specializing in digital media technologies

I’m a big fan of Mac OS X: it’s arguably the best operating system I’ve ever used. Part of my affection comes from the fact that it just works and part comes from how unbelievably fantastic some of Apple’s applications are (I’m specifically thinking about iTunes, iPhoto, iDVD, etc. here). From a work perspective, it’s so useful to me that Mac OS X is Unix, so I can treat it just as I would most of the servers I use for Web hosting. That being said, you don’t have to mess around with Mac OS X from a Unix perspective if you don’t have the need. Anyway, this post isn’t really about Mac OS X but rather about QuickSilver, one of my favorite applications that runs on Mac OS X. QuickSilver is a free (free!) utility that can be used to launch applications, perform an Internet search, control iTunes, run calculations, and much, much more. It’s only real downside is that it’s so powerful that it’s hard to use it to its full advantage. Fortunately, I’ve found some useful resources towards that end… (continue reading…)

One of the sessions I attended at the 2008 Adobe MAX conference in San Francisco was Creating Attractive, Usable, and Accessible Forms, presented by Rob Huddleston. I went to this session as part of my current drive to improve my user interface (UI) and Web accessibility skills. In this post I’ve collected a few do’s and dont’s that I jotted down during Huddleston’s presentation. As was the case for me, you’ll likely already know some of these, some might serve as reminders of something you already knew, and hopefully a couple will make you think about rewriting some of your HTML forms today. (continue reading…)

The question of which PHP framework people prefer just came up again (it comes up like every three months or so) on PHP’s general mailing list. There are many considerations when it comes to selecting a framework:

• Features
• Available documentation
• Performance
• Compatibility
• Maturity and developmental progress

The specific issue I want to discuss here is performance, measured quantitatively using benchmarks. (continue reading…)