Author: mary

PHP and MySQL for Dynamic Websites

The other day I was browsing Amazon.com trying to find a good PHP/MySQL book for my easily distracted mind to focus on. I have been making starts and stops in my PHP journey for some time now mostly because I was busy with school, but also because I couldn’t seem to find a good resource to help me get started and moving fast. The book that I had contemplated using before when I started working on improving my PHP skills fell short because it covered outdated versions of PHP and MySQL so I was constantly running into all kinds of errors.

Well, I think I finally solved my problem! I think I finally found the book that I’ve been looking for:

This book is great for several reasons. One, it’s laid out in a very easy to follow manner. It starts you off with just PHP, and has you building a nice dynamic website just with HTML/CSS and PHP by the second chapter. You get all the code so you can type it all out, but you can also download it from the accompanying website. I prefer to type it out because then I learn better. After you’ve got the basics of PHP under your belt, Larry moves you into MySQL and databases, and while I haven’t got there yet, I can tell by browsing through that he has done a thorough job covering as many details as he can in a book of that size. At the end, everything comes together, and you build several applications to test your knowledge and to whet your appetite for more.

Being the geek I am, I never buy a book or a gadget without reading as many reviews as I can find, and PHP and MySQL for Dynamic Web Sites: Visual QuickPro Guide (2nd Edition) (Visual QuickPro Guide) has excellent reviews at Amazon.com, and I definitely highly recommend it.

By the way, the second edition covers PHP 5 and MySQL 4.1, so you’re pretty up to date, and Appendix A guides you through the installation process. I’m excited to start working through this book!!

The World’s Thinnest Notebook

MacBook Air
Apple has released what they tout as the World’s Thinnest Notebook, and you can pre-order it now at the Apple Store.
This is the ad for their latest release:

[youtube:http://youtube.com/watch?v=GBCfW9-hjKI]

This video is bit longer but gives you a guided tour of the MacBook Air.

[youtube:http://youtube.com/watch?v=W7askBmF4_c]

I have to say it looks pretty sweet, and even though I’m not currently a Mac user, it definitely looks tantalizing enough to tempt even me!

Here are the tech specs from Apple’s website:

Size and weight
Height: 0.16-0.76 inch (0.4-1.94 cm)
Width: 12.8 inches (32.5 cm)
Depth: 8.94 inches (22.7 cm)
Weight: 3.0 pounds (1.36 kg)

Processing Capability
The MacBook Air comes with Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 4MB on-chip shared L2 cache running at full processor speed wit 800MHz frontside bus and 2GB of 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM onboard. The standard processer is 1.6GHz but there is the option to upgrade to 1.8GHz.

Graphics Capability
Most Mac Addicts like to know about the graphics capability, so the MacBook Air has a 13.3-inch (diagonal) glossy widescreen TFT LED backlit display with support for millions of colors. The supported resolutions are: 1280 by 800 (native), 1152 by 720, 1024 by 768, 800 by 600, 800 by 500, 720 by 480, and 640 by 480 pixels at 16:10 aspect ratio; 1024 by 768, 800 by 600, and 640 by 480 pixels at 4:3 aspect ratio; 720 by 480 pixels at 3:2 aspect ratio. The MacBook Air is endowed with an Intel GMA X3100 graphics processor with 144MB of DDR2 SDRAM shared with main memory. It has extended desktop and video mirroring which means it simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display and up to 1920 by 1200 pixels on an external display, both at millions of colors.

Connectivity
The MacBook Air comes with built-in AirPort Extreme Wi-Fi wireless networking (based on IEEE 802.11n draft specification); IEEE 802.11a/b/g compatible, and built-in Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR (Enhanced Data Rate).

Pricing
This sweet baby has two pricing options:

  • $1799 (or $43/month with Apple financing) for the 1.6GHz model that comes with a 80GB 4200-rpm PATA hard drive
  • $3,098 (or $74/month with Apple financing) for the 1.8GHz model that comes with a 64GB solid-state drive

You can pre-order yours at the Apple Store today and be one of the first people to own the world’s thinnest notebook!

Blogger To Blogger – A new community for bloggers

BloggertoBlogger is a new community that’s coming up for bloggers. There is a forum where bloggers can share ideas and talk about blogging in general and specific blogging topics too. The forum is still young but if definitely active and interesting, and the posts are filled with useful material.  There is also a blog, and you can get your blog reviewed by using credits that you earn by posting on the forum.

I found BloggertoBlogger when looking for a way to transfer a WordPress blog from one server to another, and there was a useful tutorial on how to accomplish this.

While not necessarily focused on coding and programming topics, I think that BloggertoBlogger has great potential to become a very useful resource for programmers who mostly work on blogging platforms to share ideas and to exchange information on the latest plugins, enhancements, and on customizing different aspects of the blogging software.

So visit BloggertoBlogger today and share what you know.

Happy New Year and Happy Coding in 2008

2007 is finally winding down, with everyone getting ready to welcome the new year.  It’s  been a full and busy year for me, and as always, life has taken away from the time to code and build projects.  But I did uncover a lot of interesting resources and stuff that have given me ideas for projects for the new year.   All I have to do now is make time and get the ball rolling.  One of my goals for 2008 is to do more of the things I enjoy for the heck of it, so here’s to more coding, more discovery, more ideas, and more more more fun.

Happy New Year and Happy Coding!!

Open source web templates and free scripts

We’ve talked before about using content management systems, whether database-based or flat-file. As you may know, some of the CMS’s out there are very powerful and can be used to create some amazing websites and communities. In a previous post I talked about the simplicity and ease of using a flat-file CMS.

Another option for creating a website, apart from hand coding it yourself, is to use templates and build on them. To this end, I want to share with you two wonderful resources I discovered the other day. I am going to be exploring and using these resources myself and you may see me mention them again, but in this post I just want to introduce them.

The first is the Open Source Web Design project. Open Source Web Design is a site where you can download free web design templates and share yours with others. The goal is to help make the internet a prettier place, and the templates you find there are really nice to look at, and can inspire you with a slew of ideas. As of this post, there are currently 2080 free designs for you to download and play with. If you download and use one of the templates, make sure you read and adhere to the Usage Agreement and the copyright information of each template.

The second resource that I want to share with you today is the Dynamic Drive DHTML and Javascript Code Library. This is one of my favorite places to find and download free, original DHTML (Dynamic HTML) and Javascript scripts to enhance your web site. Some of the scripts you will find on this website include:

* Calendars
* Date & Time
* Document Effects
* Dynamic Content
Iframe & Ajax,
* Form Effects
* Games
* Image Effects
Galleries, Mouseover, Slideshows
* Links & Tooltips
* Menus & Navigation
CSS Based, Multi-levels
* Mouse and Cursor
* Scrollers
* Text Animations
* User/System Preference
* Window and Frames
* XML and RSS

and others.

Between these two resources, you may be able to come up with some ideas for projects in the new year.