| The Official Newsletter of the SitePoint Community Forums | |
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In This Issue...
Editor's ViewPoint Our member of the month, erik.j, takes the stand for his dedicated work helping out SitePoint designers. On the programming side, we have an interview with jimfraser, who talks us through his dealings in the JavaScript forums, and his life outside SitePoint. Our staff members present an interesting piece on SQL construction, and some rockin' music signatures. Speaking of staff, check out the Community Mailbag section to find out a little about what being a staff member is like! Hope you enjoy this issue as much as we enjoyed making it. Remember that you can send me a forum message at any time (chris_fuel) if you have questions or suggestions. Chris White (chris_fuel) Community Crier Managing Editor
What's New?Forum Upgraded to vBulletin 3.7.1At the end of May, our forums were updated to the latest version of Vbulletin. There’s a few bug fixes, security patches and administrative updates in the latest version , but there’s also a heap of cool new features like photo galleries, social groups, buddy lists, and customizable profiles. Read more about the new forum features in this thread . Adobe Air Contest WinnersThe winners are finally announced! Congratulations to Jack Herrington on winning the Best Adobe Flex article award, and Akash Mehta for winning the Best Adobe AIR article. Jack did a wonderful piece called "Build 3d Configurators With Papervision and Flex," and Akash Mehta helped out the HTML/JS enthusiasts with his article, "Adobe AIR: HTML-based desktop applications made easy." The winners receive a copy of Adobe CS3 Web Premium. Congratulations to both! Also congratulations go to those who scored honorable mentions: Jamie McDaniel and Jason Foss. Jamie McDaniel wrote an article titled, "Creating a Reusable Custom Component in Flex;" Jason's was called "Using Adobe AIR To Manage Your CMS." Both honorable mentions receive a PDF of their choice from the SitePoint Library. Read more about the results and congratulate the winners here. Member of the MonthCongratulations to erik.j on being our May Member of the Month! This accolade is indeed well deserved, as erik.j has done an excellent job in the CSS forums helping people with complex CSS issues. Member InterviewjimfraserThis month, I had a chance to talk with jimfraser about his work on the JavaScript forums, where he helps out with IE-based issues and other JS oddities. Crier: Thanks for taking the time to do this interview. To start, can you tell us how you got into web development? jimfraser: I've been in software development for 20 years now. About ten years ago the company I was working for wanted to create a web front end to one of their existing client/server applications, and the task fell to me. I wrote ASP and JavaScript pages that ran under Internet Explorer 3 and Netscape Navigator 3. Crier: So how did you come across SitePoint, and what made you stick around? jimfraser: Fast-forward six years and I'm living in Santiago, Chile, working at a small tech company. I was writing an HTML music player for a Chilean internet radio station. I was having trouble with one of the components and several of my myriad Google searches for help turned up SitePoint forums, where there was a level of quality that I hadn't found on other forums. Although I never did get that one problem resolved, I recognized the wealth of knowledge that SitePoint offered, especially in the area of cross-browser HTML and JavaScript. Up until this point I'd programmed almost exclusively for IE, and knew relatively little about the way that the other browsers worked. I started answering peoples' posts, and found that I learned a heck of a lot. Crier: Since you dabble quite a bit in the JavaScript forums, what's your experience like with it? How do you deal with the common cross browser issues? jimfraser: I've always liked the unique or unusual questions that are asked in the forums by people trying to find a way to do something different and interesting with a browser. Those are the posts that I'm most likely to contribute to. To be honest I'm not the greatest with cross-browser problems, but fortunately the JS forum is populated with several regulars who are very capable of making a piece of code work well with all browsers. I have always been a bit of an IE fanboy, probably because back when I started web development, IE was a much friendlier browser to work with. It had fewer unexpected errors and was easier to script, and it offered features that other browsers didn't implement. Crier: In the realm of web development, what do you think is an important driving technology these days? jimfraser: Innovation. Just look at the new technologies that are being added to our browsers, along with the advanced sites