November 2010

Drupal Web Services Overview

Echodittolabs has a great and easy to understand write up about Drupal and web services.   If you ever need to interact with Drupal with an external application it looks like this is the best way to do it.

Blizzard's Web Art

As a web designer/developer I am always in awe of Blizzard's attention to art on their websites... even in sites that aren't main portals to their games and news.  The latest Darkmoone Faire Fortune page is incredible.  They have beautiful art in the header, footer, and throughout the page without making it seem overwhelming.  Each subpage has awesome custom art and also includes a different footer.  No other game company I've seen pays as much attention to web art as Blizzard, which I respect.

Disabling the backspace key on a page with jQuery

I had an issue with a multi-page form recently where Internet Explorer would go back a page immediately upon hitting the backspace key.  If you accidentally do this while not in a text field you'll lose your form data.  Other browsers actually ask you if you want to resend data when you go back.  The solution was to disable the backspace key on my form page.  I accomplished this with the following Javascript (requires jQuery):

Redirect webform submissions to a dynamic URL in Drupal 6

If you need a way to redirect webform submissions to a dynamic URL in Drupal 6, using the Webform PHP module can work well with Webform 3.x.  I recommend only using post processing conditionals on select fields if possible with Webform PHP since you need to enable the permission to "use PHP for additional processing" for users who submit webforms (typically anonymous).

Here's the process:

Vilepickle's Weekly Link Digest 11/5/2010

Thoughts on programming languages

I've been expanding my programming language base lately.  Being a web developer, I don't have an immediate need to learn other languages.  However, learning them seems to pass time and it doesn't seem like a worthless endeavor.  Who knows, being the one who creates the next "killer app" could be worth it.  Here's an overview of some of the languages I've been experimenting with: