Chris Shiflett's Blog: OWASP Spring of Code 2007
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As mentioned in this new post from Chris Shiflett, an announcement was made at the most recent Columbia PHP meetup by Andrew van der Stock (of OWASP) about an incentive to work in their Spring of Code 2007 competition - a bit of financial reward.   The Spring of Code 2007, an effort that will distribute $100,000 to worthy projects, is divided approximately as follows:  $20,000 for one lucky project. $10,000 for 10 open source projects. $40,000 for 8 large projects. $22,500 for 9 medium projects. $7,500 for an internship.    Chris notes that the projects should be related somehow to web application security and interest was shown in helping out with the security issues that surround PHP (both the language and developing applications in it).
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Christian Wenz, back from the php/db|works conference and at a break following the conference, has posted some of his thoughts about this years conference over on his blog.   My schedule was crammed right after php|works 2006, so I could not find an earlier possibility to blog. Anyway, the extended entry contains my short report on php|arch's second conference this year.   He talks about some sightseeing before-hand, Tutorial Day, XML Security demos, Unicode in PHP6, a "slight problem" concerning his laptop, and his role on the Zend PHP5 Certification Panel. Check out the full entry for all of the details and "expect a separate blog entry later" on his experience on the panel.
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My rich desktop experience is richer than yours At the Mix07 conference in London last week, Scott Guthrie, co-inventor of ASP.NET and Microsoft's general manager for the technology, presented the latest plans for ASP.NET and Silverlight and took a swipe at the competition in the process.â¦
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Reinhold Weber has put together a list of signs (40 in all on his "programming list of shame") that you're a lousy PHP programmer. Here's a sampling:   don't see the need and/or benefits of a good programming IDE like Zend Studio or Eclipse PDT have never used some form of version control like Subclipse don't use a consistent methodology don't use test-driven development don't return content but echo or print it from your functions or classes return HTML, not data, strings, or objects. don't allow intelligent error handling you think reusable software equals/requires your code to be OOP   Now granted, some of them are a bit more high level than others, but if you're not headed towards a lot of these, you might change paths, hop out of that comfort zone and branch out into the community and the language a little bit more.
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Josh Sharp has posted a new article to his blog advocating something that there's still a lot of controversy around in the PHP community - frameworks (when to use them and when to not).   PHP's ease of use is also its downfall. Because there are less restrictions on the structure of the code you write, it's much easier to write bad code. But there is a solution: use a framework. [...] Of course, if you're not taken with any of the packages above you can also write your own framework, which I've done and will talk about in the next few posts. But for now, let's have a look at the common benefits of a framework.   He's broken it out to talk about the usual framework structure, MVC and how a framework can enforce good code standards. He also mentions some happy side benefits of their use including making for "pretty URLs" and the helpers that most of the frameworks come with.
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Search Engine Friendly Design and Coding (Especially Flash)  Its been almost a year since I attended a session of this nature. I was not too impressed last time, so I am hoping things have changed within the year. Brett introduces the panel, by saying its the first time WMW is doing ...
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This is an updated and revised annotation to the HTML 4.01 Specification published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), detailing the differences between the specification and its implementation in Netscape Navigator 7.2 and Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0. By Lee Underwood. 1116
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In another quick note from Chris Shiflett, there's a summary of php|works and some of the comments made about it:
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The Hiveminds Magazine has pointed out a new effort that's been kicked off today to try to get the PHP community (and providers) to finally make the leap and drop PHP4 support all together:   The idea is to make a unified, concentrated effort to drop PHP4 support and drive PHP5 adoption in the year 2008. Think of it. All CMS, forum and framework projects going completely over to PHP5 on a set date! This would be like a bomb dropping on the web hosting world and cause ripples throughout the open source world.   They point out some of the projects that are leaning either way from ezPublish hanging on to PHP4 and apps like Drupal that have embraced PHP5. In fact, it's the Drupal group that's written up the proposal on how it would all go down - the "Go PHP5 Effort".   It is a dangerous cycle, and one that needs to be broken. The open source PHP developer community has decided that it is indeed now time to move forward, together. Therefore, the listed open source PHP projects have all agreed that effective 5 February 2008, any new feature release will have a minimum  required PHP version no older than PHP 5.2.0.   There's tons of comments to the proposal in both parties (and some in between noting that there are already several PHP4 applications that run quite happily on PHP5).
