Aaron Wormus' Blog: Amsterdam PHP Conference Cancelled

Thu, 30 Mar 2006 07:22:06 -0600

Aaron Wormus has some sad news for those that enjoyed attending the annual Amsterdam PHP Conference - apparently, this year's edition has been canceled.

The news has broken in a report on PHP-Center that the traditional annual PHP Spring Conference in Amsterdam has been cancelled this year. Because of the World Cup, people from all over the world will be flooding into Amsterdam, this influx of tourists has created a shortage of some of the essential ingrediants without which the conference cannot operate. Of course, I'm talking about the lack of a venue.

It's sad to see that one of the more popular European PHP conferences won't be happening this year, but there's always the International PHP Conference to look forward to:

On the bright side, there's word on the rumor mill that the International PHP Conferece in November is going to be bigger that ever, and will introduce a big sponsor which has yet to sponsor PHP events.

Joshua Eichorn's Blog: PHP AJAX File Upload Progress Meter Updates

Wed, 15 Mar 2006 06:55:18 -0600

Joshua Eichorn has posted about some updates that he's made to his "file upload progress meter" example in the wake of major popularity via del.icio.us and digg.

Over the weekend my file upload progress meter code got lots of traffic. It seems it made it made it on the del.icio.us popular list as well as getting over a thousands diggs. To celebrate this i've updated the code.

The main new feature is giving you feedback without having to patch PHP. Now the patched version gives you more information such as upload speed and estimated time to completion. But we still provide some nice user feedback even without it now.

I also created some wiki pages to start the documentation process.

He includes

CentreBlog: Disappointed in Zend

Wed, 01 Mar 2006 10:40:26 -0600

Jackson Miller has posted on the CentreSource Blog that he is disappointed that Zend did not deliver on Andi's promise of a Zend Framework preview release in February.

When Andi Gutmans was interviewed by Marcus Whitney on the phpArchitect Pro::PHP Podcast, he stated that there would be some sort of preview release for the Zend Framework sometime in February. It is now March and there was no release that I can find. This is a big disappointment for me.

I imagine I am not the only one who is dismayed by this broken promise from Zend. Hopefully they will release a statement not only letting the community know when we can expect the preview release, but also how and why the deadline was missed and what steps are being taken to prevent it from happening again.

He also mentions the need for a framework to help define the "enterprise level application" development, and that he had hoped the Zend Framework would have filled that void.

Vidyut Luther's Blog: Book Review - "No Nonsense XML Web Development With PHP"

Wed, 01 Feb 2006 06:35:57 -0600

On Vidyut Luther's blog today (phpcult.com), there's his brief review of a PHP-related book offered from SitePoint, No Nonsense XML Web Development With PHP.

This weekend, I had a chance to go out of town. Since, my laptop was in the shop, I was forced to go with just my Treo 650 and some books. I decided to take "No Nonsense XML Web Development With PHP" by Thomas Myer. I haven't finished the book yet, but after reading a few chapters, I felt it was worth other peoples time.

DevShed: Abstract Classes in PHP - Introducing the Key Concepts

Thu, 26 Jan 2006 06:45:35 -0600

DevShed has posted this new article today, a look at abstract classes and their development in PHP - a simple, but very useful feature that can help in a pinch.

An abstract class is a class that cannot (or should not) be instantiated. They are surprisingly useful for certain purposes. In this article, you will learn the important concepts related to abstract classes in PHP 4, and see many hands-on examples that will allow you to make use of them in your own applications.

The article looks at the creation of these classes in PHP4, then moves on to the creation of one a bit more "clever" and keeps even subclasses from instantiating it. Once that's done, they show how to use a get_class() call to pull in its functionality...

Dan Scott's Blog: Book Review - No Nonsense XML Web Development With PHP (Build Your Own)

Tue, 10 Jan 2006 06:43:10 -0600

From Dan Scott's blog, Coffee|Code, today, there's a new book review of one of the latest books from SitePoint Press - No Nonsense XML Web Development With PHP (Build Your Own).

This is an excellent little book if you know your way around PHP but need to start working with XML and need some hands-on examples to complement theory. This book will give you a choice of tools: client-side XML manipulation with browser-based XSLT and EcmaScript DOM, or server-side XML manipulation with PHP extensions for SAX, DOM, SimpleXML, and XML-RPC, along with some criteria for determining which approach to use for different aspects of your project.

Myer is an excellent, enjoyable writer, and the short, clear examples solidify his lessons. For the past few years my bible for XML reference material has been Elliot Rusty Harold's XML in a Nutshell, but No Nonsense XML Web Development With PHP (Build Your Own) complements any reference book with its task-oriented introduction to a broad array of XML Web development technologies.

He looks at his first impressions of the book, the intended audience, Myer's writing style, book layout, depth of coverage, and a few inaccuracies and typos. Dan has a pretty comprehensive look at this book - one I'd recommend to anyone looking to find a good book covering XML in PHP.

Davey Shafik's Blog: All for naught... (Cerebral Cortex Framework)

Fri, 30 Dec 2005 06:55:32 -0600

Davey Shafik has a sad announcement for the community in this blog postCerebral Cortex.

Well, it had to come, so here it is, without further delay, hindrance or obstructions. I'm no longer going to be working on Cerebral Cortex.

There are several reasons for this, I will go into them now: the introduction of the Zend Framework and a general lack of community surrounding the project.

Have no fears, though - the domain where it lives will still exist, and you'll still be able to grab it from there - there just won't be any new development.