dumb to do that at 5:30am without a full cup of coffee in me… but there’s always work to be done. Duty calls!
7:33am
The little girl beside me has an unhealthy fascination with the glowing apple on my black laptop, demanding that the people around us look at, (at about 260 decibels). All she manages to say to me is “the soap is sticky”. Strange kid.
Keep reading for the full story!
Continue reading “South by Southwest 2008 : Day One”. Posted in
CodeIgniter, ExpressionEngine, Noteworthy with 5 comments
< 1 2 3 4 > Last »
