On May 30, 2012, I’ll be speaking at the e-Commerce Conference and Expo in Istanbul, Turkey (note: the linked site is in Turkish, but if you view it in Google Chrome, for example, it will translate the pages for you). This is a one-day event, from 9:30 am until 5:00 pm. From 1:40 to 2:25, I’ll be presenting “Creating a Successful E-commerce Venture, or Failing Gracefully” as the conference’s technology session. At the end of this post is the presentation’s description.

If you’re in Turkey specifically, or nearby, I’d recommend you attend. And if anyone has any recommendations as to what I should do while I’m in Istanbul, please let me know!

One of the great qualities of HTML5 is that even though it has not been standardized yet, you don’t have to wait to use it. Well, if you’re prudent about what HTML5 features you use, that is. For example, in my “Modern JavaScript: Develop and Design” book, I use several of the new HTML5 form elements as they get treated as plain text elements on browsers that don’t support HTML5. Similarly, several new form attributes will be ignored by browsers that don’t recognize them. By adopting select HTML5 features, you can provide a better experience to those using better, current browsers, and rest assured that those using older browsers, or Internet Explorer, will still be able to use your site. The question, then, is what HTML5 features are safe to use and what ones are not?

One good resource for answering that question is HTML5 Please, created by the same brilliant minds that created the HTML5 Boilerplate and the Modernizr library. HTML5 Please covers HTML5, CSS3, and related technologies and while the information is good, the interface is even better. Through a single page and some sweet JavaScript, you can find out all you need to know. There’s a search box at the top and a series of demo filters you can use to quickly find the feature you’re thinking about using. These filters include specific versions of IE, support on mobile device, including older ones, and more. For example, you can quickly find out that the new date input type can be used with caution along with a “polyfill”. As defined by Remy Sharp, a polyfill is:

” book. In the article, as the title states, I discuss what I believe are the five biggest JavaScript misconceptions, and by “biggest”, I mean both “popular” and “egregious”. It’s a quick read, so check it out. Thanks!

If you haven’t yet seen it, Steven O’Brien wrote an in-depth series of articles on the Yii framework’s component architecture, posted at phpmaster. In the series, O’Brien looks at the CComponent base class in detail. Every class in Yii is an extension of CComponent, so understanding what it brings to the table can be quite useful to the Yii developer. Part 1 looks at the classes key properties and methods. Part 2 discusses events. And part 3 explains the behaviors. If you’re using Yii, it’s worth reading these to better understand what’s going on at the fundamental level.

In this edition…

• On the Web => Follow Me on Twitter!
• On the Web => Facebook and MySQL
• On the Web => 99Designs Contest for My Logo and Business Card
• On the Blog => Autographed Copies of “Modern JavaScript: Develop and Design” Now Available
• On the Blog => Using PayPal’s WebSite Payments Pro with “Effortless E-Commerce with PHP and MySQL”
• Q&A => Does It Make Sense To Use a Code Generator?
• Larry Ullman’s Book News => “Modern JavaScript: Develop and Design” and “PHP 5 Advanced: Visual QuickPro Guide” (3rd Edition)

Some time ago I stumbled upon the WWW SQL Designer, an online database modeling tool, created by Ondrej Zara. It’s built in JavaScript, and runs in the browser, although PHP is required for some functionality. You can download the code from its Google Code home page so that you can run it in from your own computer, but to see a demo of it in action (a completely usable demo), head to http://ondras.zarovi.cz/sql/demo/.

There’s not much in the way of documentation, but the tool is pretty straightforward, and there’s a YouTube video, if you want. To start, just create a new table, giving it a name. The tool will automatically create the autoincremented primary key for each new table. Then you can add other columns and indexes (aka keys). Add more tables as needed, and you can easily indicate the relationships between tables by marking foreign keys. Once you’re done with the design, you can export the SQL. The tool supports many different databases, including MySQL, SQLite, Oracle, and PostgreSQL. The outputted SQL is also nicely broken down, separating, for example, the foreign key statements and table properties (e.g., the character set, collation, and storage engine) into standalone ALTER queries, allowing you to use whatever commands you need when you actually go to create the database in your database application. The generated SQL even provides demo INSERT statements for the tables. Alternatively, you can save the design as XML, allowing you to reload that design in the application for further editing at another time.