Work on my varsity PHP/IS project is progressing steadily. So far I've created a class to make it easier to handle MySQL database requests, a class to handle user-management and a few other bits and bobs to make everything work smoothly.

I've decided to stick with Prototype/Scriptaculous, because there isn't really time to learn a new framework. I've also decided to stick with ModalBox for dialogs. It just does what I want it to do perfectly. If you've seen ed before, you'll notice quite a few styling similarities. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, as they say. However, it's a lot more rounded than ed. Those awesome icons are from the Sweetie set.

There is a lot of work yet to be done. Now that rudimentary user management is done, I'm going to have to start working on the voting system itself, as well as styling all of it. Then there's the commenting, tag cloud,and if time allows, a friend system quite similar to what can be found in ed as well as RDF output for user profiles, categories and items. I'll probably also add integration with a few web services out there such as flickr, youtube and digg. 

Work on ed has taught me quite a lot. I'm actually planning things now and not just coding as I go along. The result is less, and cleaner, code that is way more efficient. Awesome.

When the whole thing is finished, and I'm happy with it, I might just as well launch it. We'll see. In the meantime, here are a few screenshots...