Last week, the first public preview of version 2 of the Yii framework was announced. Qiang and the entire team have been working very hard, and this is a great milestone to reach. The code is available on Github, and there’s a whole forum dedicated to feedback and design discussions. Input from the Yii community is actively encouraged. All that being said, understand that Yii 2 is not nearly ready for production uses yet. Many bugs will undoubtedly be found, and other changes to the framework’s design are inevitable, too.

Besides mentioning this exciting news, I also wanted to explain how I expect this impacts my self-published book on the Yii framework.

A couple weeks ago, I posted a link to the Nettuts+ article “ HTTP: The Protocol Every Web Developer Must Know – Part 1” by Pavan Podila. That was the first part of a two-part article, covering what every Web developer ought to know about the Hypertext Transfer Protocol. That article explained the fundamentals of HTTP, and is something that that truly every Web developer should read.

Nettuts+ just posted Part 2. In this article, Podila goes into:

• Connection handling
• Identification and authorization
• Caching

It’s useful, detailed stuff, and understanding these fundamentals will help you better appreciate the how’s and why’s of web development.

I’m working on Part 3 of “The Yii Book”, and have made reference to the fact that I’ve been working on Chapter 15, “Internationalization,” and Chapter 16, “Leaving the Browser.” These are not the original chapters, per the first table of contents. Here, then, is an updated table of contents. These are still subject to change, but considering there’s not that much of the book left, there probably won’t be any dramatic changes.

Pádraic Brady just posted " 20 Point List For Preventing Cross-Site Scripting In PHP". This is a thorough list of steps you should take when developing a Web site to prevent Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attacks. Arguably, it would have been useful to include the explanations for some of these, but then the post could have been too long (and one less likely to actually be read). In any case, it’s worth a quick look through. I particularly like the following recommendations:

For several months now, I’ve been doing some pro-bono (i.e., free) work for a local non-profit, the Centre County Down Syndrome Society. I’m helping them bring their Web site into the modern age. (If you look, you’ll see that the site is currently terrible. Terrible!) That process is moving right along, but they have a need I cannot address, and I’m hoping that some friendly graphic designer out there can help them (and me) out.

UPDATE: I believe this need has already been filled, but if you want to offer names and suggestions just in case, that’s great. My sincerest thanks to everyone!

To be as frank and clear as I can, if you’re interesting in self-publishing at all, you must buy APE: How to Publish a Book by Guy Kawasaki and Shawn Welch. No, I have not read every book on self-publishing that exists, but I doubt there are any as good and as thorough as APE, let alone better.