Yearly Archives: 2007

December meeting notes

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The December meeting had a turn-out better than I’d expected. Despite being in the middle of a snow storm and during the busy holiday season, we had enough attendees to consider it a real meeting, including a few brand new faces.

There wasn’t a whole lot of structure, but it was a good meeting all the same. I gave a brief demonstration of my Google Spreadsheets browser, and everyone discussed the various projects they’re working on.

ThatGuy posted meeting notes in the Forums, check them out for more details.

November 2007 Meeting

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Lots of great dialogue today. We had a visit from a very nice couple from St. Louis who are looking for some developer support. Expect to see a posting from them in our Jobs and Opportunities section soon.

We also shared concepts and ideas among the following areas:

  • [url=http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html]XAMPP – PHP on Windows made Easy[/url]
  • [url=http://pear.php.net/manual/en/package.webservices.services-delicious.example.php]PEAR’s delicious module[/url]
  • [url=http://pecl.php.net/package/APD]APD – gproff style profiler for PHP[/url]
  • [url=http://blog.papervision3d.org/]Papervision 3D – Flash-based 3d environment[/url]
  • [url=http://flex.org/]Adobe Flex[/url]
  • [url=http://www.notepad2.com/]Notepad 2[/url]
  • [url=http://www.textpad.com/]textpad[/url]
  • [url=http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/]Notepad ++[/url]

    • Zend Studio for Eclipse – VIDEOS!

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    If you have been waiting and wondering what Zend was going to do with their Studio for Eclipse–wonder no more!

    http://www.zend.com/products/zend_studio/eclipse/videos

    Here you can get a good feel for what the product is, what it will do for you, etc.

    You can even [url=dhttp://www.zend.com/free_download/studio]download the beta version[/url] and try it yourself!

    40 Tips for optimizing your php Code

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    Joel hooked us up with a fantastic list of 40 tips to overly optimize your PHP code. If you are all about squeezing out every last microsecond…this list is for you.

    And, it is just kind of fun reading.

    [url=http://www.kcpug.org/site/modules/mylinks/visit.php?cid=1&lid=50]40 Tips for optimizing your php Code[/url]

    Thanks Joel!

    Three PHP Frameworks Compared/Contrasted

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    IBM DeveloperWorks has posted the first part of a five-part series on three PHP frameworks: [url=http://framework.zend.com/]Zend Framework[/url], [url=http://www.symfony-project.com/]symfony[/url], and [url=http://cakephp.org/]CakePHP[/url]. In this series, the author will build a web application using each of the three frameworks.

    Part I: [url=http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/os-php-fwk1/index.html]Getting Started[/url]
    Part II: Building the application in each of the frameworks – compare and contrast.
    Part III: Weaknesses in each of the frameworks when extending the application
    Part IV: AJAX support
    Part V: Working outside of the frameworks

    Building a better Programmer

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    Spend 2 minutes on Google, and I’m sure you can have a bunch of PHP is better than Ruby and visa-versa. That’s not why I’m posting this. This article doesn’t interest me because it is Ruby vs. PHP, nor does his use of cursing appeal to me all that much. What I like about it are the lessons the author provides.

    Look at that old cruddy PHP code you worked on two years ago. You know what I’m talking about. Seriously, it’s only cruddy because you are two years wiser–two years more experienced. The site is still up–still maintainible.

    Now, go learn Ruby and Rails…go learn .NET, J2EE or who knows what else. When you come back to PHP (and you will ;-)) you are going to crank out the meanest, slickest, hottest code you ever wrote.

    That’s the lesson I liked so much: Never stop learning new ways to make the best tool for the job even better.

    http://www.oreillynet.com/ruby/blog/2007/09/7_reasons_i_switched_back_to_p_1.html

    Scripting Fun :: Automatic Next Meeting Date Calculation

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    OK. I have finally taken the time to hack together a block for automatically stating the Next PHP Meeting date. What I needed was a way to get the third Saturday of the current month unless it has already past. Then it would get the third Saturday of next month.

    If you want to have some fun with a nice academic exercise, read the article and start hacking!

    The “algorithm” I hacked together was:
    [code]
    [/code]

    Now make me proud and post your improvements.

    Happy Hacking!!

    PHP 4 End-Of-Life Announced

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    Maybe this will get vendors to start switching their buggy code over to PHP 5, which is already 3 years old. Of course, PHP 6 is on the horizon… Support (patches, mostly) will be offered through the end of the year 2007. Then it’s game over for PHP 4.

    [quote]
    The end is in sight for the 7-year-old but still popular version 4 of PHP, open-source software that lets servers create customized Web pages such as online catalog pages or a list of search results.[/quote]
    Full Story via cNet News.com

    HTML Purifier

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    Do you offer HTML input on your website or blog? Are you nervous about XSS (Cross-Site Scripting) vulnerabilities; or even more concerning–are you unsure what they are? Does it frustrate you when your users continue to use depricated tags like center in their posts?

    Well, be troubled no more. Check out the [url=http://htmlpurifier.org/]HTML Purifier[/url] today. Now in version 2.0: tidy and tag extensibility!

    [url=http://htmlpurifier.org/news/2.0.0-released.html]Get your HTML Purifier today[/url] and code safer!

    Zend Framework Webinar

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    I hope many of you got to see the Webinar from Zend on their new [url=http://framework.zend.com/]Framework[/url].

    If you missed it, do not dispair–you can find the [url=http://cts.vresp.com/c/?ZendTechnologies/30b665b54a/8c50b6436f/7af5e442dc]download of the presentation[/url] on their site.

    Not only do they cover their much anticipated implementation of the MVC pattern, but they also introduce a ton of the other modules as well. Very exciting stuff indeed!

    Be sure to check it out!