On PHPMaster.com there's a new tutorial from Vito Tardia about using the Mozilla Persona authentication system in your PHP application - an abstracted authentication system that keeps only a token representing the user in your system.

Mozilla Persona is built upon the BrowserID technology also developed by Mozilla. You can find an expanded explanation of the concepts in the article How BrowserID Works by Lloyd Hilaiel. [...] An email address is an identity and it’s verified by the email provider [then the] authentication takes place in the browser.

He talks about the three steps in the process (certificate provisioning, assertion generation and assertion verification) and includes some sample code that does the work for you with some PHP, HTML and Javascript. In his example he just authenticates the user and returns the success/fail back to the calling script. You could take it one step further and integrate it with the session handler as well.

On the Engine Yard Developer Center today there's a new episode of their "Chicks that Rip" podcast series - an interview with Laura Thompson, a development manager and member of the PHP community.

Elizabeth Naramore interviews Laura Thomson about being a manager, the current state of PHP and speaking at Hacker School.

They talk some about Laura's background in development and PHP, how she learned to become a manager of a development group at Mozilla, the Hacker School event and some of the things she's seen happening in the PHP community. You can listen to this latest episode by downloading the mp3 or subscribing to their feed.

From DashExamples.com there's a quick post on how you can set up your application to notify you on content security policy violations and store them back on he server side for later review.

When somebody violates your CSP rules, there is a great feature that can setup for supporting browsers to send back the violations to your server to be saved, processed or whatever. This is a great feature because you can stop a possibly malicious piece of code from executing and learn which scripts may have vulnerabilities in your code.

The reports as delivered by the browser back to your server according to your site's policy setup. They're sent back as a JSON string that is easily parsed and stored. The post shows you a sample database table structure (storing things like request, headers, blocked location and IP address) and the PHP to handle the incoming post. For more about the CSP reports, see Mozilla's example on their Developer section.

Christoph Dorn has posted about the latest release of a very handy PHP/Mozilla extension - FirePHP 0.2.

The release includes 27 bug fixes and feature enhancements. The scope of this release was primarily focused on improving the current feature set in terms of usability, reliability and support for logging complex objects. You can find the changelog here.

After installing the FirePHP 0.2 extension you will be directed to the Install page after your next Firefox restart. On this page you need to download the updated FirePHPCore library. Next you can visit the Learn page for information on how to get started with FirePHP. Finally refer to the Usage page as a reference for all supported features.

Some of the updates included in the release are for enhanced object logging, the addition of file and line information, full UTF-8 and Latin-1 support and an enhanced variable display in the console. Head over to the FirePHP.org website to get the latest version.

Please note: this article was incorrectly attributed to PHPHacks.com. The correct author/site has been identified and the information below is the correct information.

phpPatterns brings another tutorial to the PHP community today with this guide to creating XUL applications with the help of PHP.

XUL, or the XML User Interface language, is the common thread running through all Mozilla-powered applications – both desktop and web-based. XUL is a way to describe an application's user interface using XML. XUL is similar in many ways to HTML, while borrowing from, yet not exactly imitating its syntax.

To start off with, we need a simple XUL file that contains a form. This form could consist of anything, but for this example, I will be using a simple Login form that you might be familiar with while building web applications.

They provide the full code of the XUL, PHP, and Javascript to make everything worrk together. They explain how it all goes together and even some of the basics of XUL.

Please note: this article was incorrectly attributed to PHPHacks.com. The correct author/site has been identified and the information below is the correct information.

phpPatterns brings another tutorial to the PHP community today with this guide to creating XUL applications with the help of PHP.

XUL, or the XML User Interface language, is the common thread running through all Mozilla-powered applications – both desktop and web-based. XUL is a way to describe an application's user interface using XML. XUL is similar in many ways to HTML, while borrowing from, yet not exactly imitating its syntax.

To start off with, we need a simple XUL file that contains a form. This form could consist of anything, but for this example, I will be using a simple Login form that you might be familiar with while building web applications.

They provide the full code of the XUL, PHP, and Javascript to make everything worrk together. They explain how it all goes together and even some of the basics of XUL.

Zak Greant has posted a series of items on his blog pertaining to the just passed php|works conference he attended. The topics range from eZ systems out to Mozilla. Here's the list:

• php|works 2006: Mozilla Report
• php|works 2006: Mozilla agenda
• php|works 2006: eZ Report
• php|works 2006: The eZ Plan
• php|works 2006: General Followup

Each of the posts summaries som eof his experiences at the conference (specifically in promoting eZ systems and the Mozilla Foundation), and a bit of the happenings following.

Zak Greant has posted a series of items on his blog pertaining to the just passed php|works conference he attended. The topics range from eZ systems out to Mozilla. Here's the list:

• php|works 2006: Mozilla Report
• php|works 2006: Mozilla agenda
• php|works 2006: eZ Report
• php|works 2006: The eZ Plan
• php|works 2006: General Followup

Each of the posts summaries som eof his experiences at the conference (specifically in promoting eZ systems and the Mozilla Foundation), and a bit of the happenings following.

As an offshoot from a previous project, Joshua Eichorn has extended his code and created Webthumb, an automatic way to create thumbnails of any website out there.

So about 11 months (wow that long time ago, feels like last month) I used some code I had lying around to make some thumbnails of all the planet php blogs. Work priorities has finally allowed me to work on that code base again, and I was able to get things up to a usable state.

The result of this, is a new project. A website that lets you grab snapshots of any website at any time. The result is 3 different images, one at 800×600, one at 160×120 and one at 80×60.

He includes an example shot of his website to give you an idea of the results. You can also go to the project's page and enter in a URL of your choice to test it out. He also tries to answer a few questions about the script such as "How does it work?" and "Is there a webservice API?".

As an offshoot from a previous project, Joshua Eichorn has extended his code and created Webthumb, an automatic way to create thumbnails of any website out there.

So about 11 months (wow that long time ago, feels like last month) I used some code I had lying around to make some thumbnails of all the planet php blogs. Work priorities has finally allowed me to work on that code base again, and I was able to get things up to a usable state.

The result of this, is a new project. A website that lets you grab snapshots of any website at any time. The result is 3 different images, one at 800×600, one at 160×120 and one at 80×60.

He includes an example shot of his website to give you an idea of the results. You can also go to the project's page and enter in a URL of your choice to test it out. He also tries to answer a few questions about the script such as "How does it work?" and "Is there a webservice API?".