Aptana – Making FTP in Eclipse better!
While its kinda funny but good all at the same time; Generally I like using Dreamweaver for an IDE but when away from my computer I don't have use of it, so I look and I try all sorts of different IDEs. One I like which isn't a IDE per say but has the support for it is Eclipse...
The downfall to Eclipse for me is the lack of FTP support. While you can get a plugin for WebDAV and FTP; it is not very good, it works but it bothers me because it does work how I would like it too ^_^
One I kind of used off and on was PSPad, not exactly what i like FTP wise but you are able to open a file off a FTP Server and edit it in temporary space and when saved it saves back to the server, nice and simple but still lacking.
So I looked some more and I don't know how i kept missing it over and over and over again. I found Aptana, it geared towards AJAX but the nice thing about Aptana Studio is that you can download it as a standalone application or as a plugin for Eclipse. Aptana also has addins for PHP, Ruby on Rails, Adobe AIR, and Apple iPhone development.
But my favorite part is the built in support for FTP AND SFTP! similar that of Dreamweaver... but free and in Eclipse.
GO CHECK IT OUT NOW! It's open source and FREE!
Template v0.2.3
I posted a few days ago about making a template for an End of Day Report, here is an update on the progress.
Well simple put... I quickly gave up on the whole copy and paste thing for the short term solution cause in simpleton terms is sucked ass. I instead just wrote a basic page to email the Template from Business Objects using PHP in about 5min. So much simpler and less annoying then trying to figure out what Office is going to do with something. The part that I don't get is why doesn't MS Word show you the same thing whether you copy it from a Web Browser or if you have it emailed as HTML? They are both HTML and contain the same code, why does it convert/recognize it differently?
I guess the next step will be an interface... Interfaces are fun....
Ohh and I am trying to remember a book about design/interfaces but I cannot remember it for the life of me. If I remember the cover right, it is a white book and has a picture of a red tea pot on the front of it. If you've seen this book... let me know
Template v0.0.4
I am currently working as a Network Analyst, with this position we do quite a few reports that can be tedious :) I've been asked to create a template for our End of Day report in whichever way I see fit.
Currently the whole report is done in Microsoft Word/Outlook; you take the previous day’s report; take out what no longer needs to be there and then copy the table, paste it in the appropriate section, and edit the content to be what is needed. That’s not so bad, right? Well it isn't, but it shouldn't be mundane and tedious and it could become a little trouble for the person doing it as they would be working the graveyard and not be too familiar with what has happened throughout the day and may miss things that would be good for the report.
Ideally I would like to create this project with a little PHP pulling data from MySQL outputting the content as ether HTML/XML and then styling it with CSS and using PHP to email those that need be in the loop. But right now we are just doing something that is quick and “easier”. We are using a program called Business Objects to tie into our Ticketing software with a plug-in, we can pull any data that we would like to see on the report and then format it to what we would like to see. I have not had a chance to sit down and see what the program can do for me.
So we make a template with HTML and CSS. Perfect! Looks good, the process takes a few minutes plus some manual rearranging once in awhile, but none the less it is nothing compared to the few hours. So what is the catch? Well like I said above ideally we would be using PHP or something alike but currently we are not, so we are still left copying the webpage and pasting into Outlook to be emailed to the various people and groups AND Outlook or Word is not recognizing the CSS, I would say it is half recognizing it. Some elements are being displayed properly others are being shown in a 36px font! Quiet ugly if you ask me. So now we need to find out if Word is just unaware of these tags or if it is possible to use them or do I need to go back to HTML4.0 :) to where I know Word will see the light.
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