This Week’s Link List (March 11, 2011)

As evidenced by the number of “Just for Fun” links, this wasn’t my most productive week (but it was fun). Now, I didn’t spend all my time playing…I read lots of intelligence-enhancing posts…I just hope some of it sticks…

• Microsoft-related news…
  • Stop using IE6 now (help spread the word): http://ie6countdown.com/
  • This is so cool! Ruslan Yakushev tweeted for translation help just a few weeks ago and now the PHP Manager for IIS is available in 5 new languages (2 of the translations resulted from his tweet): http://ruslany.net/2011/03/php-manager-for-iis-is-available-in-5-languages/
  • Alex Pearce has published a whitepaper on how to install Moodle 2 on Windows/IIS/SQL Server: http://www.bfcnetworks.com/install-moodle-2-on-microsoft-sql-server-windows-server-2008-r2-and-iis/
  • A comprehensive list of resources for building applications on the Azure platform: http://www.webnotwar.ca/competition/technical-resources/
  • Maarten Balliauw investigates the why and how of scaling with Windows Azure (I'm looking forward to his upcoming PHP-specific post): http://blog.maartenballiauw.be/post/2011/03/09/Put-your-cloud-on-a-diet-(or-Windows-Azure-and-scaling-why).aspx
  • Ben Waine explains how he got over hurdles he encountered when deploying a Zend Framework application to Windows Azure: http://www.ben-waine.co.uk/blog/php-azure/deploying-a-zend-framework-to-app-fabric.php
  • This article seems to suggest that 0.8 seconds difference (out of roughly a 10 second average) in page delivery times is insignificant. What do you think? http://www.informationweek.com/news/cloud-computing/infrastructure/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=229300184

• Code…
  • Eric Lamb provides an overview of the basic functionality of reflection in PHP: http://blog.ericlamb.net/2011/03/practical-php-reflection/
  • Francois Zaninotto poses solutions to some problems with inheritance and composition: http://propel.posterous.com/dont-copy-code-oh-and-inheritance-and-composi
  • Jason Gilmore walks through using FPDF to create and manipulate PDF documents with PHP: http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/php-pdf-generation/Jason_Gilmore03102011.php3
  • An in-depth tutorial on using jQuery Mobile and JSON: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/tutorials/x-jquerymobilejsontut/index.html?ca=drs-
  • A simple way to schedule e-mails with PHP: http://www.webdevhub.net/index.php/2011/03/scheduling-emails-in-php/
  • Lorna Mitchell shares code she used for migrating issue tracking from github to JIRA: http://www.lornajane.net/posts/2011/Github-To-Jira-Bug-Migration-Script
  • Christian Schaefer extends XMLReader so that large XML documents can be parsed without increasing memory usage: http://test.ical.ly/2011/03/08/simply-iterate-over-xml-with-plain-php-using-little-memory-and-cpu/
  • Manuel Lemos shows how to do "dependent form validation": http://www.phpclasses.org/blog/package/1/post/8-Validating-PHP-Form-Inputs-Depending-Other-Inputs.html
  • Heru Setiawan shows how to reduce HTML output for fast page loads when using CodeIgniter: http://www.herusetiawan.com/2010/12/minify-or-compress-html-output-with-codeigniter/
  • I haven't tried this out yet, but it looks like an interesting tool for automating tests (note that there is a follow up article...link at top of page): http://www.phpied.com/automating-httpwatch-with-php/
  • John Mertic looks at a new validation library based on PHP 5.3: http://www.phparch.com/2011/03/more-powerful-validation-from-respect/

• Image processing…
  • Gonzalo Ayuso follows up his post last week with a look at using Gearman to add watermarks to images: http://gonzalo123.wordpress.com/2011/03/07/watermarks-in-our-images-with-php-and-gearman/
  • A new library for processing images: http://www.phparch.com/2011/03/image-processing-with-imagine/

• General web development…
  • Christian Johansen provides an in-depth look at how to test your Javascript code: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/scriptjunkie/gg655487.aspx
  • Ooooooh, this HTML5 cheat sheet looks useful: http://www.testking.com/techking/infographics/ultimate-html5-cheatsheat/
  • I like that this script loader looks simple: http://yepnopejs.com/

• Conference news…
  • Lorna Mitchell anticipates the PHP Community Conference (after you read this, you'll be bummed if you're not going) http://www.lornajane.net/posts/2011/The-PHP-Community-Conference
  • David Buchmann summarizes the Symfony Live conference in Paris: http://blog.liip.ch/archive/2011/03/08/recap-symfony-live-conference-in-paris.html

• Cal Evans poses three questions to…
  • Ian Barber: http://voicesoftheelephpant.com/2011/03/10/interview-with-ian-barber/
  • Kathy Reid: http://voicesoftheelephpant.com/2011/03/08/interview-with-kathy-reid/

• Miscellaneous…
  • The comments that follow this post about dependency injection are interesting (getting at the difference between dependency injection and polymorphism): http://www.dreamincode.net/forums/index.php?automodule=blog&blogid=1267&showentry=3257
  • Want to learn how to set up a Linux VM on a Windows machine? Check this out: http://www.davidbehler.de/2011/03/virtual-machine-for-developers/
  • Matthew Weier O'Phinney shares his ideas about the usefulness of document databases: http://devzone.zend.com/article/13105-ZendCon-Sessions-Episode-041-Documents-Documents-Documents

• Just for fun…
  • How is this done?! http://probablyinteractive.com/url-hunter#
  • Server attention span: http://xkcd.com/869/
  • In this article, Jeff Atwood says, "If the Computer History Museum was a “must-visit” for geeks in the area before, it is now mandatory on penalty of death.": http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/03/stack-overflow-and-the-computer-history-museum/
  • What does online gaming teach us about talent development? http://ideas.economist.com/blog/game-theories
  • If you are a fan of Stackoverflow, you have to check this out: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/03/a-new-name-for-stack-overflow-with-surprise-ending/

Have a great weekend.

-Brian

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