One of the nice things about CakePHP is that it includes ready to use CSS compression. Granted, compressed CSS can be buggy at times, but for the most part it works just fine.
I’ve always wondered why no one has included something like this for Javascript, since that’s usually the bigger culprit when we’re talking about document size. I’ve tried using Minify in the past. However, it took a lot to get it working right. And I really hate hacking stuff just to work with CakePHP. That, coupled with the fact that I’m a lazy bastard, meant that I gave up the Minify train rather quickly.
Mark Story To The Rescue - JSMIN Javascript Helper
At the time, I hadn’t heard about the JSMIN library, which does pretty much the same thing the Minify does, but without the CSS. Luckily, Mr. Story had some vision after his Christmas festivities and cake up with a JSMin Helper for CakePHP. This helper works by Minifying the chosen Javascript. This involves stripping unnecessary characters (line breaks, comments, spaces, etc) from the .JS file.
It also includes functionality to cache the resulting files. What more can you ask for?
Usage:
Posted in CakePHP, JavaScript.
Tagged with bakery, CakePHP, JavaScript, PHP.
By Kevin Lloyd
– December 28, 2007
In the last five (5) years another key phrase hit the Web Design scene and hit it hard. SEO or Search Engine Optimization is that phrase. It deals with optimizing the content and code on a website to cause the page to rank better in different search engines. Gone are the days when you slap some keywords and a description in the META tags and call it a night.
Now SEO is an entire business by itself, sometimes completely separate from the design process, so it should not be taken lightly. But, a little is always better than none. So here are some basic tips that you can use to help your pages rank better for your desired keywords.
1. Structure Is Everything - Titles, Headings, etc
As I said before, ye ole’ meta tags are less effective. As a matter of fact, some search engines completely ignore them. There are, however, tags that search engines do consider:
- title
- h1, h2, h3, etc
- strong, em, b, i
Posted in SEO.
Tagged with heading, SEO.
By Kevin Lloyd
– December 27, 2007
One thing that has plagued me as a designer for many years is the ability to test my designs in multiple web browsers. Back in the day, computers came with Internet Explorer 5.5 and that’s it. Installing a later version would always overwrite the previous one, so it became difficult to test my designs properly.
The Easy Guys - Netscape and Opera
Testing in Netscape is rather easy. You can download and install multiple versions of Netscape and they have no interaction with each other as long as you install them to different folders. That’s it.
Opera follows the same process.
A Bit Trickier - Firefox
Firefox is slightly more difficult, but still a piece of cake. Head over to Portable Apps and grab the latest version of Firefox Portable. While you’re there, look up the legacy versions that fit your fancy and expand each to a different folder.
These are self contained consolidations of the browsers. Rather than sticking their settings in Documents and Settings/Application Data/, they dump all their settings in their respective folders.
Posted in General.
Tagged with browser, firefox, ie.
By Kevin Lloyd
– December 26, 2007
Now if you’re into Web 2.0 and haven’t heard of the Lightbox script, then you must be living under a rock. If this is your first time crawling out from under that rock, you can get a quick sample of the Lightbox effect here. Just click on the first picture and watch the magic.
The Lightbox effect is used to pop up a larger image into the forefront of a web page. You start out with a link, usually a thumbnail of the large image. When the user clicks, the large image pops out and the rest of the web page is faded out.
The original Lightbox script uses the Prototype/script.aculo.us combo, so some may complain that it’s a bit code heavy. I would tend to agree, since I’m a fan of jQuery however, since CakePHP still uses Prototpye/script.aculo.us for their AJAX functionality, I’m not ready to jump ship just yet.
For those who are, here’s a light of the the Lightbox imitations.
There’s one called Thickbox, and another version (Slightly thickerbox), which use jQuery, however, it doesn’t have the same feel as the original Lightbox script that I’ve gotten used to.
Merry Christmas and Happy Scripting!
Posted in General.
