Michael Girouard

Mike Girouard's Blog I would like to begin this special series in the run-up to AJAXWorld RIA Conference & Expo in October with one of the most useful and commonplace patterns in my code. Arguably, this can be considered a feature of the JavaScript language rather than a design pattern; however, when considering the contexts in which it is applied, I regard it as a pattern. Self-invocation (also known as auto-invocation) is when a function executes immediately upon it’s definition. This is a core pattern and serves as the foundation for many other patterns of JavaScript developme... (more)

Rolling Your Own MVC: The Page Load Scenario

Michael Girouard's Blog Before I get into any sort of detail, I think it's important to say that there is more than one way to approach an MVC. Go ahead, ask a few seasoned developers how they would hack together a project like this and each one will give you a completely different answer. I'm going to do my best to simplify the process as much as I possibly can without damaging the stabil... (more)

Are the Job Titles "Web Designer" and "Web Developer" Too General?

Mike Girouard's Blog There are a lot of professions that have emerged from the web: designers, developers, strategists, search engine optimists, information architects, usability and accessibility consultants, the list goes on… Today, I’d like to talk about the first two. I wouldn’t go so far to say that the titles should be considered harmful by any means, rather we hav... (more)

Rolling Your Own MVC Framework - Starting-Point for Any PHP Application

Michael Girouard's Blog Over the next couple of articles, I'll be walking you through the process of developing a simple MVC framework that you can use as a starting point for almost any PHP application that needs to be developed. Furthermore this framework won't be like any other framework you've seen: it's going to be small enough to not obstruct the real development, elegant enough to m... (more)