Author Archives: lehresman

Differences between jQuery and MooTools

Over the past few years I’ve come to love the MooTools JavaScript framework.  It’s an excellent enhancement to JavaScript that helps insulate from browser inconsistencies and provides nice functionality that doesn’t exist natively in JavaScript.   But as I look around, … Continue reading

Posted in JavaScript, MooTools, jQuery | Leave a comment

Affordances of my waffle iron

I have a beef with my waffle iron.  Every time I pull it out to make waffles, I go through a process to re-learn how it works.  You would think that it’s hard to screw up a waffle iron, but … Continue reading

Posted in Affordances | 3 Comments

My core tenets of software engineering

Experience has taught me that software development is a very fluid process. As a product is developed, ideas change about what the product should do and how it should behave. Often this can result in miscommunication and wasted time working … Continue reading

Posted in Coding Practices | Leave a comment

WordPress plugin for Spreedly

I’m very excited to announce that I’ve created a WordPress plugin for Spreedly. This plugin is a drop-in solution for hiding content on your blog behind a subscription interface. By combining powers with the awesomeness that is Spreedly, this plugin … Continue reading

Posted in Spreedly | Leave a comment

Optional constructor parameters

One thing that really irks me about PHP is the way parameters are passed into functions and constructors. A typical constructor will look like this: $col = new Column($id, $label, "50%", true, false); While that’s nice and compact, it’s impossible … Continue reading

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Unit testing with PHP

You’ve probably heard of unit testing. If you are like I was a few years ago, your mouse is hovering over the “close” button right now. But wait! Don’t go away just yet. Over the past few years I have … Continue reading

Posted in PHP, Testing | Leave a comment

My current toolset

There are many tools I use on a day-to-day basis to get things done. John Long posted a similar list on his blog, and I thought it would be interesting to make a similar list for myself. Without further ado, … Continue reading

Posted in Observations | Leave a comment

Are masked password fields necessary?

Last March, @johnwlong tweeted “Do people really want their password hidden (••••••) when they signup?” (here) and “Wondering about dropping the “confirm password” field on our signup screen and using a normal text field for the password instead.” (here). My … Continue reading

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Spreedly PHP Library v2.5 released

As mentioned previously, I use a service called Spreedly to manage subscriptions in NeoBudget. I also created and maintain the Spreedly PHP library. Thanks to the contributions of some fellow Spreedly customers, and due to some recent enhancements from Spreedly, … Continue reading

Posted in Spreedly | Leave a comment

Creating a JavaScript application with MooTools

MooTools makes dynamic DOM manipulation simple. It provides some object oriented wrappers around browser functionality, and ensures cross-browser compatibility with all modern browsers (and even IE6). Lately, I’ve been using MooTools with a couple web applications that are completely rendered … Continue reading

Posted in JavaScript, MooTools | 1 Comment