Notepad Baby!

[iamnafets]

I would like to know how many other webmasters out there do their site design COMPLETELY in notepad. Yes, flash for flash and whatever for image editing but everything else notepad. Please post a link so I can see. I get great satisfaction seeing something pretty coming out of such a low level utility. Extra points if you use PHP or a server-side langauge and use a text file database instead of a wussy MySQL database.

BTW:
http://www.cryptoniterobotics.com is our site.

[sanddrag]

Hey CRyptonite! Remember us from Phoenix? We were in the same hotel. Anyway, that's pretty good for only notepad. One thing I would change, your green on the page is not the same as your buttons and capes, change it to that. Also, I didn't see your team number on there anywhere.

[Rickertsen2]

Originally Posted by iamnafets

I would like to know how many other webmasters out there do their site design COMPLETELY in notepad. Yes, flash for flash and whatever for image editing but everything else notepad. Please post a link so I can see. I get great satisfaction seeing something pretty coming out of such a low level utility. Extra points if you use PHP or a server-side langauge and use a text file database instead of a wussy MySQL database.

BTW:
http://www.cryptoniterobotics.com is our site.

That is really sick lol. Notepad thats crazy, but still understandable. Databases in text files. I'l admit, i've done that for small scripts like polls, and such, but anything larger is inefficient, counterproductive, and just plain stupid. i ask: WHY???? I used to be a notepad freak, but then i woke up. Why fight something that is there to help you jut to be stubborn. Please explain why lack of syntax highlighting etc, is advantageous. I'm terribly confused.

[iamnafets]

Lol! Sorry Sandrag, I don't remember you (because I'm a first year, yet got complete dibs on designing the whole website) . But I hope to see you at the upcoming competition. And Rickertsen, nice graphic!!!! I LOVE IT!!! WHY ISNT IT ON YOUR WEBSITE?! Now, to the question, as for syntax highlighting, dreamweaver, the works. First of all, $PHP+$editors!="chewy notepad goodness". It's really hard to make anything remotely editable in an editor (prove me wrong please). And specifically syntax highlighting, every "PHP Editor" I've found either costs like $50, or does the tabs totally wrong. And tabs are everything in code. One does it with 4 and not 5, one makes 4 tabs for one tab button push. Ugh! If someone points me to a good editor, I might be converted, but notepad is so good! And with XP they added a "Goto Line" feature which is invaluable. Lastly, text databases are very inefficient. But they are easily portable (one server to the next), can be edited with everyones favorite NOTEPAD in a jiffy, and I'm far too lazy to learn MySQL. That's all folks!

Sidenote: VI and emacs for linux and jotpad or whatever ghetto name for macs works too.

[UngsFree]

If you want something powerful enough to do syntex highlighting, and yet still be able to code HTML/PHP/CSS the old fashion way, I'd recommend checking out "programmers notepad", its basically a 'suped' up notepad. I think the site is www.pnotepad.org; its a sourceforge project so you might want to check there.

Regards,
UngsFree

[Rickertsen2]

You really must check out: http://sourceforge.net/projects/devphp I have tried many editors and DEV-PHP is truly gold. TRY IT!! If tabs bother you, it even has adjustable tabs. lol. As far as learning MySQL goes, it sounds intimidating, but really isn't and is well worth it. To tell you the truth using text files is MUCH more difficult.
here is a MySQL code example which generates the the calendar on our website. its quite simple:

PHP Code:

<?php
        $dbh = mysql_connect ("localhost", "username goes here", "password here") or die ('the database has gone to hell: ');
        mysql_select_db ("geargrin_geargrin", $dbh);
        $query = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM `calendar` ORDER BY year, month, day", $dbh);
        while ($result = mysql_fetch_array($query)) {
          $description = $result['description'];
          $location = $result['location'];
          
          $year = $result['year'];
          $month = $result['month'];
          $day = $result['day'];
          print("<tr>\n");
          print("<td width=100px class=\"calendar_box\"><div class=\"date\"> $month/$day/$year </div></td>\n");
          print("<td width=300px class=\"calendar_box\"><div class=\"description\"> $description </div></td>\n");
          print("<td width=150px class=\"calendar_box\"><div class=\"description\"> $location </div></td>\n");
          print("</tr>");
        }
        ?>

