In this edition…

• What is Larry Thinking? => An Overview of Mobile Web Development
• On the Bookshelf => Head First Mobile Web
• On the Web => Responsive Design with CSS3 Media Queries
• On the Web => Mobile Websites vs. Responsive Design
• On the Web => Bootstrap from Twitter
• On the Web => This is Responsive
• On the Blog => Introduction to Mobile Web Development Slides
• Larry Ullman’s Book News => “PHP and MySQL for Dynamic Web Sites” (4th Edition) and “Modern JavaScript”

There’s a lot of misinformation out and about when it comes to security, which is truly unfortunate. I particularly see misunderstandings when it comes to whether or not the mysqli_real_escape_string() function actually protects you from SQL injection attacks. (Some people erroneously argue that you shouldn’t use mysqli_real_escape_string() and should only use prepared statements.) I recently found a good, in-depth discussion of this specific issue on, not-surprisingly, Stack Overflow.

You can read the whole page, of course (but be careful of the other misinformation demonstrated), but the best, most thorough answer is explained about midway down the page. Spoiler alert: yes, mysqli_real_escape_string() can be circumvented, but only in very obscure situations not likely to apply to you or most everyone else.

So you’ve decided to try writing a book: you’ve come up with the idea, sold it to a publisher, and perhaps used an agent in the process. The next step is to negotiate the contract. For those entirely new to the process, and even to those that have been around the proverbial writing block a few times, contract negotiations can be intimidating. If you’re using an agent, the agent will take care of this for you. If not, it’s up to you.

When I took a class on getting published (many years ago), the instructor informed us that you can negotiate contracts offered by publishers. Great! Just one hitch: most people don’t know what to negotiate! In this post, I’ll explain exactly that.

What agents do, and whether or not you need one, is an important topic for any professional writer. If you only think you have one book idea in you, you probably don’t need an agent. But if you hope to do more writing, let alone attempt a career partially based on writing, then you have a decision to make. In this post, I’ll provide some information as to what an agent does. Understanding the role of the agent should help you make the decision, should you be in that situation.

For a sense of perspective, I’ll say that I did have an agent (who shall remain nameless) for maybe about two years. I signed with an agent after I had already written three books, and my agent represented me on two titles. After that, I ended the formal representation, although I’ve had many conversations with the agent since that time. So, in short: I used an agent but am not currently using one, nor would I expect to in the future.

This version of the blog (i.e., this look) is about two years old now, which is plenty old enough in blog terms. After months of delay, this week I’ll finally put up the new look. Mostly this post is a heads-up (i.e., if you see anything amiss, please let me know), but I also wanted to explain my thought process in coming up with this new design. As many of you are trying to learn the behind-the-scenes steps and mentality in creating a Web site, I hope this will be of use to you.

In this edition…

• About This Newsletter
• On the Web => PHP Percolate!
• On the Web => Yii 2, What’s New
• On the Web => True PHP North Conference
• On the Web => Yii vs. Rails
• On the Blog => The Yii Book, an Update
• On the Blog => Working with Layouts in Yii
• What is Larry Thinking => Choosing a Framework
• Larry Ullman’s Book News => “PHP Advanced and Object-Oriented Programming”