When developing, we always tend to search for shortcuts to shorten the amount of time we spend. While some techniques used may harm the quality and integrity of the script you are developing, there are a few that do help you out as a developer without causing damage. We cover five techniques that can be used to cut down on development time.

Remember to subscribe to our feed for up-to-date development articles and resources!

Recycling Code

This method or technique rather happens all the time whether knowingly or not. When developing new scripts that may utilize features you have developed before for previous scripts, it is in your best interest to just copy that bit of code and paste it in your ongoing project. This saves you development and puts your retired code back to work.

Auto Complete IDE’s

While integrated development environments enhance your development environment by providing basic syntax error checks and highlighting your syntax, their auto complete feature does speed up development. For example, writing function names, loops, conditional statements, and others can be auto-completed by the IDE.

For a large project, those seconds you save add up to minutes and hours saved. While the whole idea of the auto complete saving time may sound overrated, it is the little things that enhance your development experience that save you time, whether it being the auto complete or even just the line number display.

Frameworks

There are plethoras of frameworks out that take care of a lot of the work for you. For example, many of the scripts you may create may utilize many generic things such as a database connection. Either you can spend time recreating it for your script, or you can download a good framework that completes a lot of the work for you.

If you are not too keen on the idea using frameworks other developers created, you can create your own customized framework, one that suits your needs most of the time. Furthermore, the utilization of prebuilt frameworks can save you hours of development time, therefore, it is something to consider.

Recreating the Obvious

Reinventing the wheel or recreating what is already out there and suffices for your needs wastes development time. If you are developing a forum for yourself or a for a client it is best to use one that has been already created and customize it rather than spend the time create on yourself. However, with that said, if creating one from scratch is easier depending on your situation, or is absolutely necessary, than reinventing the wheel does not quite apply to this point.

Documentation

Documenting your code is a real time saver. Many times when you are developing multiple projects at once, some code snippets get lost and it creates confusion. By documenting your code, going back to pick up from where you left off would be a lot easier as you can read the documentation above a few lines of code to get back into line. Documentation additionally makes debugging easier as you can find the code snippets you are looking for much quicker by reading through your documentation until you reach the appropriate line.

Additionally, if your work is ever transferred to other developers, or other developers transfer their projects to you, you can easily understand the code, what each snippet is doing, and why. Without proper documentation, many of the open source projects today would not be as organized as they are, neither be able to pass the project on to other developers for continued development.

To Conclude

Overall, there many different ways to speed up development, however, it completely depends on your developing style and standards as that determines what techniques best suit you and whom you are developing for.

Get this Post in PDF Format!

Here at GrindSmart we aim to facilitate first the needs of the bold who call themselves web developers and we also strive to accommodate everyone else eager to learn and find resources that will help them through their journey on learning how to efficiently and effectively develop web applications and more. This is not to say that we cater to an audience who know it all, in fact, our audience primarily consists of those who are in the beginning stages of developing a website.

This is exactly why we’ve compiled this great list of cheat sheets that will allow you to ultimately code on a higher level. Forget that we used the word “cheat” and just focus on the end game; resources that’ll help you become a better developer.

Remember to subscribe to our feed for up-to-date development articles and resources!

PHP Cheat Sheet

The PHP cheat sheet is a one-page reference sheet, listing date format arguments, regular expression syntax and common functions.

Ruby on Rails Cheat Sheet

The Ruby On Rails cheat sheet is designed to be printed on an A4 sheet of paper and live by a developers desk, to make life a bit easier. A description of what is on the cheat sheet follows, or if you are impatient, you can go straight to the full size Ruby On Rails cheat sheet.

MySQL Cheat Sheet

The MySQL cheat sheet is designed to act as a reminder and reference sheet, listing useful information about MySQL. It includes a list of the available functions in MySQL, as well as data types. It also includes a list of MySQL functions available in PHP, and a list of useful sample queries to select data from a database.

JavaScript Cheat Sheet

The JavaScript cheat sheet is designed to act as a reminder and reference sheet, listing methods and functions of JavaScript. It includes reference material for regular expressions in JavaScript, as well as a short guide to the XMLHttpRequest object.

mootools 1.2 cheat sheet

For your coding pleasure, MediaVrog just updated their cheat sheet to the new revision. It includes cheat sheet like documentation for Core, Native, Class, Element, Utilities and Request. They’ll be launching another cheatsheet which will cover FX and Plugins soon.

