dotProject - Open Source Project Management for free

Posted by Branko Ajzele under Tools @ 15th NOV 2008

Notice the word free in the title. If something is declared as open source this does not imply it should be free. Take a look at FogBugz. It is, one of the best open source project tracking tools currently available. However it’s quite expensive. Maybe not so expensive to larger companies but for small businesses and freelancers it sure is.

Yesterday I came across dotProject tool. If you are like me and came to PHP from .Net world then your first though might be that this is .Net application due to the “dot” in the title. Well, it isn’t, it’s a PHP powered collaboration tool.

Harvest CO-OP review

Posted by Tomislav Bilic under Tools @ 29th OCT 2008

Do you work in a larger team? When a new project comes, it can be quite hard to determine what human resources are available. It is very hard to know what each one of 30 team members has on its queue list. This simple CO-OP online tool makes availability communication issues much easier and faster. We started using it in Surgeworks couple of days ago and it was extremely helpful. Some might have a feeling like they are in online Big Brother, but it is an useful tool.

Improve your development time

Posted by Branko Ajzele under Tools @ 14th OCT 2008

If you are developer working on a open source technologies then most likely you are using open source or some freeware tools. Since I’m a PHP developer this post will show examples in context of PHP. Developing for PHP can be quite a fun, or sometimes quite painful.

UPS API Quest

Posted by Tomislav Bilic under Tools @ 30th SEP 2008

I got one fairly simple request to develop a custom shipping calculation for Magento that will use some special calculation using UPS API. Right now, Magento only calculates weight and the client needs something more advanced. I worked on similar stuff before, so I guessed this will not be much different. First step was to find an API for UPS. Well, this post is all about the search for API. I’ll update it when I manage to find it.

Free Flash Graphs Tool

Posted by Tomislav Bilic under Tools @ 21st SEP 2008

It is very common in the process of building custom web application that we need to produce some sort of visual reports. Those reports have to quickly display tabluar data in human more readable format - graphs. Although  there is a way to create them yourself in PHP using some image functions, you’ll have to spend a lot of time to make the chart look superb. This is where Open Flash Chart project jumps in.

Figuring out Magento object context

Posted by Branko Ajzele under Magento, Tools @ 10th SEP 2008

One of the problems working under the hood of the Magento CMS is determining the context of $this. If you are about to do any advanced stuff with your template, besides layout changes, you need to get familiar with Magento’s objects (classes).

Let’s have a look at the /app/design/frontend/default/default/template/catalog/product/view.phtml file. If you open this file and execute var_dump($this) your browser will return empty page after a short period of delay. By page I mean on the product view page; the one you see when you click on Magetno product. Experienced users will open PHP error log and notice the error message caused by var_dump().

Website Launch Flowchart

Posted by Tomislav Bilic under Tools @ 4th SEP 2008

Did you ever wonder what does it take to build a successful website? Bob Misita from Virante helps us visualize the process. He made a flowchart of 40 steps that need to be completed before actual website launch. Although the list is quite comprehensive, this steps really occur even in medium sized projects.

I hope this will help all of you who want to build a self-money-generation sites with the deadline of 3 weeks. Look at the flowchart, analyze it and don’t start the development until you planned at least 80% of this boxes.

FogBugz - Project Management Tool

Posted by Tomislav Bilic under Tools @ 23rd JUL 2008

Working on a project as only developer having direct contact with the client gives you the freedom not to think too much of a communication tool you will use. Couple of meetings, phone calls and an email will be just fine. After 3-4 weeks, you deliver the project and the communication is over. If that is your common scenario, than skip evaluation of this tool.

Making and breaking the grid with “960 grid system”

Posted by Tomislav Bilic under Tools @ 27th JUN 2008

There are millions of distinct designs on the web horizon. They all have more or less the styles on their own, like: 3D, cartoon, clean, dark, futuristic, geometric, grunge, minimalistic, retro, corporate, urban, vector, and many more. If we put out design diversity, most of them share the similar structure. They have header, menu, content area, sidebar or sidebars, footer, some secondary space and many more.

If you are one of those who developed HTML/CSS for every web from scratch, try to consider 960 Grid System and their demo page.

The 960 Grid System is an effort to streamline web development workflow by providing commonly used dimensions, based on a width of 960 pixels. There are two variants: 12 and 16 columns, which can be used separately or in tandem.

Well, I just see it will work for me perfectly and will save me much time in the future.

FancyBox - Fancy image zooming tool

Posted by Tomislav Bilic under Tools @ 4th JUN 2008

There are many Lightbox clones this days. Some are fancier, some are lighter, some use jQuery, some do not. In this wast set of options, I found one I think I will prefer from today: FancyBox - fancy image zooming tool

It is based on jQuery and is a cool alternative to existing solutions. Here are some features:

• Automatically scales large images to fit in window
• Adds a nice drop shadow under the zoomed item
• Groups related items and adds navigation through them (uses preloading)
• Can display images, inline and iframed content
• Customizable through settings and CSS

Other Lightbox alternatives I found are:

• Lightview
• prettyPhoto
• Slimbox
• Highslide
• LightWindow
• Thickbox
• and many more; full comparison can be found at The Lightbox Clones Matrix