Posts tagged On The Web
Yiianswers, a new site for yii lovers
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I would like to introduce a new site that a good friend of mine and work colleague Maurizio Domba (mdomba) and I have setup in order to solve an issue that actually occurs at the Yii forum and help the Yii community with what we think could be a great tool for their learning or development processes: Yiianswers.com
Don’t get us wrong, the forum is amazing, highly addictive (you can check our profiles -mdomba an tonydspaniard to find out how we love that forum) and very useful thanks to the support of a lot of good programmers that freely give aways their time to help others get the right answers, in order to push Yii to the level where it supposed to be in terms of PHP community acceptance.
Nevertheless, one of the things that we face as the forum grows is that the same questions are repeated again and again, and we believe that this is not because users do not know how to search for a solution but for the structure and functionality of a forum itself. We always thought that could be great to have a site to keep questions and its solutions in a categorized tree where people could easily browse, search, and/or find what they are looking for, and this is why Yiianswers.com is here.
Yiianswers.com is an instant Questions and Answers site, so popular nowadays. We really hope that will help you out and will easy the task of finding the right answers to your Yii questions.
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Invoice Bubble -Create Professional Invoices for Free
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I have lately found a very interesting service for those who work as a freelance to create really cool invoices; it is called Invoice Bubble. With this service, which is totally free (it inserts some ads that can be removed by paying a very low monthly fee $5 USD), you can create your own invoices, send them to your clients and get paid via Paypal.
It is quite good and has an excellent design; also, you can create recurring invoices and keep track of the payments from the control panel.
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Less Framework 2
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All of us know how hard is to get a proper CSS layout for our pages. Thanks to 960 grid system we developers were able to solve some of the issues that we face when we design for different browsers. Now, new devices coming aboard such as Android, iPhones, Blackberry’s and their browsers and the nightmare continues. Nevertheless, nice people like those of 960 grid system give away their approaches and solutions in order to make our life’s easier. Less Framework 2 comes to help us:
A CSS framework for cross-device layouts
Everyone writes CSS differently. Less Framework takes this into account by having a minimal set of features, and does away with things like predefined classes.
No more 960 px
Less Framework uses inline CSS3 media-queries to switch between three layouts:
- a two-column layout at 320 px, for smartphones
- a five-column layout at 768 px, for iPads and netbooks
- and an eight-column layout at 1280 px, for desktops and laptops.
No hacks, unless you want them
Less Framework works beautifully in Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, IE9 (hopefully), Android phones, and all iOS devices (that’s all iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touches). It even behaves nicely in landscape mode.
RedBean ORM
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I was breaking my head towards to find a better ORM approach for my own written framework. I used, and was very happy with P.O.R.K., for quite long time but, as most of us, I was looking for something that could improve the speed of my projects. P.O.R.K. configuration is not hard at all, it is compound of a set of classes encapsulated in three files that allowed me to create models in sort of ActiveRecord style and was really, really good when I first started.
Now my projects are bigger, require a lot more of database analysis and those sometimes go up to 30 tables or more. That means that once analysed a project, I had to create those tables in the database, specify their fields and so on… you know.
I found my self into the lazyness mode and I was already thinking that it could be great to create a set of libraries that do not require any configuration files at all and could manipulate my databases in such a way that not only queries for data but also dynamically creates the tables for me if they do not exists. That could save me around one or two days of work I thought…
Before creating anything I ask mr ‘Google’ if there was something around that could match my concept (never reinvent the wheel) and OH MY… I found it, its name is RedBean and I have to say that is one of the greatest libraries that have ever came across.
How it works
Create a database
Include the required files to work with RedBean -one file: redbean.inc.php
include('mypathto/redbean.inc.php");
Access its core:
//Assemble a database connection string (DSN) $dsn = "mysql:host=localhost;dbname=mydatabasename"; //Connect to database and fetch the toolbox; either with password $toolbox = RedBean_Setup::kickstartDev($dsn, $username, $password);
Now, just for this example: creating one Bean
$rb = $toolbox->getRedBean(); // lets create one object that we didnt even declared anywhere$post = $rb->dispense('post'); // set some variables -fields $post->title = 'This is magic'; $post->created = date('Y-m-d'); // save newly created object to database (how come?) $rb->store($post);
If we were to look onto our database, we will find now that a new table is created called ‘post’ and your bean has successfully saved its properties.
Of course, this is a silly example, in my case I am using redbean on a MVC ‘modified’ pattern (I don’t like the ‘View’ part as it is implemented in modern frameworks and for small projects I use my own approach). Please, have a look to its manual, trust me, it is worth a try.