Scriptaculous Cheat Sheet

It was a real challenge to fit it all in on one page… and I was initially planning to cover more than just the combination effects, but as you can see there wasn’t a stitch of room left over. I didn’t even get to do anything fun with angled text or images!

HTML/XHTML in one page

This is a straight to the point and easy to read HTML cheat sheet that makes coding in HTML much simpler.

(X)HTML Elements and Attributes

If you want a simple and awesome xhtml cheat sheet this is the one you’re looking for. You can also explore cheat sheets for several other technologies and programming languages on the same site.

CSS Cheat Sheet (V2)

The CSS cheat sheet is a one-page reference sheet, listing all selectors (as of CSS 2.1) and properties. It includes a visual example of the box model, unit reference for CSS units and the various media types CSS makes allowance for.

Actionscript 2.0 Cheat Sheet Flashpaper

This is a nice cheatsheet of all the Actionscript 2.0 classes and methods. I believe it was created by Mike Chambers.

GrindSmart Magazine has partnered up with some of the people who run ShareDen.com to announce our latest GIVEAWAY! We’re going to giveaway a 16GB Wi-Fi 3G iPad to One lucky winner on May 1st 2010.

Our only requirements is that you comment and subscribe to GrindSmart Magazine and that’s it! One lucky winner will be chosen on March May 1st 2010 in absolute random order!

YOU CAN ONLY POST ONE COMMENT PER SUBSCRIBER. IF YOU HAVE ENTERED MORE THAN ONE COMMENT TO THIS GIVEAWAY, THEY WERE ALL DELETED AND YOU WILL NOT BE ALLOWED TO ENTER ANY OTHER CONTEST.

The iPad comes with a crystal clear 9.5 inch screen with a 1024-by-768-pixel resolution that was designed for browsing and reading eBooks. It also weighs 1.5 ounces, is .05 inch thick, and comes with a built-in 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB flash drive. This is where the price splits, since the basic 16GB iPad starts at $499. Even though it resembles that of the iPhone, we can assure you that the iPad is much more. Here’s why. The larger screen size will allow you to view applications with a lot more freedom, and you’re able to websites as you would on a laptop with minimal restrictions. The onscreen keyboard is extremely easy to type on, and resembles that of a laptop in terms of size. Whereas the iPhone’s keypad is sometimes difficult to work around.

A large part of the controversy surrounding the iPad has to do with the fact that it’s not running OS X or anything similar to that. It seems to be operating out of an iPhone-like OS except it’s more advanced. The applications are streamlined from the Apple App Store right to the iPad and it’s capable of running almost every applications that already works on the iPhone as well. However, the apps will be resized to fit the full screen resolution or scaled down to resemble the iPhone’s screen.

With the iPad you’re able to sync it with iTunes and when it comes to wireless connectivity, there are two different versions that are available. One relies upon WiFi-entirely, and the other can is free to roam the web with 3G connectivity. The difference is mostly in price, you don’t need a contract, and it will be shipped unlocked so that you’re able to use it with other carriers (besides AT&T). Unlimited data plans for AT&T start at $29.99/month.

Disclaimer

We are providing one GrindSmart Magazine feed subscriber who comments a completely free 16GB Wi-Fi 3G iPad plus shipping. The winner will be contacted with the email provided when they comment for shipping arrangements. GrindSmart is not an affiliate of AT&T and we will not set-up any sort of connectivity plan with any mobile carrier. It is the winner’s responsibility to provide their iPad Internet connectivity if desired.

Today we’re announcing our latest GIVEAWAY! The Ultimate Collection of Books for Web Designers! Because reading up on new standards, practices, and professional insight on design is important and in some cases vital, we’ve decided to giveaway 5 MUST READ web design books for designers/developers that touch base on subjects such as Logo Design, Usability, Typography, Freelancing, and more! Five lucky winners will be announced on March 24 2010.

Our only requirements is that you comment and subscribe to GrindSmart Magazine and that’s it! 5 lucky winners will be chosen on March 24th in absolute random order!

Here’s what you’re getting:

The Complete Manual of Typography

This book is about how type should look and how to make it look that way; in other words, how to set type like a professional. It releases the craft knowledge that used to reside almost exclusively in the heads of people working in type shops. The shops are gone, the technologies have changed, but the goal remains the same. This book explains in very practical terms how to use today’s computerized tools to achieve that secret of good design: well-set type.