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Padraic Brady has posted a manifesto of sorts about the work that he's been doing on his PHPSpec library and trying to work it into the approval process for the Zend Framework.   I'll be attempting to pound the Zend Framework into submission so I can apply Behaviour-Driven Development (BDD) using PHPSpec when I write a Controller. Why? Because I feel like it, and it gives me an excuse to promote one possible incarnation of PHPMock and the PHPSpec Zend Framework extension. See? Perfectly reasonable selfishness!   He hopes to move it past the typical test-driven development process that PHPUnit offers and "kick your ass into high-TDD gear" without having to have worked much with it before then (the key is simplicity).   He includes some code examples (how it should flow) and describes some of the challenges that he's coming across so far, specifically with the way that the Zend Framework works with the Controllers and what he wants to accomplish.
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On the Zend Developer Zone today, Cal Evans has posted his look at the Phrasebook series from Sams Publishing covering Javascript, MySQL, Apache, and, of course, PHP.   I get a lot of books to review. Currently the stack is about waist high and UPS hasn't been here this morning. So in an effort to trim down that stack of books, I'm going to talk about books 4 in one review.   He looks briefly at the contents for each of the books, pointing out specific areas they seemed particularly helpful in. He doesn't recommend them to someone trying to learn the language right off the mark. These are, as their title implies, just clips and handy snippets of information to help you get to where you're going. You have to know how to get on the road first, though...
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Apparently PHP5 RC3 is going to be the last release candidate. This is supposed to be coming out at the end of this week, so PHP5 will probably be released next month.  It's a bit like looking through a window into a candy store. The sweetener I most look forward to is the improved object assignment semantics.
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As a companion to the podcast version of his review, Matthew Turland has posted his comments in text form over on his blog today.   I received an e-mail recently from a very nice gentleman at Packt Publishing - their representative asked if I would be willing to review one of their books, namely PHP Web 2.0 Mashup Projects by Shu-Wai Chow. Reviewing books is not something I had done before, so I thought I would give it a good old-fashioned college try.   He mentions the size of the book (and how it's not an indication of the quality) and the basic structure of the book, including spotlights on some of the specific topics covered.
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Mike Potter (from Adobe) has issued an invitation for all PHP and Ruby developers attending the MAX Conference to track each other down, as well as him.   I think this would be a perfect time for these groups of people to get together, showcase what you're working on, and talk about the problems that you're facing.  We're working out the details of MAXUP, but if you're going to MAX, plan on arriving on the Sunday so that on Monday we can get together and showcase and talk about the work that's going on with Flex and languages other than Java and ColdFusion.   He suggests using the entry's comments to help coordinate the meetings. The Early Bird pricing is still in effect for the conference, so there's no time like the present to reserve your spot.
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Here's what was popular in the PHP community one year ago today:PHPBuilder.com: Using Ajax with PHP to Create an Interactive Web PageJSLabs Blog:  Top 5 PHP ToolsLorenzo Alberton's Blog: Navigation Through Paragraphs in an ArticleChristopher Jones' Blog: Review: Easy Oracle PHPStoyan Stefanov's Blog: The PEAR bookScott Mattocks' Blog: Crisscott OnForce Client DesktopDevShed: Developing a Form Director ClassDevShed: Creating a Simple Threaded Discussion ForumLeendert Brouwer's Blog: Writing Secure Web Applications with PHPPower Creative Seeks Interactive Developer/Analyst (Louisville, KY)PHP Security Consortium: New Product Launch - PHPSecInfoMarket Day: At A Glance: ASP.net vs. PHPJob Posting: LAMP Developer (PHP/MySQL) (Nashville, TN)Community News: Symfony Turns OneBard Farstad's Blog: Optimizing PHP for Intel based Mac
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The Zend Developer Zone has posted a new book review of one of SitePoint's web development related titles - "Building Your Own AJAX Web Applications".   I'm way behind on my book reviews. I've got a stack that's still knee-high and I know that there are more on the way. So let's pop one off the stack and take a peek into it shall we? This time it's "Building Your Own AJAX Web Applications" by Matthew Eernisse and published by SitePoint.   He details the contents, including the Preface. The book gives:  an overview of Ajax an inside look at the XMLHttpRequest object the asynchronous nature of it making POST requests making applications compatible with screen readers and a deeper look at what Ajax is and does  Of course, Cal explains them all in the post, giving a more complete look at each of the topics.
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Paul Meagher has just submitted the link to his latest article over on the IBM DeveloperWorks website - Conduct Web experiments with PHP: Part 1.