MatthewSchenker

Greetings everyone, Thanks for this discussion -- especially the parts about skipping Photoshop! I can't tell you how many times I have done work for agencies where the Photoshop mockup doesn't actually look the way the live site will look. Unless you are doing a "sketchy" mockup in something like Balsamic, the whole point of a mockup is to closely represent the site. Otherwise, it's just a nice bit of impractical artwork, and then you have to explain to the client, "Well, that was just a mockup..." I never understood that. I've always favored building live sites as "mockups" or "test sites." Regarding CSS/JS frameworks: I still don't use any of them. But every discussion like this makes me feel that I need to start. And here we have another advantage of using ProcessWire! Because it is so easy to create whatever designs you want with ProcessWire, it's pretty easy to mockup a few versions of the site you're working on. Thanks, Matthew

Greetings, Nice job Marty! I like the whole presentation of this site -- great example of how you can do less and more at the same time. Nicely unified theme throughout the whole site. The only page that seems to be slightly out of sync with the theme is http://walkerabercrombie.com.au/our-work/. Thanks for sharing, Matthew

Greetings, Very interesting (although that video is annoying). I use Fireworks for building comps and moving them to my initial running site. But I've been looking into other options for my workflow lately (see this: http://processwire.com/talk/topic/3524-fireworks-gone-what-now/ ). I'll definitely have to check out Brackets. Thanks, Matthew

Thanks! It looks like creating snippets is pretty easy with Sublime Text. I'm still using Espresso, which I have always liked. But it's funny I don't see many others citing it here. Thanks again, Matthew

Greetings Everyone, Excellent progress Ryan! Very exciting!!! Quick and (perhaps obvious) question: when using the new $pages->add() feature, can the array specify more fields the template uses for that page? For example: $newpage = $pages->add('basic-page', '/about/', array( 'title' => 'Contact Us', 'firstname' => 'Ryan', 'lastname' => 'Cramer', 'description' => 'Master coder and genius community leader' ) ); Where "firstname," "lastname," and "description" are fields created and added to the "basic-page" template via the admin area? Thanks again for your amazing work and commitment! Matthew

Hey Everyone, I had to stop laughing so I could post ths: http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/05/microsoft-internet-explorer-10-is-the-most-energy-efficient-browser-uses-up-to-18-less-power-than-chrome-and-firefox/ Thanks, Matthew

Hey Everyone, I've been building front-end forms with ProcessWire for a while now, and really like it. One area I am constantly looking to improve is file uploads -- making things just a bit smoother and more visual. Recently, I started experimenting with dropzone.js and I think it's pretty neat. Anyone else using this? Any other cool ideas you have used for file uploads with ProcessWire? Here it is -> http://www.dropzonejs.com/ Thanks, Matthew

Greetings, In my experience so far, Shopify is great if you want to build the entire system in Shopify -- in other words, use Shopify as your CMS and your full e-commerce actions. If you want to use ProcessWire as your CMS and pull in just the shopping cart/e-commerce elements and credit card transactions as needed, then FoxyCart is better. Both solutions have their benefits. However, ProcessWire excels so wonderfully at being a flexible CMS I want to build all my sites with it. In that case, something like FoxyCart is better, since it just ties into my ProcessWire site. Thanks, Matthew

Greetings, Excellent news! Looking forward to seeing details of your development procss! Thanks, Matthew

Hey Everyone, I am working pretty much every day on the book and the site, adding more detail and new chapters all the time. It has been a great experience. I definitely want to get the whole project "out there" as early as possible, so I will try to post a preview (at least the table of contents) soon. On a personal note: Joss and I go way back -- to the old (Joomla) days. For the past three years or so, we have been in pretty much constant touch about a range of CMS concepts and issues, we communicate with each other very nicely, and we are both writers and coders. Pete is an advanced coder (and a terrific guy from everything I can see). I'd be happy to collaborate on this effort! Stay tuned, Matthew

Greetings, Wow, Macrura, beautiful site. Really professional and smooth. When you build sites like that, no wonder the client loves ProcessWire and the community behind it! I see you are using FoxyCart for the e-commerce elements. I'd be really curious to hear more of how you like integrating FoxyCart with PW. Very interesting that the client is offering a 20% discount in honor of ProcessWire. Thanks for sharing, Matthew

Greetings, Interesting coincidence... I was just this morning trying to figure out a neat way to do this. In my case, I am building a site with property listings, and I want to auto-generate the listing numbers. I was thinking of just tying into the page ID. Would be interested in other ideas... Thanks, Matthew

Greetings Everyone, Sorry I missed this discussion until now. Yes, I am working on a ProcessWire book and companion Web site. As a technical writer/developer/designer, ProcessWire has been an inspiration on multiple fronts: creating Web sites, going deeper with design/development, and writing/documenting the system. I've been working regularly on the book project, and I have about 175 pages completed already. I'll have much more to share in the coming weeks. Stay tuned, Matthew

Hey Everyone, Someone sent me a link to Impress this morning, and asked me what I thought about it. It is a bold idea, but I find it odd for some reason. The whole thing -- how it works, the way they charge, what they emphasize, who they are appealing to, that they promise a 2-week turnaround. What do you think: http://doyouimpress.com/ Thanks, Matthew