Logo Design Workbook: A Hands-On Guide to Creating Logos

Throughout the book is laced with various logos and there is a brief examination of each in terms of the context of the various chapters. The depth of the topic feels as if the authors have only been able to gloss over various areas in order to meet the constraints of the book, but the brevity is more than made up by the value of the questions they’ve posed that should enable a designer to conduct their own research into creating a strong logo. As well the case studies offer a variety of perspectives from different designers providing a well rounded and interesting look into the design process. This book will prove useful to designers who need to determine and define the criteria that goes into making a successful logo that will help their clients meet their goals.

Prioritizing Web Usability

After more than a decade of Web usability research, we literally have thousands of guidelines for making better websites. But what are the most important ones that all designers need to know? That’s what this new book is about.

A second goal of the book is to update the early Web usability guidelines I published in the 1990s. All the guidelines found since 2000 continue to hold, but what about findings from the studies we conducted 1994 to 1999? The book compares these old studies with more recent ones and explains which of the old guidelines should still be followed.

The Unlimited Freelancer

Freelancing doesn’t have to be a daily struggle. You too can build the business of your dreams — the business that you wanted to have in the first place. Sure, it takes hard work, but you’re probably already used to that anyway. By using the proven strategies in this book you’ll be running a successful business in less time than you thought possible.

The ideas we’ll show you in The Unlimited Freelancer can even help you expand from a successful freelance business into a larger, multi-person company (if that’s your goal). These are tactics that have been used by companies around the globe to increase productivity, earnings, and growth. [From FreelanceFolder.com]

The Smashing Book

The Smashing Book is a printed book about best practices in modern Web design. The book shares technical tips and best practices on coding, usability and optimization and explores how to create successful user interfaces and apply marketing principles to increase conversion rates. It also shows how to get the most out of typography, color and branding so that you end up with intuitive and effective Web designs. And lastly, you will also get a peek behind the curtains of Smashing Magazine.

Please Note: Results will be given on March 24th and winners will be randomly chosen using Random.Org services. Good Luck!

UPDATE: ShareDen Re-Design

As the web grows and we find the need to upload and share information with others there are only a few set of only tools that can help upload, host, and share your content for free. Here we have ShareDen.com, is the first file hosting site geared towards designers and developers. They will not only host your images (like DeviantArt) but they will host your Photoshop files, applications, coding files, scripts, zips, audio, applications, and anything else you can think of. With ShareDen you can upload and host an unlimited amount of files. Files such as the following are allowed: .php, .html, .mp3, .psd, .ttf, .otf, .zip, and more!

You don’t have to sign-up to upload and share files, and best of all the service is completely free. However, if you sign up you’re able to create folders and image galleries with your files for later use. ShareDen is a free hosting service for designers, developers, and creatives, what better way to upload and share your files then within an online community of designers. You will also receive free around the clock technical support, for more information you can also contact them here info[at]ShareDen.com

Sign-Up today and begin hosting all of your files with unlimited space!

Every day people use social media to inform and make themselves known on the web. And now designers are using social venues to get their names out on the forefront. With the massive amounts of time spent socializing on the web, you can only expect to have a set of tools to help you. This is why we’ve compiled 7 Best Social Media Tools for Designers. This list will help you save time, get your name out, socialize, make friends, and bring in more clients.

Socialite

Socialite solely operates on Mac machines. This app integrates the top 5-6 social networks into one usable and easy to access program.

TweetDeck

TweetDeck is an Adobe Air application that allows you to quickly organize and place imporatance on your tweets. You can group tweets based on search terms, time frame, and so on…

Spokeo

Search over 41 different social media networks for any and all sorts of information. It’s as simple as that.

Stribe

Stribe lets you instantly create a social network on any website. Users will be connected with your community on any website with Stribe. It is totally customizable and you have freedom to change colors, fonts and background.

CROWDFusion

Crowd Fusion is a publishing platform that combines several popular applications – like blogging, wikis, tagging and work-flow management – with some original concepts.

UserVoice

UserVoice can help track and manage the feedback of your clients or customers. Users will be able vote on the ideas of other users, you’ll be able to get quality suggestions and opinions on you projects as well as applications.

Get Satisfaction

Get Satisfaction provides you with a forum where your customers are able to get answers to questions, solutions to problems, and submit feature and new product requests. Those answers and solutions are stored and searchable over time, cutting down on support costs and building trust with your user-base.