array(PHP,MySQL, Flex, jQuery, Adobe Edge, Linux, Drupal, Drush, WordPress, CSS, Joomla, Flash Builder);

About this site

A note about this website. This site uses responsive markup, it's a Zen sub-theme , so that it appears appropriately on handhelds. Resize the screen to see the collapsing and stacking elements. The animated butterfly (mouseover to engage - mouseout to halt) was created in Flash with a standard tween, and exported as a spritesheet and javascript code using Createjs, then coded manually to rig the mouse functions. This is a Drupal 7 website installed with Drush and managed from the command line.

Projects

Elizabeth Kubler Ross Foundation

Pulse of the Planet

RCenedella Gallery

Kid's Science Challenge

Art Bastard

Apparel News

Labor 411

Christopher Grimes Gallery

Chimes Air Application

Endorsements

Bob Reselman

Peggy O'Connor is one of the most unique personalities that I have met in my twenty plus years of software development activity. She is devoted to doing quality work that matters. She has a exemplary grasp of developing enterprise level web based applications in a fast paced organization. She is a continuous learner and possesses an open mind. Unlike more developers that tend to so specialized that they lose the forest 'fore the trees, Peggy's system administration skills are on par with her ability to write code. Such competency is hard to come by.

I had a lot of fun working with Peggy and would do so again without hesitation.

Bob Reselman is a Senior Technical Writer and Technical Editor for Edmunds Inc. Edmunds Inc. is a leading publisher of high volume, high availability, state of the art, Java based Web sites dedicated to empowering the automotive consumer. Bob is the author of numerous books and articles on computer programming. Bob was the CTO of ITFex, a Wall Street startup dedicated to the providing on line products for International Trade Finance Community. Also, Bob was the Platform Architect, Consumer Products for the computer manufacturer, Gateway.

Dave Drekter

I recently had occasion to search our records and was astounded to find that Peggy and I have been working together since the end of 2002! Put succinctly, Peggy's a gem. She has a real talent for understanding and translating the needs of non-programmer types like me into computer code that accomplishes our objective, and I find that a rare quality in the programming community. She's easy to work with, and stays ahead of the curve on all the new technology so our large e-commerce application is, and will continue to be, cutting edge. Bottom line, I can recommend Peggy without reservation.

Dave Drekter, Pres.
www.powerfulhosting.com
www.onlinemenuordering.com

Hilary Lentini - Lentini Design

Peggy is fantastic at what she does. Highly-knowledgeable, responsive, and easy to work with.

We've worked with her for several years now, and she's always delivered a high-quality product for us. Our clients are pleased, and we're pleased with Peggy for making us look good to our clients!

Hilary Lentini
Lentini Design
1626 Virginia Road
Los Angeles, CA 90019
323-766-8090
f 323-766-8022

Ann Zumwinkle - Zumwinkle.com

The artist/magician behind the curtain!

Peggy OConnor developed several complex database features for our Pulse of the Planet (pulseplanet.com) and Kids' Science Challenge (kidsciencechallenge.com) web sites, including a dynamically delivered module for thousands of audio programs, a customized e-store and membership branch with downloadable curriculum and products, registration and entry systems, and voting and tabulating systems. We relied on Peggy through every step of the yellow brick road.

Ann Zumwinkle
www.zumwinkle.com

Random Notes

jQuery Note

There's something tricky I learned today. When you set a radio button on a form programmatically, meaning that you use code to set its state, then if you want to change it to something else programmatically, you have to use the exact same code. For instance, if you set the checkbox to unchecked using $('selector').val(''); you can't set it with $('selector').attr('checked',true); So then when you want to unset it you have to use $('selector').attr('checked',false);

Adobe Flex Notes

Sometimes it is hard to find out how to do simple things when building a Flex or AIR application. It's not that the documentation is lacking. There are thousands of doc pages at Adobe, and then there are the wonderful video lessons over at Lynda.com. The problem is that there is so much, and when you have a little question, your little question's answer is just a tiny dot in a sea of information, theory, and information about information.

