It has been a while since my last post. I did not intend to have such a long hiatus from blogging but with limited time, what can you do. I have started to post on twitter and will be using twitter for small bits of cool or informational stuff I come across or produce.

My last post Integrating FirePHP for Ajax Development kind of paints a picture for what I have been up to:

I have never been a real fan of interactive debuggers, primarily because they don’t support my write a little code, run it, write some more, re-run it  development approach, which seems to be quite common when building Web applications with scripting languages. As FirePHP is coming into its own and I can observe how others use it, I see tremendous opportunity in evolving this type of development approach further. I’m not talking here about just the debugging aspect, but rather a system that can easily be tied into any application to provide the developer with a powerful user interface that can visualize the internals of an application. One that allows the developer to configure components for different environments and stages of the development cycle.

To that end I have been working on a new development and debugging system for PHP and JavaScript applications that takes these kinds of features (and much more) to heart. What I am really excited about is that I have been able to build the whole thing primarily in JavaScript and architect it in such a way that it may be incrementally integrated into existing applications and workflows.

It has been a difficult decision to make as to when to shift focus away from the primary research and development and start supporting users on the system but I think it’s time to publish what I have accomplished so far. I am going to be releasing a bunch of Developer Companion tools in phases with the initial focus on taking FirePHP to the next level.

This developer tools project has been a long dream of mine and I hope to make a real difference in how we write modern web applications by bringing the level of functionality we are used to from Web 2.0 applications these days to the toolchain.

I realize what I have mentioned so far is vague but you have to start somewhere in condensing many years of work into a brief heads-up. Next steps are to redo my website, I already have a design from 99designs, and get FirePHP Companion better introduced (forgive my amateur unfocused freecasting skills … they can only get better!).

Lastly, I hate to burst your bubble if you are expecting regular posts and production ready tools right away. You can start to follow and get involved with what will slowly trickle out but I still need some more time to get a consistent workflow going that I can maintain including tweets, posts and screencasts.

I hope you will follow me on this journey and most importantly that you will benefit from my efforts as that is my whole reason for doing this. Solving real problems we face every day.