Test your regular expression easily right on the desktop.
Link

Some other nice resources for regular expressions:
http://www.regular-expressions.info/ (Tester)
http://regexlib.com/ (my favorite)
Regular Expressions Cheat Sheet
Javascript Regular Expressions
Mac OSX widget

I have been doing alot of javascript programming in the past few years and had to do many tasks over and over again.

Since last year javascript libraries have been almost exploding, due to the huge ajax hype. Among those are Prototype, jQuery, MooTools, ext, cssQuery, dojo and alot of other larger frameworks.

When I evaluate libraries, I make sure that what I include mostly consists of things I will actual use within a project. Bloated libraries are out of the question for me. Also important is the way a library integrates into my workflow and other server side enviroments I use. The library must be unobstrusive and easy to extend.

While evaluating options for my php framework, JQuery became the library of my choice.
“jQuery is a fast, concise, JavaScript Library that simplifies how you
traverse HTML documents, handle events, perform animations, and add
Ajax interactions to your web pages.”

It has a lighweight footprint of around 19kb(compressed), is CSS3
compliant and provides cross browser functionality (IE, Firefox,
Safari, Opera). The jQuery community is really active and provides a
huge amount of additonal plugins that extend its functionality. jQuery
allowed me to move many of my snippets into small plugins, that I can
load where ever I need them. I will share some of those in the future
and also write up some tutorials about things I have created with
jQuery in the past months.

jQuery is up to version 1.1.2 and version 1.1.3 is just around the corner.

Check it out

Easy way to generate a .htaccess online:

Link

I have been heavily multitasking the past few weeks. Had to get all my sites and services back up, after the long downtime.

Also finishing the upgrades for the Pro modules over at pro.portalZINE, making them 0.8 compliant.

Apart from that, I am working on two projects, that keep me really busy.

One project revolves around in house solutions and a custom set of functionality.
Will have to meet a deadline for that soon, so long nights are nothing new here LOL

The other project is more design related and gladly keeps the split work a bit in balance.

Also working on implementations for jabber and email on my Messenger module and currently laying out the foundation to make it 100% standalone.

Cheers
Alexander

As a developer we daily look for oportunities to sell ourselfs and our products. We seek new frontiers by advancing our skills and constantly looking at new technologies. We work on new innovative products, that we hope will conquer the world. The question always remains, are we actually producing and advancing for our clients? Do clients really need all the functionality and options they purchase. On the desktop market it has been known for a long time, that products present more functionality than the common customer will ever need.

Why
The problem with products is, that we want to target a broad range of customers. We are producing one single product that satisfies as many potential customers as possible. So even if a customer does not need a set of features, another might just be looking for those. Another reason is the constant competition feature set, we are being compared against. If one provides an innovative feature, we have to provide that and another feature to set us apart. Feature sets are just like the “GHz run”, we had on the pc hardware market for years. The customer
So where is the customer in all this? Well he sits on the outside, facing the fact, that it is getting more more difficult to make any conclusive decisions in a short period of time. When evaluating options for a project, it gets difficult to find a perfect fit. Customers take the options that fit their target goals as close as possible, living with the fact that many of the features they paid for are not required at this stage of their project. At this stage :), well some of those features might actually become handy in the following phases, evolution of the project.

So where does that leave us as developers ? Well the classic product is not dead, as many customers just accept the fact that they pay and get more than they currently need.

If you are a customer with a set budget, its a complete different ball of wax. You would want to get the most out of that money. In that case the classic product is of no use.

Custom package
The goal is to provide the customer with a custom package that provides only the required set of functionality. For us developers this means building custom reusable blocks, that represent one or a combined set of functionality. These blocks would be combined to a package, that represents the project requirements. This means faster development, easier scheduling and to the point budgeting. You build once, reuse again and again. Especially with so many new and converging technologies, its easier to streamline each functionality into a solid block. As soon as your toolbox is filled, you can build anything with ease.

The solution
Still having the technology out of a toolbox, does not make it a solution. As a developer you are forced to think more and more like a consultant, wisely providing your customer with the right set of functionality.

This makes development alot more interresting for me, than providing the classic product ;)

Classic product development is not dead, but under the surface those products are often repackaged blocks, streamlining the invested development time for more than one product.

Such toolboxes are often advertised as frameworks or application development platforms, which abstract common functionality.

Cheers
Alexander