A Very Simple Delete Confirmation dialog
Dec 6th
With Jquery of course
Ok, we often have to do delete button and have to do something about if the users click the button, an the delete action should not taken right away… What if the user doesn’t want to click the button but click it anyway (they are users, their actions are illogical but we still have to meddle around the problem). Around the usability stuff, a confirmation dialog is the mostly used, and if you are scared of this concept, you shouldn’t, because it’s so widely used.
This method is unobtrusive, meaning that even without javascript enabled, the delete button will still works, but no confirmation dialog.
First, we will have a link that will link to our delete function, whatever that’ll be
1 | <a href="/delete/this/thing" class="delete">Delete</a> |
I give it a class so that all delete button with the same class can have the same functionality determined by my JavaScript or just basically the same styling.
And we can go with this:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 | <script type="text/javascript"> $(function() { $('.delete').click(function() { var answer = confirm("Delete this item?") if (answer){ return true; } else{ return false; }; }); }); </script> |
Very simple. And it will work. Also, you can also try
1 | return confirm(”Delete this item?”); |
for an easier one-liner.
Better approach and looks nicer would include using a popup box, make use of tooltips, dialog boxes from Jquery UI… there’s an universe to discover
PHP Certification.
Oct 28th
Have you ever wondering whether your PHP skill is up for the test, is it good enough for the world to look at and make use of? and How to make the world acknowledge you as a PHP developer? To be a certified PHP developer. You have to take tests, obviously, but where and why? There are various places you could take tests online to save your time and money and of course, being a certified PHP developer doesn’t make you a better ones, it just improves your chances to get a professional job in PHP.
You will need to have knowledge of PHP (obviously), MySQL, HTML (basic) and Web Administration skill alongside with some smaller skill set such as XML, CSS…. to actually be confidence in the test. And when I mean THE test, there are not just one test. Each tests are different and are offered by different organization
Zend
The industry standard, awarded from the guys who is behind PHP and alike, is always THE best award in all. Zend has been running the PHP certification for more than 4 years and have been awarding certificates for thousands of PHP developer and alike. If you are totally serious in your PHP development, Zend is the way to go.
You can look at the price tag for each of the examination bundles that Zend offers, alongside with all the exam preparation guides.
W3C
One of the most understandable sites. And one of the guys that have been running free programs and having a wide web resources for new web developers around the world. If you don’t know W3C, you are not a real developer. W3C also give out certificate and roll out free practice test for people to try. This really worth a try to know your level.
However, the real test is nothing like the practice test, it consists of in depth material with around 70 multiple choice questions that would really rule out the weak and the strong… Also, 70 questions in 70 minutes, yes, there is a time limit. And you have to nominate someone creditable to be your supervisor. The price for the exam is $75 USD.
OST
O’Reilly School of Technology also offers PHP certification through 4 courses. On completion of all 4 courses offered by OST (with a price tag of $398 each course) you will be awarded a PHP certification. All 4 courses work in conjuction to give you a thorough understanding of PHP, ranging from beginner to advanced PHP, logical design, database management to Web2.0 integration. It surely worths the price tag.
That’s all?
Yea, for now. There are others, offering similar certification, but I’ve ruled out the 3 most popular ones. The others including Expert Rating (really a job seeking site, offering PHP certification for 10 bux, 45 multiple choice questions in 45 minutes) and Brainbench which is, in my opinion, not as creditable as the others (please don’t flame me, that’s my personal preference)
OpenID for CodeIgniter made easy – All about it
Oct 21st
A few months back, I have been struggling to have openID authentication loaded to my application. It’s a hazard… the simple idea of having it integrated to my application and have users logged in using their existing facebook, google account is pretty fancy, but the code behind it is a mess, a complete tragedy. Luckily RPXNow stepped in and provided me a hand in authenticate people and handling the magic works. No one likes to reinvent the wheel after all, and this is a PRETTY HARD wheel to deal with…
Also, I’ve been exposed to the wonderful world of Codeigniter, and have found a wonderful library handling all the dirty works for me, (75% of those have been dealt with by RPXNow). All I have to do is have a small iframe in my view, and then deal with what I have to offer when I have successfully authenticated the users.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 | function login() { $this->load->library('openidrpx'); // In the view, display an iframe pointing to the "embedurl" $this->load->view('loginview', array('embedurl', $this->openidrpx->EmbedUrl('start/openidverify')); } function openidverify() { $this->load->library('openidrpx'); if($token = $this->input->post('token')) { $data = $this->openidrpx->AuthInfo($token); if($id = OpenIDRpx::Identifier($data)) { // Authorize user! } } } |
However…
The idea is great, having some other web service do the dirty authentication work, and have a web framework ready library to do the integration dirty work… Having not to dirty your hands, but get things done. This is too easy to be true. But… I think using RPXNow is a bad idea, at least for me.
By using RPXNow, I am entrusting a third party site to deal with my users. There’s an extra hop in the process and thus, I am really relying on their service for my login process… What if they gone out of business for a while…?
Also, when the users login, the OpenID provider will direct them to yoursitename.RPXNow.com instead of your root website. Although RPXNOw offers ability to customize this hopping point, or with an extra cost ($20/month) to have it named as your root website (www.yoursitename.com). This serves to confuse your naive user even more.