From the deep of my heart, THANKS for such a great job to his developer mr (Gabor) de Mooij. At last, one EASY yet POWERFULL library for our projects that really help us saving developing time.
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Technology Exact Production Costs?
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Over the past months we have heard right and left about the new comer and so called great tool ‘iPad’. Now, it is the best tool to interact with Internet, to view-share your photos, to blah, blah, blah… Again, the same story. So, marketing wise, Apple is unreal, their designs, their messages, their ‘hey people wait that is something even greater to come’ is remarkable but let me ask you guys, what is the exact point of so much technology nowadays if most of us, mere mortals, dont have a freaking clue on how the hell all those house-work-devices really work? I bet that 90%, if not 100% of us, don’t use all what a machine-device is capable of. I am a programmer and I don’t even use the full potential of my Blackberry, are you doing something I don’t? I guess not.
For me, and this is a humble opinion, so much technology is crap. Filing the gap between phones and/or netbooks and computers? What a great marketing concept but what a waste of time.
Also, let me share with you something I read on the http://www.independent.co.uk/:
The Foxconn factory in the southern Chinese boom town of Shenzhen is so vast that walking around its outer perimeter takes two hours. Its workers turn out components that are supplied to big Western electronics brands including Nokia, Hewlett-Packard and Dell. And it is here that most of the parts for Apple’s iPhone, and the much-awaited iPad, which goes on sale in the UK this week, are manufactured.
Yesterday, Li Hai, a 19-year-old employee of the firm, jumped from the top of the building in Shenzhen to his death. It brought the number of suspected suicides at the factory this year to 10. There have been another two attempted suicides.
All of the deaths have been of youngsters between 18 and 25 years old. Li Hai had only been working at the plant for 42 days. The incidents have prompted intense soul-searching in China, about conditions in its factories and the social cost of breakneck economic development.
Here you go and yes, we can all excuse our selves saying that, they have chosen the job, they decided to finish their lifes… whatever. The truth is that we don’t really know what happened to the minds of those youngsters and in which circumstances they had to work… Maybe they were forced to work for their families survival, we don’t know. The only thing that matters is that we had iPad right in time, isn’t that true mr Steve Jobs?
In 1984, Apple next launched the Macintosh. Its debut was announced by the now famous $1.5 million television commercial “1984″. It was directed by Ridley Scott, aired during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII on January 22, 1984 and is now considered a watershed event for Apple’s success and a “masterpiece”.
Mr Steve Jobs, you are not different from IBM.
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Hip Hop for PHP?
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Guys, it seems that the days of breaking your head towards how to protect your PHP code is about to end. Following a great article from the Web explaining what happens nowadays with PHP Hip Hop Facebook’s approach.
The open source dynamic scripting language PHP is widely deployed across the Web, powering countless Web sites (including the Internet.com network). Now Facebook is aiming to change the game with today’s release of a major new PHP effort called HipHop.
With HipHop, Facebook is providing a new runtime that is intended to improve PHP use in large-scale deployments. The HipHop effort, which also includes a new Web server, has already been in use by Facebook for the past six months, though the project is just being made public today.
Facebook developers say the HipHop effort isn’t an attempt to fork the PHP community, but rather, a move to help PHP scale.
“There are two different pieces to keep in mind, one is the PHP language itself, then there is the runtime that actually goes and interprets the language and runs it,” David Recordon, Facebook’s senior open programs manager, told InternetNews.com. “What we’ve done is we’ve implemented the PHP 5.2 language with a few features removed. Our plan is to keep the language the same, but what we’ve changed is the underlying runtime and the process of going and transforming the source code into C++ and then compiling it and pushing out the compiled binary.”
Facebook said the results of using HipHop have been dramatic. CPU usage on Facebook servers has dropped by an average of 50 percent as the HipHop PHP engine reduced the load on Facebook’s infrastructure.
The results have proven to be compelling enough that Facebook now uses HipHop to deliver more than 90 percent of its production server traffic.
HipHop isn’t just a new code transformation tool, either. The overall effort also includes a new Web server to deploy PHP as well. Typically, in open source deployments, PHP is served with Apache Web servers.
“In general, Apache is a great Web server, but when we were looking at how we get the next half percent or percent of performance, we didn’t need all the features that Apache offers,” Recordon said. He added, however, that he hopes an open source project will one day emerge around making HipHop work with Apache Web servers.
