Static class members (from here on called simply, '�statics'�) in PHP conjure both the best and worst in developers for a variety of reasons. In part 1 of this series of articles on statics, we'll explore some background to get a better understanding of statics in PHP.

He covers some of the places that the idea of "static" came from and how its used in a few other languages (including ones PHP borrowed some of its ideas from). He uses a few analogies to illustrate what statics are and even includes some illustrations of how the static scope of PHP compares with other languages (like Java and .NET).

I am glad to announce about "PHP Fundamentals", a new course I have developed few months ago and recently completed to refine its slides and assignments. This course is available for free at www.abelski.com. This new course overviews the basic topics in PHP and reflects a practical approach for learning this language.

This post to his blog includes the PDF files for each of the sections in the course - everything from the "PHP Basics" out to "Exception Handling" and "The Standard PHP Library".

PHP is an easy-to-use, easy-to-learn, widely accessible programming language. It's well suited for developing simple scripts you can use to help you in all kinds of games. Whether you play simple pen-and-paper games by yourself, complex tabletop role-playing games with a group of people, or online games of any kind, this series will have something for you. Each article in this "30 game scripts you can write in PHP" series will cover 10 scripts in 300 words or less (3d10 stands for "roll three 10-sided dice") simple enough for even a beginning developer, but useful enough for a seasoned game player.

The ten scripts they walk you through are things like a die roller, a name generator, a deck builder/shuffler, a poker dealer and a crossword helper.

This month's article is aimed at PHP developers who're not yet familiar with the PHP superglobals. Usage of superglobals is fundamental to PHP web development, but, with all the recent changes in PHP, there are still many outdated tutorials, books, and sadly, still much confusion.

They look at how to use them in a PHP script (in an HTML page) and what's contained in each of them (_GET, _POST, _ENV, _SERVER, etc).