that are being developed. Take AJAX for example: it's now possible to develop a complex multi-tiered web application that lives within one static HTML page, and uses plain old JavaScript to do most of the work. Kudos to Microsoft and Outlook Web Access for inventing and implementing it, but it was Google who made a point of showing off that technology with Gmail and Autocomplete, and that's when it really exploded. Standard-based browsing is certainly another important technology. Unfortunately, I believe that it's in direct conflict with innovation. Browser manufacturers are struggling to turn their products into standards-compliant browsers. I hope that one day soon this gets resolved to everyone's satisfaction, so that the manufacturers can go back to inventing new technology for us to play with. Crier: What do you do outside of SitePoint and programming? Do you have any hobbies? jimfraser: Yes, I make and restore furniture, and build other stuff. I enjoy playing the drums. I like sports, especially soccer (blame my years in South America). I love to travel, meet new people, and understand foreign cultures. Crier: If you had a chance to visit another country, which one would you be most likely to pick? jimfraser: Good segue Chris! Very likely I'll choose Norway, Sweden, or Italy. Or maybe all of them. Why? I've never been to those places, and I admire certain aspects of people I know from each of those countries. Thanks for taking the time to talk with us, jimfraser. We hope you get to visiting those awesome places one day! Team TipSQL Table JoinsIn SQL, the following two methods of table joins are often confused: The first is an implicit join using comma-separated list of tables, and the second is an explicit join using JOIN syntax. So, which of these is the best approach to use? In this thread, Dan Grossman explains that using the explicit join syntax ensures that the proper relationships are established. Using the implicit form does not enforce a relationship, which can lead to possible missed data. Sigs Around TownDan Shulz: Listen to My Last.fm playlist -- http://www.last.fm/listen/user/danschulz/playlist jusjusjusjus: SA Music Blog -- http://www.samusicblog.co.za/ LazyP: Cyclones -- http://www.cyclones.se/ Hartmann: Hey, Hartmann has a Last.fm, too! -- http://www.last.fm/user/ssegraves masm50: AudioMelody -- http://www.audiomelody.com/ Atomm: GamersRadio --http://www.gamersradio.com/ Community MailbagA thread has now been opened for the Community Mailbag. This thread lets users ask different questions about the Crier, staff or any SitePoint-related material. If your question is particularly interesting, we'll feature it in a Crier issue, but even if it doesn't get in, the thread will always be linked to for others to see. Our first question comes from php_daemon: "There are a lot of mysteries, rumors, myths, and legends going around about the colorful screen names of the forums, i.e. the forums staff. One of the most common myths is the salaries that our mentors, advisors and others get for their hard work done at the forums. So, how do you get this job, what's it like to wear a badge, what hard work you do behind the scenes, and what you get in return for doing it?" Our friendly and helpful forum admin Sarah took up the task of answering the question: "It isn't as exciting as it sounds. Basically none of the staff here get paid, from mentors right through to me the admin. The only people that get paid are SitePoint Head Office staff. The rest of us do it because we love it so! How you become staff? There's no sure-fire way of getting onto the staff, but you must be active, pleasant, helpful, courteous at all times, and almost never lose your cool. It's hard work, and there's lots of it. Basically, we try to keep track of every thread and post that is made here (not an easy job), as well as resolving arguments and issues between members. Then, each staff member has more responsibilities -- some are our eyes and ears, some take an active role in coaching the members into being more helpful, and so on. What do we get in return? Job satisfaction!" (I'm sometimes rewarded with pictures of fried turkey, but you didn't hear that from me...) Support Our Sponsors:Don't forget to check out our current sponsors: TWING – Get Your Community DiscoveredTwing is a new site dedicated to helping millions of Internet users search and discover the online communities and forums that match their interests. 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It's already halfway into the year, and the community is still going strong. Recently, we announced the winners of the Adobe Air contest, Jack Herrington and Akash Mehta. The competition initiated a great direction for some community members to take advantage of this new and exciting technology. 
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