PHP Contact Form Builder is out

PHP Contact Form Builder

PHP Contact Form Builder is designed to achieve one simple thing only – to create a contact form in PHP without writing a single line of code. Its like asking a PHP developer to code a simple contact form for your site free of charge. Actually that developer happens to be Raymond Selda. If you want to see how page looks and works, then see it in action here .

In clear words what does it do?

A PHP contact form is generated along with jQuery validation based on the provided email address and site url. Once it is ready you can use it as is or modify it to your heart’s content. All the messages sent using this form will be sent the provided email address.

Who needs such a thing like this ?
Everyone who knows how to design a website but does not know how to code in php but needs a contact form really badly.

Requirements
Adobe AIR runtime 1.5 or the latest.
It runs in any operating system where AIR is installed.That means Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

It free to download and use.

snowdust beta released

Finally the beta version of “snowdust” saw the light of the day. It is a small and lightweight css framework Suvra has been working on for quite a few days. I had started it a year ago but abandoned it due to time constraints (mostly relate to my marriage ceremony). But recently Suvra found it and decided to revive it again. The credit should go to her for seeing potential in it.

In my opinion, it can be used for rapid prototyping of various web projects. In its earliest forms I had used it once or twice while creating few Rails projects.

It is licensed under MIT license and hosted with Google code.

Here is the downlod link

http://code.google.com/p/snowdust/

Best book on ActionScript 3 animation

Yes, Keith Peters has written the best book on doing animation in ActionScript 3.0.

Foundation Actionscript 3.0 Animation: Making Things Move!

Now a days I am spending my free time in designing the website for  wedoui.com. It is a joint venture between my wife and my sister-in-law. At first we decided to use only html, css and some javascript framework for the site. The designs we came up with were also very compelling .

But sooner we found that we are taking the wrong decision by avoiding Flash altogether. Because the kind of idea we want to convey is much better presented in Flash only, though it requires some animating skills in AS. I know AS3.0 and Flex very well, still that’s not enough. So while searching for a book that would guide me in animation I found this book with some great reviews. I have just gone through some initial chapters and I have this feeling that I am a damn good ActionScript animator (is there such a thing!). What I liked the best in the book is the approach of attacking the problems using few mathematical concepts.

In fact this book can change the way you view and use ActionScript because a lot of Flex and RIA war has taken away some of the sweetness that Flash is famous for from your mind. I certainly believe currently ActionScript 3 is the most expressive language for visual medium and Keith Peters is one of the star makers.

Thanks Keith for writing the book.

60 Days are gone

AS 3.0 is awesome and Flex is awesome too. So what are your options to get your hands on them and apply these to various projects.

The easiest way is to get the Flex Builder from Adobe. The other way is to get the Flex eclipse plugin and use it with Eclipse.But those coming from Flash & Photoshop background FB seems the best option.So download and use it for free for 60 days.A great decision. In these 60 days you invest your time to learn MXML, AS 3.0 as well as toolsets of FB.Once the time period passes you think of buying it.A greater decision. You go to the Adobe site and click the buy online button and the journey starts(to the hell, of course).If you are from a country not listed for sale in their site such as India and try to buy from another country from the list, you will be shown the door like this

Oh, what a bad day.

So what are your options now?

You can certainly do one of the following :

1) Quit this Flex thing altogether

2) Start again with SDK and spend another 60 days to love working in this alternative way

or 3) search for the c*****d version on some torrent (and continue form 62nd or 63rd day)

You decide which option to take.From now on you are on your own.

TIP: why don’t you ask Adobe guys or the evangelists who in the first place lured you into trying Flex altogether ?

Should one learn Ruby on Rails ?

Several months ago I had to choose among php, .net, coldfusion, asp and Ruby on Rails. I chose Ruby on Rails because I had seen the famous screencast where the author creates a blog within minutes. I even bought the Agile Web Developement book and then almost any book with Ruby or Rails in its title. To this day I am still learning without much to show off. The question is how I am going to justify so much time spent on this learning. my answer is I find this a lot more fulfilling and promising than I had bargained for.

Would I recommend it to others ?

Here is a better reply given by Michael Slater and Chris Haupt

“Ultimately, the factor that probably keeps more developers away from Rails than any other is the learning curve. If you’ve already been working with one technology, it’s always more time consuming in the short term to switch to a different one. And if you’re only working on simple sites, it may not be worth the investment.

But if you want to advance your skills and become as productive as you can be, you owe it to yourself to learn Ruby on Rails. You’ll need to invest a few months of study and practice to become proficient, but from that point forward you’ll be building better sites more quickly and having more fun doing it.

If you’re a PHP developer, you many wonder whether you can take a short-cut and use a PHP-based MVC framework instead of having to learn Ruby. In the short term, this may save you time. But Ruby is a key enabler of many aspects of Rails, and it just isn’t possible to build a framework that really matches Rails in a language such as PHP. Learning any powerful framework takes a significant effort, whether it’s a PHP framework or a Ruby framework. Learning the basics of Ruby isn’t hard. The payback is that you’ll be working in a more modern, more elegant language, and with a more powerful framework as well.

In future episodes of this podcast, we’ll explore all the key concepts that underlie Ruby on Rails. Ultimately, though, you need to begin building sites with it to really understand it. There’s a variety of good books and online resources available, many of which you’ll find listed in the show notes at learningrails.com.”

Actually this is from the transcript of the podcast . You can view the podcast here

Learning Flex and RoR simultaneously can be a hard Job for anyone especially for those who with years of designing experience but little or no programming experience.

Colin Moock has taken some pains to explain whether ActionScript is hard or not in this article titled ActionScript 3.0: Is It Hard or Not.

Well my opinion is (after reading the article and the ongoing public debate in the shape of comments and counter comments ) that end users never bother to see in which language the application is written.They just want the application to solve their problems and not force them to learn something new just to use it.