I came over this old question on StackOverflow: "Which PHP Framework will get me to a usable UI the fastest?" I couldn't help but wonder, why people are not aware of all those other PHP UI frameworks? There are few, right? If you google for "php ui" you can find them. Those are more generally referred to as UI toolkits. But why those toolkits are not known in the mainstream?

He notes that most of the major frameworks leave you out to dry when it comes to presentation. They don't include much in the way of interface helpers in the name of modularity and backend focus. He suggests a few reasons why this happens and why the UI frameworks out there haven't made it to the mainstream. He gives three rules that could help this situation: view and object handling, giving developers a way to extend things easily and knowing the limitations of what the framework can do.

This article provides an overview of the API toolkit, and a collection of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that facilitate PHP programs accessing and working with i5/OS objects.

The article comes complete with diagrams of the stacks for both LAMP and iADP as well as an overview of the Zend Core API and a code example of how to make a connection to the backend and send off a message (SNDMSG) to the local system.

It offers a great start to reducing the coding yet helps you produce cool applications using Ajax, ATOM feeds and REST Web Services. It is a great on-ramp to get you working with Zend Core and IBM DB2 Express-C and Rich Internet Applications (RIA). This toolkit will also work with Zend Core for IBM, check out the FAQ. This is an excellent use case for DB2 pureXML.

It makes things simple like making ATOM feeds from a data in a pureXML database, making web services as simple as a point and click operation and check out the usage of your database via an Ajaxed interface.

Check out the project's website for more information. Currently, the project requires Windows (either XP or Server 2003).

More and more people are learning about the fun sport Geocaching. Why not integrate geocaching data into your own website, creating a mashup or simply creating your own geocaching website?

PHPGeocache is a free toolkit implemented in PHP which allows everyone to integrate geocaching information into his own website. And yes, it can also be used for commercial projects.

The library allows you to grab and store geocoded data in a local database and makes it easy to pull the information out and manipulate it as you need. There's also a built in system to create paths of wyapoints for a hunt in true geocaching fashion.

Article shows how to create Ajax forms with server-side actions using the Dojo toolkit and Zend Framework. It guides you through creation of a sample user login form that uses dojo.io client-side packages and Zend_Controller and Zend_Filter_Input server-side packages.

He talks about the situation that caused him to work up this model, including some of the other options he had looked into. He includes the code for the various pieces - the HTML for the view, the PHP for the controller, and the Javascript for the Dojo code and login action function.

Among the questions he asked were:

• Start us off by giving us a short primer on exactly what Microformats are.
• So is there really any difference between a microformat and just a bunch of semantic class names?
• So does the W3C officially support microformats?
• Being a developer I'm always curious as to motive. Why did you build hKit?
• What resources do you recommend to someone just learning about microformats?

Of course, to get the answers to these and many more of the questions Cal asked, you'll have to check out the interview yourself!

On returning from a very successful @media conference at the weekend, I had the urge to get hacking on some code. In an enviroment such as that created by a tech conference, where you're surrounded by many like-minded individuals who are passionate about the same things you're passionate about, it's hard not to get the bug and be compelled into action.

It quickly became apparent that what should've been a couple of hours coding was going to take me quite a while, because I had no toolkits to back me up. I poked around looking at stuff that's already out there, including Microformats Base, but I couldn't find anything that fitted the model I was after.

He mentions what he was looking for (a simple interface, generic to support multiple formats as packaged in a plugin layer). Unfortunately, he didn't find anything, but fortunately, he created one, hKit.

The package uses SimpleXML and a system of profiles held in the packages for each different format. He mentiontions some of the things that are yet to be done on the toolkit, but he wanted to "post early and post often" to get it out there. As of this post, it's currently in version 0.3.

In this episode we hear from Brian Grayless, developer of phatJax, introducing his new AJAX toolkit. I introduce two ways of using free tools to run desktop Linux from inside Windows, and give some code examples of using Javascript to reduce large HTML forms by dynamically creating pulldowns. I also introduce my new weblog at fosterburgess.com.

He also talks a bit about the latest PHP release and some handy Javascript/HTML tips...grab it here now!]]> Tue, 29 Nov 2005 06:58:50 -0600