• The Things I Will Need Before Abandoning Firefox

    08-14-2009 2:17 PM

    I should start by saying that Firefox has all but driven me away.  I can no longer ignore the way the performance has continued to deteriorate with successive versions.  I'm almost ready to switch to something else until they get their act together.  But the fact is that, for me, what Firefox offers is really hard to beat.

    So this is my list of must-haves before I'll consider using another browser setup on a regular basis.  I'm a professional web developer, and like many people reading this, I'm also an internet junkie.  So this isn't going to be the typical feature set.

    High Performance and Responsiveness

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  • Why you should be using an Object Database instead of ORM: Part 1

    01-08-2009 7:03 AM

    I think traditional relational databases (RDBMS) are generally crappy for as the data store for complex dynamic web sites.  But despite the inflammatory nature of that first sentence, I'm going to try not to turn this into a rant.  Instead, I'll try to explain the problems I see and why I came to that conclusion.

    The problem with RDBMS

    First of all, I don't have a problem with RDBMS.  I think it has served us very well up to this point and will continue to do so for the forseeable future.  It's a perfectly workable solution to the problem of storing and retrieving persistent data.

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  • New Year's Resolution #1: Join the Conversation

    01-02-2009 8:18 AM

    I'm knocking out my first New Year's Resolution early.  After 4+ years as a web developer, I'm finally launching my own site.  Here's why.

    For the past several years weve seen tremendous growth in the area of web development.  As we started to regroup after the bubble burst (which I just missed), there has been a pretty dramatic shift in the way web programming is done as well as what is possible.  We've seen a paradigm shift from table layouts to semantic markup with css.  Newer and better browsers have given us a more stable environment to work in as well as new and exciting capabilties.  Someone figured out what AJAX was good for and blew everybody's mind.

    It's an exciting time to work with the web.  For the reasons stated above and for one other.  It seems to me that it's been pretty easy to follow the tide of innovation.  With this new renaissance has come an exponential increase in online media as well as professional and personal blogs dedicated to our field.  These days the flood of information comes right to your door.  We work in an industry where it's possible to stay on the cutting edge of knowledge simply by putting in a few hours of online reading a week.  Okay maybe several hours of reading a week, but you get my point.

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