If you are looking to create dynamic functionality on a web site, there are no shortage of options for the server programming language. So why use PHP?
Category: Technology (Page 4 of 12)
Technology, software development, FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) and the web. From languages like PHP to specific tools, books and anything else.
Ok, you are about to code a great new application in PHP, that will be downloaded millions of times and be installed on shared servers all over the world. Being the cutting edge developer you are, you will use all the latest PHP features like closures and namespaces. What is stopping you from world domination?
Recent PHP news to July 9, 2010.
- Early release of Wibble for HTML/XML Sanitisation
- PHPKetchup. Survey for developers interested in creating PHP based desktop applications.
- Yii framework releases version 1.1.3 with bug fixes and enhancements.
- Entropy, another PHP framework.
Registration to attend Web Directions 2010 has now opened. I didn’t make it last year after attending in 2008, but I do intended to go this coming year. The are still a number of TBAs in the conference program. October 14 & 15 are the dates for the conference with workshops the days prior. There is a special price of $799 for the conference only when using the code WDS10-THANKS. Of the workshops, none really appeal to me, and I will save the cash for OSDC later in the year.
Does having an open license for a software project, have all the advantages negated if the development process is basically closed to the outside world?
Recently I have been trialling a new web based account/billing software. It is not a very mature project, but the features listed and performance so far have me believing that this is potentially a good solution. Also it is written in a language I am comfortable with (PHP), and it has an open license (GNU AGPL). Hence I may be able to contribute.
However, I have now encountered some issues. The project is under the control of a small company, and project communication is limited to a couple of mailing lists. I have tried direct communication, but the response was things are proceeding, and they are very busy.
The latest planned release date has now slipped twice. I understand software development, and this happens, but public communication has been minimal. Also there is no public source control. In most FOSS projects, a browse of commits will give a good indication of the health of the project, but this is not possible.
So we have a closed open source project. Some may raise the option of forking, but this is almost exclusively a bad result in the long run. So I will wait a little longer, and see how it goes?
Note: I have intentionally not named the software in question, as I still have hope for this project, and do not wish to tarnish the reputation unfairly.
Kubuntu Lucid Lynx is available for download.
I really like the bubble image, and thought it would make a great background for a WordPress theme, but in reality it was too big, and made the initial page load too slow. So I have replaced the theme for this blog, with a theme called Modern Clix by Rodrigo Galindez. Beautiful typography and plenty of white space. Pretty much the opposite of what I had created.
Occasionally when I have needed an image for a web site, or even just inspiration for a colour scheme, I have headed over to Stock.XCHNG, where there are hundreds of thousands of images. It seems Stock.XCHNG has new ownership in the form of Getty Images, and there has been a break away called RGBStock.com.
Obviously the number of images is lower at this time, but the site is easy to navigate, and a number of previous contributors to Stock.XCHNG have made the move over to RGBStock.com. The licensing of images is pretty liberal, even for commercial use.
Kubuntu 10.04 or Lucid Lynx is to be released on April 29th.
I had a large number of directories of music files in flac format. Flac is a great format due to the lossless compression, but I wanted to take these files on the road with me, and I had limited storage space. The solution, covert them to ogg format.
A google search brought up a great perl script to do the conversion. I am using Kubuntu Karmic Koala, so on first run it complained “Encoding application not available: /usr/bin/oggenc”, but these is easily solved by “sudo apt-get install vorbis-tools“.
After that, converting a directory of flac files was as simple as:
./acxi -q 8 -s /home/temp/input-dir - d /home/temp/doutput-dir
Obviously change your input and output directories to you need.