Translating Geek Into English
In this edition…
I’ve been contacted a couple of times now by the people behind CodeLobster, a PHP-centric IDE, in the hopes that I’d review/mention CodeLobster on this site. Now, CodeLobster only runs on Windows, which means I haven’t, and probably won’t, use it myself (I primarily use a Mac, only using Windows for testing purposes), but I have no problems mentioning products and sites here that I don’t personally use, because such things may still be of use to you (you, whoever you are, presumably are a separate entity with your own interests, needs, etc., and are statistically more likely to be running Windows). Anyway…
So, CodeLobster is an IDE for PHP that runs on Windows. It’s available in both a free and “professional” version, the professional version costing $100 (US). The free version comes with an HTML editor and inspector, a CSS editor, a JavaScript editor, a PHP editor, and a PHP debugger. This all includes the standard features such as code completion, code collapsing, browser preview, project management, FTP, and so forth. The professional version includes all of those features, plus plug-ins for specific tools and frameworks: CakePHP, CodeIgniter, Drupal, jQuery, Joomla, Smarty, Symfony, WordPress, and Yii. In other words, the professional version gives you code completion, contextual help, and so forth for these additional tools that you may also be programming in.
As I said, I haven’t personally used it, but if you’re looking for a PHP/Web Development IDE, it may be worth checking out.
I’m happy to say that I should (hopefully) be finishing the first draft of the fourth edition of my “PHP and MySQL for Dynamic Web Sites: Visual QuickPro Guide” this week. Today I’ll finish one of the new chapters, introducing jQuery. The chapter’s a bit longer than I had originally hoped (30+ pages), but I think it works very well.
The chapter begins with a discussion of jQuery and JavaScript, and a sidebar on the best development tools to assist in your JavaScript programming (or, more importantly, debugging). Then the chapter shows how to incorporate the jQuery library and how to do a simple test of it. Next, you’ll learn how to select page elements using jQuery, and write an HTML form for the example to follow. After that is coverage of event handling and DOM manipulation, which will round out the example.
The first specific example is a widget cost calculator (similar to one done in PHP earlier in the book), with JavaScript performing the calculations and jQuery being used to show and hide error messages, change the classes assigned to elements, and update the content of the page.
The chapter concludes with several pages on Ajax. That specific example is a login form, with a server-side PHP script validating the login data, and jQuery updating the page appropriately.
I think the chapter presents a good introduction to jQuery, within the context of the entire book. Thanks to the new “Review and Pursue” section, many ideas for where to learn more or to practice what you’ve just learned are suggested.
As I said, I should be submitting this chapter today. Over the week I’ll finish the last remaining chapter: another new one introducing Object-Oriented Programming in PHP. After that, there’s just the appendix and introduction, neither of which will take much time. So I’ll have the first draft of the book done by the end of the month, and I’ve already completed seven chapters of the rewrites. I think the new edition is turning out well, and I’ll be happy to have it complete and on its way to the printer in July!
In this edition…
In a previous post, I wrote about [intlink id=”2353″ type=”post”]using sessions in Yii-based sites[/intlink]. In this one, I’ll look at using cookies. Neither is that difficult, but as with all things regarding frameworks, the solution may not be obvious at first. And there are some ways to make use cookies in Yii in a more secure manner. Continue Reading…