[iamnafets]

Thanks, I'll try out both of those editors. As for my code, I wrote 2 scripts, filewriter and filereader so all I have to do is say explode(";:;",Filreader(day)) and I've got the array with all the data. But that is quite small code for a calendar. Very nice. Mine looks like this:

<?php
if(###############)){
	$userteam=UserTeam($robotuser);
	$now=getdate();
	if(!$curmon){
		$curmon=$now["mon"];
	}
	if($curmon>7){
		$year=2003;
	}else{
		$year=2004;
	}
	$months=array("January","February","March","April","May","June","July","August","September","October","November","December");
	$weekdays=array("Monday"=>1,"Tuesday"=>2,"Wednesday"=>3,"Thursday"=>4,"Friday"=>5,"Saturday"=>6,"Sunday"=>7);
	$content.="<h1><center>Calendar</center></h1>";
	$teams=UserTeam($robotuser);
	$content.="<table width=600 border=0 frame=box rules=none cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0><tr><td valign=bottom><h2>";
	if($curmon==1){
		$content.="<a href=index.php?page=calendar&curmon=12><< </a>";
	}else{
		$content.="<a href=index.php?page=calendar&curmon=";
		$content.= $curmon-1;
		$content.= "><< </a>";
	}
	$content.=$months[$curmon-1]." $year";
	if($curmon==12){
		$content.="<a href=index.php?page=calendar&curmon=1> >></a>";
	}else{
		$content.="<a href=index.php?page=calendar&curmon=";
		$content.= $curmon+1;
		$content.= "> >></a>";
	}
	$content.="</h2></td><td nowrap valign=bottom align=right><table border=0 cellpadding=1 cellspacing=1><tr><td nowrap bgcolor=660000 width=50 align=center><font size=-5>Not Pertianing to You</td><td bgcolor=000066 width=50 nowrap align=center><font size=-4>Pertaining to You</td></tr></table></td></tr></table>";
	$contents=ReadDirectory("Data/Calendar/".$months[$curmon-1]."/");
	if($contents){
		foreach($contents as $key=>$file){
			$theday=explode(";:;",FileReader("Data/Calendar/".$months[$curmon-1]."/".$file));
			foreach($theday as $key=>$value){
				if($value)$calendar[$file][]=explode("+=-",$value);
			}
		}
	}
	//Get day of week for first day
	$then=getdate(mktime(0,0,0,$curmon,1,$year));
	$dowfirst=$weekdays[$then["weekday"]];
	$content.="<table width=600 border=0 cellpadding=1 cellspacing=1><tr>";
	foreach($weekdays as $key=>$value){
		$content.="<td width=85 bgcolor=006600><center>$key</center></td>";
	}
	$content.="</tr>";
	if($curmon==4 or $curmon==6 or $curmon==11){
		$maxdays=30;
	}else if($curmon==2){
		if($now["year"]%4==0){
			$maxdays=29;
		}else{
			$maxdays=28;
		}
	}else{
		$maxdays=31;
	}
	$currentwday=1;
	while($currentwday<$dowfirst){
		$content.="<td></td>";
		$currentwday++;
	}
	for($x=1;$x<=$maxdays;$x++){
		$content.="<td height=50 align=center valign=center bgcolor=";
		$escierto=false;
		if($calendar[$x]){
			foreach($calendar[$x] as $key=>$value){
				$hello=ParseTeam($calendar[$x][$key][4]);
				for($y=1;$y<=15;$y++){
					if($hello[$y]==1 && $userteam[$y]==1){
						$escierto=true;
					}
				}
			}
			if($escierto){
				$content.="000066";
			}else{
				$content.="660000";
			}
		}else{
			$content.="white";
		}
		//END COLOR CODING STUFF
		$content.="><font color=";
		if(!$calendar[$x]){
			$content.="black";
		}else{
			$content.="white";
		}
		$content.=">";
		if($calendar[$x]){
			$content.="<a href=\"index.php?page=calendar&curmon=$curmon&view=$x\">$x</a>";
		}else{
			$content.="$x";
		}
		$content.="</font></td>";
		if($currentwday>=7){
			$content.="</tr><tr>";
			$currentwday=0;
		}
		$currentwday++;
	}
	$content.="</tr></table><center>- <a href=index.php?page=addevent>Add an Event</a> - <br>";
	if($view){
		$allday=explode(";:;",FileReader("Data/Calendar/".$months[$curmon-1]."/$view"));
		foreach($allday as $key=>$value){
			$event=explode("+=-",$value);
			$content.="<table border=1 frame=box rules=none cellpadding=1 cellspacing=1><tr><td bgcolor=006600 width=150><font color=white>Subject:</td><td>$event[0]</td></tr><tr><td bgcolor=006600 width=150><font color=white>Time:</td><td width=150>$event[1]</td></tr><tr><td bgcolor=006600 width=150><font color=white>Location:</td><td width=450>$event[2]</td></tr><tr><td colspan=2>$event[3]</td></tr><tr><td colspan=2 align=center> - <a href=index.php?page=reschedule&day=$view&id=$key&month=";
$content.=$months[$curmon-1];
$content.=">Reschedule</a> -</td></tr></table>";
		}
	}
}else{
$content.="<h1><center>Restricted</center></h1>You are denied access to this page until you login.  Please use the navigation on the left to login.";
}
	
