What's This All About?
On this particular page, I am going to tell you what this blog is about. In case you hadn't noticed, this blog is somewhat technical and mainly devoted to various aspects of web development (nerd alert). To be specific, this will be a resource for ASP.NET and Javascript. Not only that, but I have joined the table-less army and decided to start conforming to and promoting web standards. So… if you are totally not interested in computer programming and/or web development, you might be a little disappointed with what you find here. My apologies.
It is my hope that this blog will become a never-ending experiment with my favorite web technologies. Ever since I first conceived the capabilites of the world wide web, I have been fascinated. And with all the crazy new things that are coming out, it seems like this ride is never going to end! I've always desired a way to document the trends and subtleties of the world wide web from a programming/development perspective, mainly becuase things constantly and consistently change. It is fairly difficult for me to keep track of what happened, and when. Hopefully this blog can help me out with that.
My experience on the ASP.NET forums has made it painfully obvious that people tend to struggle with the differences between Javascript and ASP.NET. I have repeated myself so many times on those forums, I hope this blog can help me document some of the common misconceptions so that I can quickly point those in need to the solution. I also want to get some of my techniques out there and hear what smarter people have to say about them. Maybe I am doing something totally wrong. I guess what I am trying to say is that I hope this blog can be a learning tool for myself as well.
How's It Work?
This blog runs on a custom engine that I conceived, designed, and implemented by myself in my spare time. It is powered by ASP.NET version 2.0 (duh). The server-side code is all written in Visual Basic. It was more work than I anticipated, but as a dedicated code junkie I could not help but enjoy the whole experience. I really did learn alot, and I am glad I chose not to settle for something pre-written such as Community Server, WordPress or MovableType. The site layout was designed and crafted by me and myself on my fabulous Gateway PC (that's right, I wouldn't be caught dead behind a Mac) running Windows XP. Only two pieces of incredible software were involved in the entire creation of this blog: Visual Studio 2005 and Photoshop CS2. I put a lot of effort into conforming to W3C standards with respect to XHTML 1.0 Transitional and Cascading Style Sheets. That turned out to be more of a task than it should have been. I wanted a fluid layout so that minimal screen space was wasted. I have a widescreen monitor and I get annoyed when I go to a web site that is a fixed layout only utilizing half of my screens real estate. I made it a goal to have this site look good in all modern screen resolutions and all modern browsers. Hell, the site even looks decent at 640x480! If you happen to come across a bug, don't try to squash it, please contact me and let me know about it (provide as much detail as possible, please). If you are using IE6 or older, don't report any bugs; you deserve a buggy web site for using such an old browser.
Ok fine, so I really can't take all the credit for this blogs architecture. I came across some very useful things that saved me time and didn't cost a dime. And for that, I must say thanks and give credit where it is due. So, here goes…
For a database management system, I decided to go with MySQL, which is free and open source. I have discovered that MySQL is surprisingly fast. And the GUI tools are really fantastic, considering the fact it is open-source. I strongly considered PostgreSQL, but I decided that I liked dolphins better than elephants.
I am also the host of this blog, which is kinda fun. If somehow I start getting a bunch of visitors, I will probably have to start paying for hosting. My server is a machine I did not pay for, running IIS 6.0 on the unbelievably stable Windows Server 2003 operating system. The machine could be classified as weak, but it gets the job done. So yeah, I guess I am in total control of this blog in every aspect imagineable. This is what I live for, baby!