Rob Allen's Blog: A Tutorial Update & Extending ViewRenderer to Support Layout Templates
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Rob Allen has two new posts today, both revolving around the same thing - an update to the Zend Framework called the action helper ViewRenderer. The first just mentions an update to his "Intro to the Zend Framework" tutorial PDF, but the other gets a little more in-depth:   The Zend_Controller_Action_Helper_ViewRenderer action helper is a great bit of code that automates rendering a view template based on which action has been called. This is very useful, but renders the action template, not my layout template. To solve this, I am experimenting with extending the Zend_Controller_Action_Helper_ViewRenderer and overriding it so that it know about my layout template. I also prefer to use the view suffix "tpl.php" for my view scripts, so I've made my class automatically set my preferred view suffix.   He illustrates with some code, an example that shows how to tell the ViewRenderer about his "tpl.php" files and link them back to the action that's called on the URL.
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There's a new tutorial posted on the PHP-GTK Community site today - a quick one showing how to use GtkSourceview to create a simple PHP editor with syntax highlighting.   This widget is nearly usable as a real php-gtk IDE. It extends GtkSourceView widget and internally manages both a text buffer and language object classes.   They provide the code, but not too much in the way of explanation for it. Thankfully, most of it is pretty straight-forward. There are a few things that the script has to manage to make the it work - a text buffer for the data, a viewer (window), and the syntax highlighting component. For the view, there are a few handy functions already built in so you won't have to create them - undos, the syntax highlighting, line numbering, markers, and bracket highlighting.
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(InfoWorld) - Even if text editors have been prominent in AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) development, developers nonetheless would benefit from an IDE, panelists agreed at the EclipseCon 2007 conference on Wednesday. In a session entitled, "What Does Eclipse Need to Do to Become the IDE for AJAX?", panelists from companies such as IBM and Nexaweb said AJAX could use an IDE and that AJAX could benefit from Eclipse technologies. "I remember when Java first came out and all I used was a text editor," said panelist Robert Goodman, senior programmer at IBM. He said he did not like the first Java IDEs. But now, he could not go back to writing Java without one. "I think that's eventually what you'll get on JavaScript," Goodman said. Eclipse's own AJAX-related projects include the AJAX Toolkit Framework, for editing, compiling and debugging AJAX applications, and Rich AJAX Platform, serving as a runtime for AJAX applications. Panelists also cited issues in AJAX development. Detailing his own experience with AJAX complexity, panelist Coach Wei, CTO at Nexaweb, told of writing an AJAX application and running into trouble. Eventually, he found a problem related to a CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) file.Â  JavaScript now is being used to write large libraries, which was not anticipated, according to Goodman. "We haven't proven yet that you can really do this in JavaScript," Goodman said. Panelists noted that although AJAX can be difficult, it is still the way to go for desktop interaction in Web applications. "Definitely, the reason to do AJAX is for those sexy, dynamic Web apps," said Eric Clayberg, senior vice president of product development at Instantiations. Panelists supported consolidation in the area of AJAX runtimes, noting the existence of runtimes such as Dojo. An audience member emphasized that rather than devising new technologies, it may be a good idea to leverage what has already been done. "They should be standing on the shoulders of giants," said Hal Hildebrand, an architect in Oracle's Java platform group, after the session. AJAX is a new interface technology and lots of work already has been done in this area, he said. Another audience member, Kyle Shank, developer of the RadRails IDE for Ruby on Rails, cautioned against relying on a single framework for AJAX. "I would caution everyone who's interested in AJAX to not depend on one framework and actually write your apps in a way that [they] don't depend on one framework," Shank said. RadRails was built on the Eclipse Rich Client Platform. Companies represented on the panel, such as Aptana, Instantiations, and Nexaweb, offer tools for AJAX developers. Also on Wednesday, EclipseCon featured a session where attendees could air gripes about Eclipse. Attendees expressed desires for improvements such as a native installer, which would tailor installations of Eclipse to suit the target platform. Nested projects support, enabling projects to be maintained within other projects, also got a thumbs-up. Improvements to Eclipse dialog capabilities and the Eclipse Graphical Editing Framework also were suggested. Scripting enhancements were requested as well, as was stronger support for the Subversion version control system. Others in the audience noted that work is being done in areas such as scripting. The Eclipse Monkey project is a dynamic scripting tool for automating routine programming tasks. One attendee said it is possible to create nested projects within Eclipse but there is no wizard for automating this function.
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Ligaya Turmelle has relayed some great news in her latest blog entry, something that the web's been needing for a long time - a new group from the W3C created specifically for enhancing the HTML standard.   Now I have to admit to being curious about what is going on - after all anything new dealing with the web affects me as PHP coder. Since the W3C is supposedly interested in input from the Web community and content developers, I decided to see who from PHP would be there. Granted it is very early for the formation of the group so it didn't really surprise me to see no one from PHP that I know or heard about in there, but I wonder if anyone from the PHP Group will become a "invited expert" somewhere down the road.   The group is looking for members to help define this next generation of markup on the web. Check out their page for some of the qualifications needed to participate and for some of the upcoming events.W3C Launches New HTML Working Group
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Lorenzo Alberton is back today with another tutorial dealing with the PEAR::Pager class. This time, he focuses on using it with some simple Javascript and Ajax.    Not everyone has jumped on the (Ajax) bandwagon, though, and many libraries still exist without implementing this feature, so you're faced with the dilemma: should I keep using that old library and give up my cool AJAX ideas, or should I implement my own version?   If you're looking for a pager class with these requisites, I'm happy to reassure you about PEAR::Pager: it is AJAX-ready, and has been since a long time ago. 100% buzzword-compliance guaranteed!    He gives two examples of what he means - one just using the Pager package to create Javascript lists and divide them into paginated chunks and the other to work with an Ajax connection (via PEAR::HTML_AJAX) to grab the data and push it into a container DIV on the page.
