Running a simple syntax check over your files is a good way to save time. This can be when testing code but best practice is to not to even commit code that contains syntax errors.

You can syntax check a single file using the -l (lowercase L) flag with the PHP executable like this.

A common practice that some users have is to press the enter key when they are filling in forms on the web. This might be when they are just moving to the next field, but the trouble is that this will submit the form.

To prevent this from happening you can simply stop the form being submitted if the enter key had been pressed. This is done by binding a JQuery event to the input elements of the form and returning false if the key pressed is enter, which has the keyCode value of 13. We also include a call to the JQuery method preventDefault() to stop the event propagating.

One new feature of Drupal 7 is that any title you give a node will be copied to the menu title field when you create a menu item. I wanted to replicate this functionality in Drupal 6 and so I created a function that did just that. I have used this function a few times in different projects so I'm posting it here.

Changing the text of a submit button when clicked can be useful if you are writing an AJAX application or you know that there will be some sort of delay. Providing the user with some form of feedback is a useful way of letting them know they they have done something.

First, we need a form to work with, so I built a quick one here. Notice that the submit button has an onclick action associated with it, this will be used later to enable us to alter the text of the button.

Opening external links in a new window can be useful, but adding target="_blank" can be a real chore. Not only that, but if you are trying to validate the page to XHTML strict then the target attribute will cause errors to appear as it is not defined in XHTML.