By having a monthly fee, you can whitelist/blocklist certain provider, but this feature is not available in the free ones.
So!
It’s up to you, if you are really confident that you can deal with OpenID on your own, I suggest you do. But if you have absolutely no idea of how to even start looking at the problem, RPXNow is a definitive choice, it saves you “10 years of pain of extensive coding” and have your application up and running in under 2 hours (or less!!!). And if you like RPXNow and pay to be a loyal customer, you’ll gain a lot of extra functionality.
Useful websites web developer should make use of
Oct 18th
There are quite a few tools lying around on the internet that helps the web development or web design process drastically. It will certainly strike inspirations and surely make your life easier while creating a website. In this post, I have compiled several websites that I have make use of in my progress.
Lorem Lipsum / Sample Content
Yes, the awesome, the all known popular test text lorem ipsum dolor sit amen… something something… To simulate real text rendering on a webpage. If you don’t have this on a notepad lies on your desktop, this website is a blast. It gives you short paragraph, long paragraph, list items to mess around with. Complete with a Coda Clip or Textmate Bundle for your complete convenience. I personally just go onto this website and grab the thing I need.
Colour Combinations / Palettes
Visit ColourLover | Visit ColorCombo | Visit ColourSchemeDesigner
You need some colour combination that works together, but you certainly do not have the time to play around and do experiments.. Of course, when designing a website, look and feel (to please your boss) comes first. So colour combinations must be chosen wisely. I primarily goes to ColorCombo and ColourLover, but when I need to pick a certain colour combo that takes a long time to find, I’ll just make a palette myself. ColourSchemeDesigner offers me all the tool I need to create one.
Font Choosing
This tool helps you grab font from an image or a website that you think looks nice. People have been using the same fonts for ages, so it’s no big deal grabbing some here and there 
Test Absolutely Everything 100+ Tools in One
Yeah, it does what it says it does. This tool can test your website in a lot of different ways, through a lot of different sites. CSS/HTML Validator, SEO, Social Services, Web Proxies, Network Tools, Text Tools, Images Tools and a lot of other tools all aggregated from 100+ sites here for your testing convenience. My definitive choice.
Speed Tester
Visit Pingdom Tools | Visit Load Impact
I often use both of this website to test the speed of my server and by that, optimize page load accordingly. Pingdom tools give me the file name that I should optimize and Load Impact helps me understand how my server would react in heavy load.
Icons
Good looking icons are the heart of the website. It virtually makes the site looks good and worth checking out. They have around 100000 icons in their database and all have been carefully picked and enhanced with various size to choose from. Splendid tools.
CSS Compressor / Tidy / Optimisation
Visit CSSCompressor | Visit CSS Tidy | Visit CSS Optimisation
The compressor reduce the css size so that it’s faster to load. CSS Tidy helps developers read better, fix errors and reduce redundant code. The optimiser does pretty much the same thing + reducing file size.
To be a web developer
Oct 17th
Is to know all of these <insert evil and sinister laugh here> languages. This post serves as a starting place for all who wants to be a web developer. You might not need to understand in depth on any of these, but the least is the basic. My choices of framework serves as a suggestion only, the real choice is yours.
1. HTML
Back to when internet was born and introduced to the naked world… Back to when the internet was young and needing a serious developer….Tim Berners-Lee said “let there be HTML”… and there was HTML, and it was good. The proof of its goodness stays ever since then until today. Yeah, every serious web developer use HTML. Easy to learn, easy to misuse. With great powers come great responsibility. So code well, and follow the standards.
2. CSS
HTML always comes with CSS. It helps you refrain from misusing those font and colors tag by having a separate CSS file. This serve as a way for you to separate content and display components. Also, helps you to hate tables and loves divs and spans. Though many would say otherwise…
3. Server Side scripting
When you have master your way of representing your thoughts on pretty html/css compliant documents, it’s time to deliver dynamic content. One problem though, is to choose which server side scripting you would go for. Unlike HTML/CSS where only 1 thing is required to learn and to have it beaten to your head. There are choices.
My Choice: PHP. Other choices: Ruby, Python, Java, ASP.NET
4. SQL
One choice again. SQL have become a parent of all database language. There are many database engine, most of them are built ontop of SQL or understand SQL anyway. So why bother learning a language that you might not be using. SQL is the way to go.
5. Javascript / Client Side Scripting
User interactivity is the heart of the website, make sure people enjoys reading your website. Javacsript has matured into a great way of delivering dynamic content by using AJAX interactivity. Facebook does it, most new website nowadays does it. Why don’t you?
6. Frameworks
Web developers have been reinventing the wheel so many times that they come up with a whole sort of different type of wheels. These framework give you the wheel and tell you how to use it properly with examples and screencasts… Save you tons and tons of time trying to imagine how the wheel would look like and how it will work.
There is no one type of wheel that helps all web applications. So there are a lot. Choose wisely for a server side scripting framework and a javascript framework.
my choices: PHP Framework: Codeigniter, CSS Framework: 960.gs, Javascript framework: Jquery or Mootools
7. Knowing your web server.
Tricks and tricks. Understand how to give your website optimum experience by deliver the webpage to them as fast as it could be. When you have become a master and reach new ceiling, it’s time to differentiate yourself.