One problem that I’ve always had with finding CakePHP related information over the internet is the multiple sources. I wouldn’t so much mind if all these sources were legit. The thing that pisses me off is those scrapers who scrape the entire CakePHP mailing list. To me, there’s nothing worse than asking a question in the mailing list, then searching on Google for an answer, just to find some idiot has scraped your question from the mailing list. I try to report them when I can, but I just can’t seem to keep up.
Sorry for the rant, back to my point. Sharan over on the CakePHP mailing list has made the process of finding the latest CakePHP information a lil’ bit easier. Using Yahoo Pipes, he’s taken feeds the most popular CakePHP RSS feeds and consolidated them into one giant feed – http://feeds.feedburner.com/cakephp. The great thing is that he’s also taken some of the non-english blog feeds and slapped on some translation. What more could you want?
I’m not sure how much the author values his privacy, so if you want to get in contact with him and/or view the Yahoo Pipes source for this feed, head over to the CakePHP mailing list and search for: “http://pipes.yahoo.com/sharanbrar/cakephp”. If you think that their’s a blog missing, just leave a comment here and I’ll route it to the author.
Posted in CakePHP.
Tagged with CakePHP.
By Kevin Lloyd
– January 1, 2008
After reading about Matt’s Experience with the Zend Framework, I came to the conclusion that one’s choice of a Web Development Framework doesn’t really matter. There are tons of frameworks out there and there’s a good reason for that. People still use them. If no one used a framework it would die a quick and painless death. Different frameworks offer different benefits to different people.
However, I’m willing to bet that First Choice is one of the main factors affecting a developer’s choice of framework. I fell into CakePHP first because I had an initial choice of CakePHP and Code Igniter. I couldn’t quite get CI working quickly enough, so I jumped on CakePHP and I’ve been here ever since.
Something else which solidifies the First Choice method is that the frameworks are sufficiently different that there is a learning curve when moving from one to the other. If you’ve started using one framework effectively, learning another (even to discover potential benefits) is usually not worth the time.
So I say this to you; be confident in your choice of a web development framework. Code Igniter, CakePHP, Symphony, even Ruby on Rails, it doesn’t matter and no one cares as long as you can crank out functional web applications in a reasonable amount of time.
Posted in PHP.
By Kevin Lloyd
– December 31, 2007
One thing that I liked about the jQuery website is that they offer a compressed version of the jQuery script on the website ready for immediate download and usage. This is convenient if you don’t want to go through the few steps it takes to Minify your own javascript code.
Well we now have this same luxury for Prototype and its Script.aculo.us library read for download.
Enjoy folks.
Posted in JavaScript.
By Kevin Lloyd
– December 29, 2007
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
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