Before I announce the winner... I have to say that everyone entries were excellent. We definitely have some great coders here.
I went through all of the entries, and checked to make sure they followed all the prescribed rules. For the most part they did, so if you missed something here and there (like a mis-formatted date), I didn't nitpick it. What it essentially boiled down to was the little extras you guys added in... and each and every one of you had your own little "flair" to add to the application.
Bad76: I really liked the edit function. You are the only one that allowed editing of an entry, and that was nice. I also liked your addition of allowing the upload of a jpg. Of course, that could pose problems with questionable content and filesize, but overall, a very nice concept.
benkillin: Your app had class. Literally. It's nice to see that you have a good grasp of OOP. I also liked the elegent simplicity of the page. The colors were interesting. I wouldn't have thought of purple and brown, but somehow it works -- like peanut butter and jelly 🙂
drawmack: I have to say that I do like the addition of the install instructions, and all of the cool extra parameters. It's obvious that when you code you think about the future, and expandability. Well done. I would have liked to see a link to the actual guestbook page, or even better, the instructions built into the guestbk.php file. The email validation was a nice touch, too.
goldbug: Yours sucks. Who the hell gives a crap about XHTML validity? And XML? Please. XML is just a fad. I think you just used these two because you like the cool "X" they start with, just like Windows XP. And who the hell puts green and blue on the same page??? You could really learn a thing or two from these other guys.
Jeb: A fantasic job... very well thought out design, and I like the fact that you offer email obfuscation. A good coder thinks about the needs of his clients, and that is obvious in your code. I also like your paging model. Cool stuff. Gotta say, though... the interface is a little utilitarian. I suppose it depended on the environment, but most people that actually enter stuff in guestbooks (little girls and AOL users) will find it a bit bland :-D
highlight between the lines to discover the winner. Try to guess before you reveal it.
And the winner is.... goldbug! It really was a tough decision, but in the end, the XML format of the dat file, and the XHTML validity of the web page won me over. goldbug's coding style is very structured, easy to read (not much more than the others, though), and very well commented. Well done, goldbug!
and thanks for the $50! heh[/color]
Contest Home Page
[FONT=courier new]Current Entries (in order of submission only):
goldbug: . . . data . . . code . . . guestbook
bad76: . . . . data . . . code . . . guestbook
jeb: . . . . . data . . . code . . . guestbook
drawmack:. . . data . . . code . . . guestbook . . . instructions
benkillin: . . data . . . code . . . guestbook
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