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On the SitePoint PHP Blog today Troels Knak-Nielsen asks th3e question "what's so bad about the singleton?" For all of its advantages, is there a darker side of the design pattern when it pertains to global variables.   As I have often taken this stance myself, I found it reasonable that I should be able to argue for it, so I'll try to give an explanation. This is also in part a follow-up on my post from last week, in which I present a way to avoid global symbols, without spending much time on why.   He talks about what they are and how they're commonly used - sometimes with some unpleasant side effects because of their use of globals.
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In the last part of this series, you'll learn how to build a declarative component for an application with a list of customers which is populated from a server-side data handler using AJAX. By David Johnson, Alexei White, and Andre Charland. 0910
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DevShed concludes their series on using the GD graphics libraries in PHP with thie new article focusing on the use of some of the simple filtering functionality the library has to offer.   In this article I'm going to demonstrate how the GD library can be used to apply some basic graphic filters (yes, like Photoshop, but much simpler) by utilizing the versatility of a brand new function called "imagefilter()". As you'll see shortly, with this function it is possible to reverse, blur and highlight the colors of a determined image, as well as convert it to its grayscale version, among other things.   They use the imagefilter function in a few different examples - altering the colors in an image, working with contrast and brightness and various other filters (like smoothing, embossing, blurring and colorizing).
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This week wraps up our section on Object-Oriented JavaScript with a look at prototypes, the JavaScript execution context, var x, this.x, and x, inheritance using closures and prototypes and more. By Cristian Darie, Bogdan Brinzarea. 1029
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OpenSwing is a component library that provides a rich set of advanced graphics components and a framework for developing java applications based on Swing front-end. It can be applied both to rich client applications and Rich Internet Applications.       In this release:   Added multi-line label control. Added alert window. Added new property "foreignKeyAttributeName" to ComboBoxVoControl and ListVOControl, to the purpose of distinguish between the name of the attribute in the combo/list v.o. and in the container v.o.  Updated "demo26" sample application, to show how to use "foreignKeyAttributeName" property. Updated web site by adding description about new features. The distribution includes also Jar file libraries, source files, javadoc, licence and readme.txt installation instructions.     OpenSwing is available at:     http://oswing.sourceforge.net/     OpenSwing last release is downloadable from:   https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=167774&package_id=190748&release_id=565569
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Jared White has released the latest Developer Preview of his application framework for PHP 5 - Willowgarden DP2.   I'm so pleased to announce that Developer Preview 2 is ready. This is where the project is really starting to solidify and settle into a cohesive whole that can be used for hands-on development. I've been working on several Web site and applications using the DP2 codebase, and it has made my life as a PHP developer so much more fun than the bad old days of cobbling together scripts nearly from scratch.   A new wiki for the project has also been launched with content already being added - a User Guide and areas for tutorials and howtos. Jared also puts a call out to PHP 5 developers out there looking for something to get involved with to take a good look at the Willowgarden project and send him an email ("remove everything after jared before the @ sign").
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Patrick Reilly has a new post today encouraging developers out there looking for an opportunity to volunteer in the community to check out the Zend Framework project's many needs.   Most components and subprojects need volunteers to help with documentation, unit test coverage, code reviews, improving integration with other ZF components, and enhancing architecture and design for the purpose of improving extensibility and ease of use with new components. If you see a subject area or component that interests you, please contact any project members currently associated with the component.   The project is starting several wiki "websites" dedicated to each of the components/efforts inside of the main framework project. Areas for these include:  Auth Team Documentation Team MVC Team Web Services Team
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Adobe Integrated Runtime paves the way for Web applications that perform like desktop-bound programs.Images: Building apps on AIR
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This new post from Jon Lebensold (on the KillerPHP blog) introduces you to a handy feature of the Zend Framework - View Helpers.   In summary, View Helpers are great for encapsulating forms, grids and other functionality that could eventually be bound to a different data source or even be pushed back to the user through a simple AJAX call.   Example code on how to use them is included showing a sample helper that adds Ajax functionality to a form's submit and pushes the response values back out into a div on the page.
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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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Cameron Olthuis wants to share the tools that he finds th emost useful with the entire web, so he's posted them here on his blog.   His list includes libraries from all different technologies, not just PHP. Several are Javascript-related, but it's always good to have a complete toolkit on hand when trying to tackle some of the more difficult things.   Included in his list are things like:  Moo.fx - a Javascript effects library Swat - an open source web application toolkit PEAR - the PHP package repository Mochikit - lightweight Javascript library    Be sure to check out the post and its comments for more great resources!
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In this installment, a solid programming style has been imposed, a JavaScript class model developed for Preezo which supports single inheritance and simple, tightly bound class definition code. This is important when working with large applications. By Guyon Roche. 1129