Greetings, Choppingblock: that article you mention is also what finally got me fully into ProcessWire. I had been following PW for some time before that, but was still trying to force Joomla to do what I needed (and also giving several other CMSs a try, including ModX, ExpressionEngine, and Drupal). After reading that article, I finally dove full into PW, and never looked back. A theory about Joomla -- designer/developers who want flexibility, open design possibilities, clean templating (or no templating), and like playing with code for particular goals, are attracted to systems like ModX and ProcessWire. However, designer/developers who want a more pre-defined way of doing layouts, and to just "plug in" modules for all kinds of actions, are attracted to systems like Joomla. I know lots of designer/developers who never move away from Joomla because they like to just "install" what they need. The problem, of course, is all that Joomla "done for you" stuff becomes a problem once you find yourself spending more time hacking and altering Joomla than if you just went to another system. Speaking for myself, I had a number of projects I had built in Joomla, and I was ready for something more, but it was a challenge to convince clients to move several projects to another system. I believe the most painful spot to be in with Joomla is an "intermediate" developer. You don't yet have the coding skills to hack Joomla deeply enough, and yet you are ready for more flexibility. ProcessWire is excellent for all levels of developers, but it is the best cure for the "intermediate developer blues"! Thanks, Matthew

What in the world does this even mean?

Greetings, Choppingblock: there are a lot of (former) ModX people here. Seems that the kind of people who want high flexibility are attracted to ModX, and the fact that so many ModX people then see ProcessWire as a higher level of flexibility really tells you something about ProcessWire! After using ProcessWire for several months now (I came from Joomla -- a very inflexible system), I am impressed over and over again how every kind of development challenge can be achieved with such concise, neat solutions using the ProcessWire API. Thanks, Matthew

OK, thanks. I still can't get the video to play anyway. Would like to see it. Thanks, Matthew

Hey Everyone, That is an ambitious project! I agree with all that Ryan said. I want to highlight one statement in Ryan's post that I think is most apt here: "But stay with us here and start learning ProcessWire in smaller chunks and on smaller projects, and before long you'll be ready to build anything you can imagine." That makes a lot of sense. I would also add this: instead of looking at the whole project all at once, make a list of each individual challenge in your project, then look for the ProcessWire solution for each one. This is what I did when first using ProcessWire, and I keep using this now for each new project. It is not only a way to learn ProcessWire, but it also becomes a great way to organize your project planning. You will be amazed how even rather complex needs have very elegant solutions in ProcessWire. Thanks, Matthew

Hey Everyone, This is a great discussion -- we should know where ProcessWire is being discussed, and encourage more! Soma: I tried to watch that video but it won't start. Slides worked. I've been very interested in knockoutJS for some time now, so glad to see it combined with ProcessWire. Thanks, Matthew

Hey Everyone, I've spent some time playing with Sketch and Antetype today. Of those two, Sketch is more along the lines of what I am trying to do. Another one I have been looking at is WebCode. Would be happy to hear about others! Thanks, Matthew EDIT: Gotta say, after spending some time with all of these "alternatives," some of them have parts that are better, but none of them comes close overall to Fireworks. I really hope the code can somehow be taken up by someone else, or that Tirbaloid comes through somehow.

Greetings, In some sense, this could be one of those situations where a bad situation becomes a good situation. When I look at my workflow, the only Adobe product I use extensively is Fireworks, and therefore I am facing the prospect of maintaining a $600/year Creative Cloud subscription mostly for that application. I have already replaced Photoshop and Illustrator with other applications, and even though I like what I see with Adobe Edge I can't say it's become part of my workflow yet. Finding a proper replacement for Fireworks may be better in the end. Doing a quick round-up, here are a couple of applications I am seeing as possible replacements: Sketch Antetype There is also an application possibility with the person who was one of the leads in Fireworks: Tribaloid Finally, there is this petition to make Fireworks open-source (not sure how successful it will be, but I signed): http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/adobe-com-release-adobe-fireworks-to-open-source Thanks, Matthew

Hey Everyone, Very displeased to see the post on .Net magazine's site today about the end of Fireworks (http://www.netmagazine.com/news/fireworks-axed-adobe-pro-software-goes-cloud-only-132733#comment-11468)! I have been using Fireworks for years for site layouts/mockups/presentation to clients, and much more. Just wondering -- who here also uses Fireworks, and what will you do now? For those of you who do not use Fireworks, what is your preferred equivalent application? Seems like it's time for me to consider alternatives. Thanks, Matthew

Greetings, Doing a Google search on this topic, Sublime Text seems to be getting all the attention lately! I am planning to try it. For the moment, I use Espresso. On this topic, what do people think about adding ProcessWire snippets to Sublime? Thanks, Matthew

Hey Mike, I'll do it. But I'm sure you are aware that a discussion like that is going to become rather messy pretty quickly! Thanks, Matthew EDIT: OK, I posted! It's actually easy for me to post strongly positive statements about ProcessWire, since everything that's great about it is on my mind almost every day...