So... here's a teeny question note. How do you make your AIR app updateable?

Answer. When you compile your new version, edit the YourAppName-app.xml file. Make sure the version number is different from the original version number. If your original version was v1, make this one v1.01, or v2.

Here's another tiny tip. How do you send variables to a component?

<MyComp:ComponentName myuserpass="{userpass.text}" myusername="{username.text}" id="myprogram"/>

In your component, there must be a variable named "myuserpass" and "myusername". In the main app, you have to have some sort of text widget with a text attribute whose id is userpass and another one whose id is username.

Why coding is fun.

You aren't supposed to do it this way. You are supposed to be in a sterile room, with no surprises, a thick plan, and a highly detailed map. But web development is sometimes very different from developing indoors. Often you are dealing with other people's oversights and follies, and since you can't just rewrite everything, you have to figure out ways to code around a thing rather than just burning the village down. You are in the wild, stalking the ephemeral.

It is the high drama of a solitary person solving the seemingly unsolvable. You are alone, pushing through a blizzard of confusion. You don't know how you got here, and you don't know how you are going to get out. You have several options -- Google, your Safari bookshelf where you can get unlimited technical books, or you can field a question on one of your lists you participate in. If the monster you are facing down is abstract enough, you can ask a mathematician.

Panic rises, you run ahead of it. First you Google. Luck is with you, you get a couple of good prospects. You pick one, on a hunch.

The gods are kind today -- well documented sample code shines forth from the page. You grab that code, bring it back to your cave, and dissect it. After a while of chanting, prayer, and checking reference materials, you grok it.

Then you harness it up, and take it for a spin in a browser. It works. You dance a happy dance, and plod onward, into the fog.

You run smack into a tripwire, and you are on your face. Dazed, you stumble to your feet. This time it is too serious for a quick Google fix. You head for the bookshelf. You do a thorough search, and find references in 6 books. You pick one, and start reading. Four hours later, you grok it. You are back at the drawing board, this time with utter confidence. Until the next thing...

It's like being in Mission Impossible all the time.

Form sort of follows function

It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic,
Of all things physical and metaphysical,
Of all things human and all things super-human,
Of all true manifestations of the head,
Of the heart, of the soul,
That the life is recognizable in its expression,
That form ever follows function. This is the law.
-- Louis Sullivan, Architect, 1896

I have noticed that most people, when pondering a new website, begin by looking at ready made templates, other people's websites (many of which were made from ready-made templates), settle on one with their own unique modifications (such as logo), and then try to fit what they want to do into that pre-defined format.

I suggest that the opposite approach may prove more fruitful. Start with your data and your purpose. What do you want to do? Share information? Do you have a large database of inventory or information you wish to present in a friendly way? Do you wish to write often? Do you have a lot of pictures you want to show? What is your main intent? Once you have defined what it is you want to do, think about how your information could be best presented. You might need dynamically generated charts and graphs based on your data, or you might need a shopping system, or a blog format.

After you have defined your purpose, and decided on what you want to present, how, you can accessorize and emphasize with a coherent design. It is very important for the programmer, who makes things go, work very closely with the designer, who makes things look right.

This and That about PEAR Quickform Package

I posted a question on a list I participate in and this is the conversation so far. I thought the discussion had some useful information, so I'm posting it with Ed's permission:

Does anyone here have any opinions about QuickForm, the PEAR package? I am using it in a fairly big way right now, that is, the app I'm writing using QuickForm will serve as a checkout form to a store application and there are many stores which will be using it. I've used it here and there on other projects and I've worked on a project where it was the technology of choice for form construction, but I've never run across any opinions about it.

My opinion is that it is quite good, and I don't understand why it seems to be used very rarely. Maybe there's something wrong with it I just don't see. Or maybe it's just sort of obscure.

Peggy

I've built several apps out of Quickform and quickform-controller.

Best,
edg

Thanks, Ed. I'm just trying to find out what people's opinions are about it. Think it's a good way to go for form building? Any drawbacks?

