WEB DESIGN BLOG

Nov 30, 2006

Web Utilities

Considering publishing my first utility for general consumption. I have been using the HIOX Events Calendar in the calendar section for the Champions Family Fitness website. While this is a decent calendaring solution, it lacks several things. First of all, there are no provisions for the user to be able to add any HTML markup in WYSIWYG fashion; everything is plain text. Second, the data is stored in php strings instead of a database which also causes problems. Even with "addslashes()" there are issues with syntax errors.

In the stock version of the HIOX calendar, they provide an interface to update the calendar, which, of course doesn't have the same look and feel of my site, with no way to configure it. There are many functions which I find were not needed. They also provided me with password protection. Since I don't have multiple users and I don't really trust generic PHP validation solutions, I ended up stripping this, (replacing it with a password-protected directory provided by my hosting company) and other functions out of my copy of the code and made other changes such as CSS control of colors, borders and such.

I plan on making a similar calendar, but with some differences.

Provide a calendar class instead of just sourcing a PHP file.
Have all features configurable by code.
Use pjjTextBase to store all data instead of php files. (With PJJ's permission, of course)
Use CSS to maintain all visual settings.
Use a WYSIWYG editor (in extremely light mode) for the interface.
Header names and number of columns will be configurable. In the HIOX calendar, this was not available in the free version. This plus the column width will be stored in the pjjTextBase file.
Since it will be a class, not just sourcing a file, there will be support for multiple calendars. With the HIOX calendar, you need to have multiple installations to achieve this.
Have an option to hide expired entries when viewing and delete them when in administration mode. Old entries can also be shown and kept as well.

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WEB DESIGN BLOG Nov 30, 2006 Web Utilities Considering publishing my first utility for general consumption. I have been using the HIOX Events Calendar in the calendar section for the Champions Family Fitness website. While this is a decent calendaring solution, it lacks several things. First of all, there are no provisions for the user to be able to add any HTML markup in WYSIWYG fashion; everything is plain text. Second, the data is stored in php strings instead of a database which also causes problems. Even with "addslashes()" there are issues with syntax errors. In the stock version of the HIOX calendar, they provide an interface to update the calendar, which, of course doesn't have the same look and feel of my site, with no way to configure it. There are many functions which I find were not needed. They also provided me with password protection. Since I don't have multiple users and I don't really trust generic PHP validation solutions, I ended up stripping this, (replacing it with a password-protected directory provided by my hosting company) and other functions out of my copy of the code and made other changes such as CSS control of colors, borders and such. I plan on making a similar calendar, but with some differences. Provide a calendar class instead of just sourcing a PHP file. Have all features configurable by code. Use pjjTextBase to store all data instead of php files. (With PJJ's permission, of course) Use CSS to maintain all visual settings. Use a WYSIWYG editor (in extremely light mode) for the interface. Header names and number of columns will be configurable. In the HIOX calendar, this was not available in the free version. This plus the column width will be stored in the pjjTextBase file. Since it will be a class, not just sourcing a file, there will be support for multiple calendars. With the HIOX calendar, you need to have multiple installations to achieve this. Have an option to hide expired entries when viewing and delete them when in administration mode. Old entries can also be shown and kept as well.