Jason Ashdown's Blog of Wonders

I often hunt around on the internet for the latest information to do with Web Development. Most of the time it goes to my Twitter but I thought it would be great if I could start logging a collection of the best ones I read.

So if you enjoy keeping up with the latest trends, I hope you enjoy my information bites!

HTML5 won’t save the web
http://gizmodo.com/5461711/giz-explains-why-html5-isnt-going-to-save-the-internet

Facebook develop faster PHP
http://www.neowin.net/news/facebook-unveils-hiphop-for-php-039source-code-transformer039

IE8 now “most popular” version of IE
http://www.neowin.net/news/ie8-is-now-the-world039s-most-used-browser

Zend Framework 1.10 Released (and now with versioned documentation!)
http://devzone.zend.com/article/11727-Zend-Framework-1.10.0-STABLE-Released

PHP hates integers (64 bit)
http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/2007/03/27/integers-in-php-running-with-scissors-and-portability/

I have finally migrated my site over to my VPS. It loads a lot quicker and I have more control over it. I was very disappoint with the service my last host provider was giving me (www.streamline.net). I would strongly advise AGAINST using them as they have no refund policy and are also part of the scummy chain Fasthosts who have a terrible reputation anyway.

I will be cleaning up old posts that I don’t won’t to keep (sorry search engines!) but will be populating the site with new and “read worthy” content soon :)

Thanks for dropping by if you do actually read my blog. I treat my blog just as a general dumping ground for all my interests, thoughts and professional opinion. Sometimes there is stuff worth reading :)

Just to let people know, I will be changing my website soon and will be removing most of my older (useless) posts.

I wish to post quality article about web development on my blog to help others and to show my wide, diverse knowledge.

I’m afraid I have a lot of work to do with changing my webhosts and sorting out my domain host for this year but as soon as it’s sorted I am going to relaunch this site.

I hope you look forward to it ^_^

I am currently investigating the best way to style an options page in the admin area of WordPress.

Anybody know of any good ways to theme, style, layout an options page?

Add a comment with your thoughts and any useful links ;)
I will then post a tutorial based on your findings!

After doing some testing, I was wondering why the hell my form wasn’t submitting any POST data in Google Chrome.

It turns out that Google Chrome will not “post” to a form when the “action” destination is left blank.

Using a relative path doesn’t seem to work, it has to be absolute… I can understand why they would do this but but it’s the only browser I have come across that behaves in this fashion. Normally other browsers would allow the “action” property to be blank and still allow submission of the form.

It’s good practise but annoying!

I’ve been playing around with the Zend Framework for the last couple of weeks and I love the MVC methods and it’s very well structured and comes with full documentation (very much like CodeIgniter which I’ve used but CI lacked the sustenance for my projects which I desired.)…

So what’s so annoying you may ask?

What bugs me is the naming conventions of methods and functions… as I mentioned, I’ve been trying to get to grips with the framework over the last few weeks but progress is slow. What’s slowing me down? Remembering the naming conventions.

I understand that Zend are trying to create a framework that can be used by a wide range of developers by using verbose names but sometimes I feel they are clunky, unnecessary and hard to remember. Zend’s great for decoupling and using it in anyway you want but it also seems to be it’s own enemy with making simple tasks hard to comprehend.

I find that I am forever creating new classes each time I want to use a Validator or use my Auth functions… I still have a lot to learn, so many of these problems might be solved with a different approach (like extending the classes more). But I’ve yet to find the hidden tricks.

I am currently in the middle of coding my first plugin for WordPress when I came across my first stumbling block…
Why doesn’t my jQuery code work in the admin area of WordPress??

After some probing on Google, the answer was revealed to me. Basically WordPress doesn’t use “$()” for jQuery, that’s reserved for ProtoType, which is also bundled with WordPress. Instead you have to use “jQuery(‘field’).” in order to get it working.

This article explains it in more detail.

Who-Remembers-Me.com has recently been spamming the hell out of my inbox lately. I’ve been getting more emails from them than anyone else within a week. It’s really starting to bug me!

Thankfully Yahoo mail blocks most of them and dumps them in spam, but one or two leak through occasionally offering my insurance, credit cards, pharmaceutical, fictional offers etc. You know, everything that spam is about…

It’s driving me mad! I just hope someone comes down on them like a tonne of bricks soon. They have already had an official complaint from the Advertising Standards Authority but that was back in 2006.

Another guy blogged about this problem too, and recently as well. It seems the amount of unsolicited spam from them has gone up this year and is causing major problems. I did what the guy suggested and reported them to their ISP which isn’t such a bad idea.

Check out this useful tool that will draw some radically cool graphs for you without any trouble :)

A good find me thinks! PHP Chart Tool

The admin interface on the new WordPress 2.7 is impressive. I haven’t had time to play around with it very much, but I really appreciate the automatic upgrade link for plugins. Reduces the time required to keep them up to date :P

I’m surprised that the plugins still function even after the upgrade, but then it really is only backend changes. Verdict? It’s worth upgrading.

I just hope this build is just as stable as version 2.6, but only time will tell! We shall find out in the next few weeks.