By Kevin Lloyd
– December 25, 2007
Before I start let me say that CakePHP is great. I love it to death. Currently, I’m coding a semester long class project for a friend. I’m trying to illustrate just how much faster it is to create a web application using CakePHP than anything else the other students are using.
The Project
The project consists of computerizing some department of the local university. What she’s chosen is to computerize the Audio Visual Department. Specifically the process of submitting equipment requests to the department so they can take the equipment to different classes.
The Competition
The other students are using things like C#, Visual Basic, and other high level programming languages. With all these things, you need to design an interface (and everything else for that matter) from scratch.
You’re also on your own when it comes to controls and binding them to the database fields. Not to mention, you need to do all the database relationships by yourself. The other problem is that the project is a multi-user application by definition. That means a central database. This is generally more difficult to implement on a desktop application. The project, to me, just screams Web App!
Posted in CakePHP.
Tagged with CakePHP, database, School.
By Kevin Lloyd
– November 30, 2007
Poll results for What Do You Look for in a PHP Framework are in:
Most of you prefer a framework that is Quick and Easy. Hey, I’m totally with you guys on that. When deciding on a web development framework, it has to be easy. It’s no fun if it takes hours to learn and saves you minutes. For me, CakePHP definitely fits this bill. The bake routines save me so much time during initial development.
Next on the list was a Less Code Needed and a Small Learning Curve. Again, that would definitely fit high on my list. I’m sorry, I’m just lazy that way.
That last result on the list is interesting, but expected. Not many people needed the framework to have a Small Footprint. With the type of processing that is required nowadays, sometimes the lite/light version doesn’t cut it. With that said, we also have a lot more processing power to push those heavy frameworks along. In my opinion, it’s less important that a back end framework be light as apposed to a JavaScript framework. The back end is handled strictly by the server, so the user doesn’t take the hit. With a JavaScript framework the user needs to download the entire thing. In this day and age it has become more cost effective to through some more CPU at the problem while saving weeks (or even months) in development time.
Posted in General, PHP.
Tagged with CakePHP, framework, PHP.
By Kevin Lloyd
– November 28, 2007
By now you’ve all either heard or experienced first hand the blow dealt to the Page Rank of many websites by the mighty hand of Google. They are basically targeting any websites that serve links, which are not natural. This generally includes any links that have been sold on the website.
PayPerPost is one of the largest companies out there that pay bloggers to post about different things. They are generally instructed to keep their reviews relevant to their content, but sometimes bloggers stray a bit. Of course Google has made these blogs a prime target for the Page Rank drop.
The irony is that PayPerPost uses (used) the Google Page Rank as a way to quality a blog. Now that damn near all PayPerPost blogs are hit by Page Rank drop (with a lot of them dropping out right to 0). They’re going to implement their own method of blog ranking:
PayPerPost’s CEO, Ted Murphy, quickly came up with a solution  since PR is obsolete and no longer represents accurate data for both publishers and advertisers, they are going to develop their own trademark rank, called “RealRankâ€Â, based on:
Posted in General.
By Kevin Lloyd
– November 26, 2007
Now i doubt it has crossed anyone’s mind to use CakePHP to create a custom content management system (CMS). Even though you’re not designing a full blown CMS, sometimes it’s nice to give novice users a way to create HTML content for a website or web application. The simplest way to do this is to integrate a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor.
When it comes to WYSIWYG editors, they are a dime a dozen. There is of course the world famous TinyMCE. There is already an article in the bakery on how to use TinyMCE with CakePHP. There’s htmlArea and even openWYSIWYG.
Although I generally love TinyMCE, for my last project I needed to give the user the option to upload images. FCKeditor is the only editor that offers this functionality for free. Some say that it’s bloated, but you can always trim it down to only what you need. Actually the new (October 10th, 2007) version is pretty snazzy. They’ve done away with the font tag and just made it a lot cleaner.
Posted in CakePHP.
Tagged with CakePHP, cms, editor, PHP.
By Kevin Lloyd
– November 23, 2007
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