The idea of optimizing the PHP runtime is not a new one, with multiple solutions in the market today including eAccelerator and commercial PHP products from Zend. Zend is one of the lead commercial sponsors behind PHP.
“HipHop looks like an interesting project,” Zend CEO Andi Gutmans told InternetNews.com. “We have been briefed by Facebook but will certainly take a closer look now. There have been other such projects but most have been targeting managed runtimes such as Java and .NET with various degrees of success. We welcome any innovation that will help PHP extend its leadership position in Web application development.”
Gutmans added that, as is the case with all runtimes, it is important to continue innovating and the PHP runtime has continued to evolve over the years.
“I think it is important to continue to fold in new ideas and innovations into the community-based runtime and it’ll be interesting to learn what HipHop concepts could be relevant to the existing PHP community,” Gutmans said.
With some PHP runtime optimization solutions, the optimization is often a simple matter of a module load and a line change in the php.ini configuration file.
It’s not quite that easy with HipHop.
“This is not an extension to PHP — this is pretty different,” Recordon said. “Right now, the process is once you build and compile HipHop, it comes with a tool that will go through the transformation process and output the binary, and that’s what you actually use to run it.”
With HipHop, Facebook said its aim is not to split the PHP community but rather to help grow it. According to Recordon, HipHop will help to solidify PHP’s position as a great language for doing Web site development.
“There is definitely the piece in there that HipHop is designed for larger PHP deployments and not necessarily for individuals hosting their own blog or small Web site,” Recordon said. “The proof of the effect of HipHop will be over the next year as we start to make deployment tools easier, and as we start to build a successful community around it and start working with others on its future development and solving problems for companies beyond just Facebook.”
Tweet this! Apple Reveal iPad
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After so much expectation, a new family member of Apple named iPad, has seen the light. Steve Jobs introduced it in his annual San Francisco event and has already produced long queues to book on major stores.
IPad is called, weighs just 680 grams, and is thin, only 13,4 mm. This is the newest member of the Apple that was released yesterday. Steve Jobs, CEO of the firm, on its annual event in San Francisco released its new device to thousands of expectant people. And that, along with the iPhone, which was introduced three years ago, has become one of the biggest releases of the company, preceded as usual by numerous rumors that echoed on the Internet.
The new device has been born to close the ‘gap’ between smartphones and netbooks. Can navigate the web, send emails, view photos and videos, listen to music and reading e-books (the firm opened a store of electronic books, iBookstore, coinciding with the availability date of the iPad in March). But in addition, Apple has designed a new version of iWork, productivity suite of applications for desktop computers own specifically designed for multi-touch for the new iPad. With Pages, Keynote and Numbers The user can create formatted documents, presentations with animations and transitions, and spreadsheets with statistical graphs, functions and formulas.
In general, includes 12 new applications developed especially for the iPad and, according to Apple, it works with virtually all of the more than 140,000 applications available on the App Store, including those already purchased by the user for the iPhone or iPod Touch.
The user will see all these applications on a 9.7 inch screen and LED backlight, which includes winning IPS technology for crisp and clear, with a viewing angle of 178 degrees. All applications will work in both portrait or landscape, changing automatically and dynamically between views when the user rotates the iPad in any direction. In addition, applications will run on the chip itself A4 Apple.
For connectivity, the new device will offer two versions: one with comnicación Wi-Fi 802.11n, and the other with Wi-Fi and 3G, which supports speeds up to 7.2 Mbps on HSDPA networks.
Finally, adding that the company has launched a new software development kit (Software Development Kit or SDK) for developers to create applications designed to take advantage of the capabilities of the iPad.
Prices
Although the iPad will be available worldwide beginning in March, only been realized prices for the U.S., which depend on the storage device and wireless connection type you wish:
- The U.S. MSRP is $ 499 for the 16GB model,
- Cost $ 599 for 32 GB model,
- And $ 699 the 64 GB model
IPad models with Wi-Fi + 3G will be available in April in the U.S. and certain countries. U.S. Retail pricing be:
- $ 629 for 16 GB model,
- $ 729 for 32 GB model,
- And $ 829 the 64 GB model
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Antonio Ramirez
Thank you for visiting the blog!
4 hours ago
Alen
Just to say thank you Antonio.
You helped me a lot with this article.
Greetings from Croatia =)
2 days ago
Abdelaziz
Thanks Antonio for this great Yii extension.
Thanks also to Steve for his tip for multiple jqPrettyPhotos.
And sieppl stated in Yii's […]
5 days ago
Steve Chen
Thank you so much for this article!
1 week ago
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