I talked to my friend Scott for the first time in a long time yesterday.  He and I were like brothers growing up and share like and dislike, almost without exception.  The one major difference between us would probably be our chosen paths.  While he went the photography route (the roundabout way through several stops) I went the web programming route (also the roundabout way).

The most common questions I get asked by people who are really interested in what I do is ‘what are you using to build your websites with’ and ‘what javascript framework  do you use?’  It was in explaining my choices to Scott that I felt like it would be worth explaining them to the world (potential clients may be curious).

The lesser of the two questions is what I’m using to build websites.  The desktop application I’m using is Adobe Dreamweaver but I’m really only using that for the code collapsing, snippets and site organization.  My foundation of choice is WordPress.  I’ve found it to be almost infinitely customizable and flexible enough to cover just about any project.  I found Joomla too big and hit WordPress next.  I’d love to give Drupal a try but I have a strong belief that being really strong with one tool makes you more marketable than being slightly experienced with several.  I have not met a site that WordPress didn’t like.  (But just because WordPress is in my ‘lesser’ category, don’t be fooled into thinking it’s not important.  WordPress is amazing.  It’s only lesser because it’s so easy to use and largely unnoticed by site visitors.)

The bigger impact tool I’m using right now is a javascript framework called MooTools.  Scott had never heard of MooTools and I guess this is where the line between web surfer extraordinaire and web programmer is drawn.  A surfer may know which blogging tool or BB platform he’s looking at but he’s unlikely to know which javascript framework is in use.

MooTools isn’t for javascript n00bs.  You have to be fairly comfortable with coding in general but also with CSS and the DOM.  Once you’re pretty good with those, stepping into MooTools is heaven.  Once I started working with MooTools I realized that there really wasn’t a single thing I couldn’t do with a web page.  It’s that powerful.

Once you’ve decided that MooTools is interesting and deserves looking into further, have a look at Aaron Newton’s Clientside.  All of the things you want to do on a daily basis with MooTools are covered.  Man, it’s almost all done for you!  Aaron’s got a book coming out in August and I can’t wait to get my hands on it.

I used to rely pretty heavily on the official MooTools forum which was shut down when version 1.2 of the framework was released.  I don’t lean quite as heavily on the community now but I invite everyone struggling with a MooTools script to try the unofficial forum at http://mooforum.net.  I cruise it quite often and try to help where I can.  My handle there is Lweel8 (it’s a bumper stumper for my punctuality when it comes to sporting events).

Best of luck to everyone out there.  I hope to see you in the forum.