Peggy

I've built several apps using a combination of DB_DataObject, HTML_Quickform and HTML_Quickform_Controller. Also, and most important, Smarty templates. The combination works very well.

Quickform generated forms are not ready for prime time, but they make an excellent prototype. Then you build a Smarty template to hold the form and use Quickform to accept the data, do the validation and execute the action function. Quickform and Smarty play well together. Quickform has the concept of plug in renderers, and smarty is accessed via one of the plugins.

Quickform_controller made excellent multipage wizards. It can make tabbed interfaces, one-way and two-way wizards, and other multi-page form flows that I haven't used.

I found the software to be stable and reliable, and when I asked questions about it on the PHP Pear list, I got good concise answers.

DB_DataObjects is another part of the team. It encapsulates the tables of a relational database (usually MySQL, of course) in some convenient objects.

I'd use all this again.

Best,
edg

Thanks so much for your response -- you've given me some ideas -- I
haven't used HTML_Quickform_Controller yet. And you are right about
Smarty--it really does finish off the job nicely -- I always use
Smarty. Every time I use Quickforms I am impressed at how good it is,
and then wonder why it isn't more widely used.

Peggy

Quickform/Smarty integration is a bit complex. Add controller, and you
have a mess, if you follow the examples.

I think the reason it doesn't get used is that there is no snappy web
site touting it and the documentation is unfriendly. It's kinda
model-view-controller, but only kinda.

L8R,
edg

What I learned over Thanksgiving

This holiday, I gave myself a mini-crash course in advanced Adobe Flex development. I learned to use the Timer class -- which is very cool because you can fire off functions after a designated amount of time has passed. Still haven't dreamed up all the things this could be useful for -- I used it in a slide show, probably the most obvious, fairly pedestrian use of this class. I'm sure I'll think up more subtle ways to use it. And I learned to create a configurable component.

This is great. To date, I've been making Flex apps by putting together building blocks and creating Actionscript functions to make things happen, mostly reading data into a DataGrid widget, and when I've needed a custom component, I've used other people's. Now I know how to make my own custom component, and how to set configurable variables and act on the values sent to the component. This opens up new doors, and paves the way for better looking, efficient, and more useful Flex apps.

The php behind this little slide show reads the copy from a database table, and the pictures from a folder, creates arrays of these two collections, and writes an XML file which is then consumed by the Flex app.

Here is a link to the current version (mind you, this is a work in progress). Right click to see the source code. http://www.mariposagraphics.com/flexdemo/

Web development is not like building a model airplane

When you create a presence on the web, you can't just pull the parts out of a box, glue it together with the language of your choice, publish, and then stand back and admire it.

It's more like going to war. You want to be well armed, and have a battle plan, but when things get gritty, you have to be able to morph with the circumstances, improvise, and be willing try out the most cutting edge whiz kid state of the art weaponry when the opportunity presents itself.

Whatever you do, you don't want to kill bystanders. You need to know enough about server technology to stay out of the way of the core of things, but if you need to make some adjustments, you need to have that knowledge as part of your kit.

And you must always remember that the web is a living thing that changes moment to moment, and you need to support that. Sometimes you have to tear down what you built, and build it again with newer stuff. More often, you have to adapt new technologies to legacy structures.

You have to be willing to take calculated risks, and have an escape plan ready.

Cowboy coding can save a lot of time, but you better have a backup.

The environment on the web is usually pretty unruly, littered with the code left behind by myriad other developers, some brilliant, and some foolish, and some downright idiotic. But this is how it is in the wild. It's not like working in the Cathedral, where everything is sanitary and orderly.

Sometimes you have the opportunity to create something pristine. That's great, as long as you build in a way to let your creation evolve.

Because it is evolve or die.

Mariposa Web Development

Developing the Web since 1993 · (323)-466-2362

About this site

Projects

jQuery Note

Adobe Flex Notes

Why coding is fun.

Form sort of follows function

This and That about PEAR Quickform Package

What I learned over Thanksgiving

Web development is not like building a model airplane