Entries by Joey

Wednesday, May 14. 2008

Useful in-browser development tools for PHP

While debuggers exists, there isn’t much of a tradition for using them in PHP. People have largely come to rely on injecting debugging code directly into the program, for inspecting program scope. The infamous var_dump have served for this purpose and version 4.3.0 of PHP brought us another equally useful function — debug_backtrace.

Comparison of Microsoft SQL Server 2005, MySQL 5, and PostgreSQL 8.3

People ask us time and time again what's the difference why should you care which database you use. We will try to be very fair in our comparison. We will show equally how PostgreSQL sucks compared to the others. These are the items we most care about or think others most care about. There are numerous other differences if you get deep into the trenches of each.

Friday, May 9. 2008

The Future of PHP

PHP is already popular, used in millions of domains (according to Netcraft), supported by most ISPs and used by household-name Web companies like Yahoo! The upcoming versions of PHP aim to add to this success by introducing new features that make PHP more usable in some cases and more secure in others. Are you ready for PHP V6? If you were upgrading tomorrow, would your scripts execute just fine or would you have work to do? This article focuses on the changes for PHP V6 — some of them back-ported to versions PHP V5.x — that could require some tweaks to your current scripts.

Monday, May 5. 2008

Compiz Check

Compiz works perfectly on most hardware that has good drivers - however, problems do exist and sometimes it may not work so well with your computer’s graphics card. Depending upon the kind of drivers and support, Compiz may not work at all, or it might throw up errors when activated.

Those of you who want to experience the ‘wow!’ that Compiz does on your desktop, but are not sure whether it’ll work well with your graphics card and other devices can make use of this little tool called Compiz Check.

Compiz Check checks your system’s hardware and gives you a brief report on the compatibility of your hardware. You can basically find out if Compiz will run on your computer.

Thursday, May 1. 2008

PHP 5.2.6 Released

PHP 5.2.6 has been released. You can download the latest version on the downloads page, or check out the changelog to see some of the numerous changes and bugfixes to this version.

Javascript event compatibility tables

I spent most of my time on the cross-browser events; the links in the first compatibility table lead to even more compatibility tables with detailed information about these events.

I merely tested basic browser support for the Microsoft and W3C events without delving too deeply into the details.

Adobe to open FLV and SWF formats

The Open Screen Project is working to enable a consistent runtime environment – taking advantage of Adobe® Flash® Player and, in the future, Adobe AIR™ -- that will remove barriers for developers and designers as they publish content and applications across desktops and consumer devices, including phones, mobile internet devices (MIDs), and set top boxes. The Open Screen Project will address potential technology fragmentation by allowing the runtime technology to be updated seamlessly over the air on mobile devices. The consistent runtime environment will provide optimal performance across a variety of operating systems and devices, and ultimately provide the best experience to consumers.

Specifically, this work will include:

- Removing restrictions on use of the SWF and FLV/F4V specifications
- Publishing the device porting layer APIs for Adobe Flash Player
- Publishing the Adobe Flash® Cast™ protocol and the AMF protocol for robust data services
- Removing licensing fees – making next major releases of Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR for devices free

via Slashdot

Monday, April 28. 2008

Denormalization Patterns

A denormalized database is one that has been meticulously normalized to eliminate redundancies, only to have redundancies deliberately put back in to meet other needs. That is the kind of database we are going to talk about today.

By contrast, a database is "non-normalized" if nobody ever bothered to normalize it. This is what you get when the programmer says, "I'm not concerned with the table structure yet, I'm working on the code first." In my experience this is something like saying, "I'm not worried about the plan for this work bench I'm building, I'm just going to throw the wood on the table saw and start cutting." We are not interested in non-normalized databases.

Friday, April 25. 2008

Stop using Ajax!

Ajax is a sound and useful idea. But every idea comes down to a practical implementation - a technology that makes it happen - and in this case the technology is immature, because it leaves groups of users behind. Most notable and greatly affected are those using assistive technologies, but also those using less capable browsers that don't support the necessary scripting objects, or don't support scripting at all.

Javascript testing you'll actually use

Automated testing has well-known advantages, but JavaScript developers rarely write test code. In fact, JavaScript developers cite testing as their second biggest pain point in making web sites. Clearly, JavaScript testing sucks. It sucks because most applications are event driven, and although libraries exist that simulate some events, none are complete. Also, existing test libraries are complicated to set up and use. The Test plugin solves these problems.