Brettia

I am too busy to even blog, but I’m blogging anyway. I don’t even know why I blog anymore, probably more for personal pride than anything. I’ve been doing this successfully for seven months now, but it feels like seven days. I am continually amazed by my determination to keep writing, even after long absences, like over winter break.

Oh, by the way, I’ve got a keycount of over one million now. After this week, I should be pushing 1.2 million, at my current rate. I now have three clients, one of which is interested in being hosted, another which I’m freelancing for, and another which only needs site maintenance. My good friend and teacher (sort of), Mr. Trapani, has a brother who runs a web design/hosting firm. I can sum him up in three words: he uses Dreamweaver. Which is a step above using FrontPage, but a step below “hard core” coding, using just Notepad or some other basic editor.

Before I continue, let me note that I think rather highly of several known FP and DW users, I just don’t agree with their usage of that software. Admittedly, Dreamweaver does a pretty good job. FrontPage…don’t even get me started. I’d rant like I did back when I found proffs.nu.
But there are two issues that tick me off: standards compliance and control. FrontPage is not standards compliant at all, mainly because it’s a Microsoft product and Microsoft has a general disdain for all rules it doesn’t make itself. Dreamweaver has improved greatly with the new MX 2004 product suite, so it’s all right. Bear in mind that I haven’t used either of these products much, having uninstalled them soon after opening them for the first time when I found out how complicated they can be.

Some features are truly useful, like built-in FTP and project capability. But I don’t need much else. I need syntax highlighting for HTML, CSS, SQL, and PHP, customizable font and colors, and, if possible, PHP debugging. FrontPage is again unsatisfactory because it is a Microsoft product, this time because Microsoft won’t put PHP support into it. (Microsoft is the main backer of ASP, which stands for A Stupid Programming language. Really, why would you need to program both in Java style and in VB .Net style?)

Anyway, FrontPage is out. Dreamweaver is good when used well, and when the outputted code is checked for errors and compliance issues. No one is able to always write perfectly formatted, perfectly compliant XHTML, but Dreamweaver can, in most cases, help you get closer to that goal.

I would like Dreamweaver even more if it wasn’t so hard to manipulate the code it outputs. My second client is a family friend who owns a golf business. Their site was done two years ago in Dreamweaver, and never updated. Now I am charged with the task of updating the site, and I have to fumble through the horribly capitalized, DOCTYPE-less, JavaScript-stuffed, unquoted mess of Dreamweaver MX (the first MX, not MX 2004). This was such a headache that I found it easier to just start from scratch.

Before I forget, a list of all the stuff I have to do this week:
Task - Client - Reason - Priority - Hours Until Completion
Work on Bloop - Me - I’m tired of MovableType! - 7 - Hundreds (I’ve put in about a hundred already)
Freelance Work - Jim Trapani - Money! (and experience) - 9 - 5-10
Write Epic for English - Ms. Hart / Ms. Kulinsky - Um…GPA? - 9 - 10-ish (with poster)
Golf Site - Ray Adams - Money! (and headaches) - 9 - 3-ish
DMUMC - My Church - Out of the Goodness of My Heart (and in the interest of getting clients from church) - 5 - Not Much
Other Homework - Various Teachers - I have to - 3 - I dunno.

Note that homework (other than projects) has fallen to a three on the priority list. Frankly, I no longer care. Outlining chapters in social studies is a waste of time, as is doing “idiot packets” in biology, as is reading The Odyssey in English. I’ll still do it, but I’ll procrastinate or push it back as far as possible. I’ve also found that I can get most of my homework done in class (especially in biology and geometry) if I work fast enough.

Eeeee. I’ve suddenly lost the will to blog. Perhaps inspiration for something better will come soon. For now, some interesting PHP statistics:
PHP is found on 14.7 million domains, and is the leading Apache module, with five million installations, beating the next highest contender, OpenSSL, by two million installations. So much for Perl.