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/

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!

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.

I’ve always enjoyed tweaking my Web Servers, trying to get the most out of them, but sometimes it can be very tedious and frustrating… long, late hours of troubleshooting problems. Enter HowTo Forge!

HowTo Forge is website that provides pre-compiled virtual images of (pretty much) every UNIX platform already configured for you.

Read the rest of this entry »

I have been delving into the Javascript Frameworks yet again. When I think of Javascript Frameworks, I automatically think “AJAX”, but that actually is just a part of what they are.

When I think of Javascript Frameworks, these 4 come straight to mind:

• ProtoType
• JQuery
• MooTools
• Script.aculo.us (derived from ProtoType)

I am sure there are others out there but these are the most popular ones that I have learnt about. I remember the first time when AJAX was being taunted with back in 2005. If I recall correctly, ProtoType was the first “Javascript Framework” to appear on the scene, taking hold of this new concept.

These days, more have popped up with very similar features and tools. They also focus on doing everyday tasks as well as handling AJAX. But admittedly, AJAX was the main reason why it spawned this new idea of creating “Frameworks” for Javascript.

The real point of this rant was to ask if anybody else knew of any other Javascript Frameworks? I want to have a look at some alternatives and see what they have to offer and to broaden my knowledge.

Thanks for reading!

For those budding PHP developers out there, you want to run your eyes over this!

http://www.mantisbt.org/

Mantis is a free Bug Tracking tool like Trac but without the SVN fuctionality.

Why is this useful? There are several reasons.

It’s a quick and easy way to log issues for any type of project. Even if it’s a simple “todo” list for a small job, its a quick and easy. Without the mess of SVN.

Read the rest of this entry »

The latest version of CL Auth now includes example files to help you understand how to use the functions.

You can download the lastest version CL Auth v0.2.5 now.

I’ve just completed taking the “A List Apart” survey for 2008. It was a set of 48 quick questions about what its like to be a web designer.

If you are a web designer, I suggest that you show your support and fill in the survey so they can get the most accurate figures. They do publish them at the end of the year for everyone to see.

Last years results were interesting. It will be even more interesting to see how much they have changed this year!

Just to top off my daily posts, I have been perfecting a PHP Validation class over the past few months.

At work I tend to do a lot of registration forms for competitions, subscriptions, newsletters, contact forms etc.

So I went to the trouble of creating a very quick and easy validation class that I could include into my projects at a drop of a hat. Inspired by CodeIgniters validation class, it has very similar features. Including helper functions.

It’s even UTF-8 friendly (except for the email function). Please feel free to download and test it out yourself. Read the rest of this entry »

Recently I had to integrate a photo gallery for one of my work projects Sony Alpha, a new digital SLR camera from Sony. My task was to display both the Exif data and the image at the same time.

For this project I had to create something new which I haven’t found on the internet before. It uses the popular Lytebox extension (a flavour of the popular Lightbox 2 javascript library) combined with a new javascript plugin that gathers Exif Data for photos via javascript with AJAX. Read the rest of this entry »