?>

And I've got 2 other files to manage reschedules and adding events . Man I've got no life.

EDIT: I checked out the Dev-PHP IDE, very nice I like it. All the standard functions, line numbers, and the right TABBING! I may be converted.

[Aignam]

::raises hand::

Though most people I talk to are partial to Fireworks for tables and such, Notepad is my one and only.

[Trashed20]

http://www.lightningrobotics.com

When I first started coding this I used only Notepad. It is completly hand writen php/mysql. Text files are really hard on the server and can be very slow. Mysql works for our uses. I like it.

As the site started to grow we got many more pages, and haveing 18 instances of notepad open just didn't work. I got a copy of dreamweaver and use it as a text editor. I only use it because it has tabbed files and Ctrl+S saves. Very useful to switch back and forth between files. The syntax hylighting isn't all that great, and doesn't do html highlighting in echo tags to its pretty useless. So, its still a notepad of sorts, with so many functions i never use. I still write it all by hand to keep the code clean. Front page turned me off to any cookie cutter programs.

Duke13370 now webmasters the site and i'm not sure what he uses, but i'm assuming a text editor of some sort.

[iamnafets]

I've noticed unless you are using them wrong, IE one huge text file for all your data, you really don't run into those performance problems. All my pages load in under 20 ms on a 450 mhz server, I wonder if anyone has benchmarked this.

[Gui Cavalcanti]

Yeah, our webmaster does the site completely in notepad too:

Home of the Mech Techs

Fun stuff.

[iamnafets]

Cool! the only thing I have to ask you is what is the little dude on the bottom right-hand corner? And another thing, the comics are really cool, in fact I happen to be one of the idiot soldering on the floor when I picked it up by the wrong end and had this nasty swell/burn/pus blob on the palm of my hand. Ya... But the second comic, well ya...

[piotrm]

Does emacs count as plain text editing ? It has great syntax highlighting, works very well for perl and html, or anything else since one can make up a custom syntax highlighting scheme to use in it.

[iamnafets]

You may be right, I was on Linux for a very short time and maybe I've mixed up emacs for something else. Meh. I stand corrected.

[Noah]

Until very recently notepad was my only editor. Recently, however, I started dealing with files coming from a linux environment, and notepad doesn't like thier line breaks...

So, I have recently become converted to Crimson Editor. It's basically a notepad with a few extra features: php syntax highlighting, being able to open multiple files at once in one window via tabs, significantly better file management. (It detects when other programs alter a file you have open! How often have you had two copies of notepad running at the same time editing the same page and overwritten something you did earlier?)

You should notice, however, that none of these features do anything in terms of wysiwyg editing or such nonsense. As of yet, no wysuwyg editor has an interface that is intuitive enough that it can match my production speed typing raw html.

It's a matter of knowing what you want. Sure, I could design in Dreamweaver, but I always end up wanting to tweak some obscure table setting or style property and having to wade through too much junk to do it. Now, especially with the added functionality of Crimson, I can fly reasonably well through source code.