My previous blog post was all about the best PHP IDE and how our development team decided to switch from Aptana to Netbeans partly because of Aptanas decision to drop its PHP support in favour of PDT. However it seems that Aptana has since backtracked on this and is now re-introducing its own PHP support for Version 3.

So far they have confirmed the following as part of the Beta:
1. Syntax coloring which is part of the new Studio themes support.
2. Code Assist (for scripts in a single project and PHP API)
3. Syntax Errors annotations (which are actually better then what we had in the old php plug in).
4. Mark Occurrences
5. A PHP ‘Ruble’ (https://radrails.tenderapp.com/faqs/radrails-3/ruble-programming-guide) that provides you the ability to add capabilities to the editor by scripting them at your own team (with some Rails knowledge).

They have also confirmed the following features for future releases:
1. Code formatter
2. Debugger support
3. External libraries support
4. More views, such as class hierarchy etc.
5. Wizards and generators, such as class/interface wizards, Getters & Setters etc.
…And more

So it’s going to be interesting to see how Aptanas PHP shapes up in comparison to Netbeans and if this developer is going to be shifting back to Aptana.

I had a problem earlier in the week where I needed to merge multiple PDF files together so they could be printed in one long run. I thought it was going to be one of those tasks that caused me to have a serious headache, but to my surprise it was rather easy.

Lets say you have 5 PDF files named “doc_1.pdf, doc_2.pdf, doc_3.pdf, doc_4.pdf and doc_5.pdf” and you need them to be merged into one file called “docs_joined.pdf”. All you have to do is use the following function:

shell_exec();

This function executes a command via shell and in this case the Linux command you want to call is ‘gs’, which is Ghostscript, a PostScript and PDF language interpreter and previewer.

So using both shell_exec() and ‘gs’ we would do the following to join the PDFs together:

$output = shell_exec(‘gs -q -sPAPERSIZE=letter -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=docs_joined.pdf doc_1.pdf doc_2.pdf doc_3.pdf doc_4.pdf doc_5.pdf);

And you’re done. Simple!

I’ve been recently developing a very large scale website and back end system for a client and during the development process we came across and very annoying yet common issue that really spoils the user experience. When data is posted from one page to another and the user navigates back using the “Back” button in their browser, you get a warning page saying that the page has expired. Not only is this very annoying for the user, but could potentially turn them off from using the site altogether.

So what’s the solution? Well there are a couple of things we can do to help the problem, but the only real way to get around this is to use a header redirect once the form has been posted. Let’s look at an example.

So you have a form like below and you want the users name to be stored in a session variable.

<form action=”step_2.php” method=”post”>
<input type=”text” id=”users_name” name=”users_name” />
<input type=”submit” id=”submit” name=”submit” value=”SUBMIT” />
</form>

When the SUBMIT button is then pressed a PHP script is called to store the users_name in a SESSION variable, like so:

<?php
if (isset($_POST['users_name'])) {
$_SESSION['users_name'] = $_POST['users_name'];
}
?>

The one thing that is missing from this script is the header redirect. This will redirect the page to the page of your choice and will eliminate the Page Expired issue. So to do this simply change the above script to:

<?php
if (isset($_POST['users_name'])) {
$_SESSION['users_name'] = $_POST['users_name'];
header(‘Location: step_2.php’);
}
?>

Perfect!

I’m sure all web designers have come across a really annoying problem with multiple  <div> columns that float.

The Problem:

If you have a 2 column layout and one <div> has “float: left;” and the other “float: right;”, the containing <div> tag is not going to expand beyond those 2 floating <div> tags. The old solution was to put a new <div> tag under those columns, with the CSS rule of “clear: all”. So you would end up with the following code:

<div id=”container”>

<div id=”column_left”>Content</div>

<div id=”column_right”>Content</div>

<div class=”float_clear”></div>

</div>

#container {
border: 1px solid #000000;
}

#column_left {
float: left;
}

#column_right {
float: right;
}

.float_clear {
clear: both;
}

Although this works just fine and dandy, the main issue with it is that it creates extra unwanted HTML markup. Well the good news is that a better solution has since emerged. Instead of using the float_clear tag, replace your #container CSS with the following:

#container {
border: 1px solid #000000;
overflow: auto;
width: 100%
}

This results in the same outcome as using the <div class=”float_clear”></div> markup and clear: both; CSS.

Brilliant!

There are plenty of options out there to “build your own website”, some obviously better than others, but is it a good idea?

Well first off, it will probably save you some money up front and in some cases web builders are free. So it may seem an appealing way to get your self an online presence. But beware, there are a few drawbacks.

Firstly they will almost certainly be template driven, so don’t expect your site to be unique and one of a kind. Sure you’ll probably be able to add your own logo, but the layouts, colour schemes and pictures will more than likely be predefined. Secondly the code that the builder produces may well be very “un-search engine friendly”. If you want  your site to get to the top of Google then taking this route will not be your best option. The site builder may produce nests and nests of code that Google will dismiss and not list your site. The problem is that if this is the case Google may not continue crawling your site and it could take a long time for you even to appear on their listings. Also bear in mind  the disability act. Your site should comply with guidelines setup by the W3C, so people who are visually impaired can still navigate around your site using screen readers. The use of a site builder may not take this into consideration.

So to sum it up, although it might be an appealing option to use a site builder, there are some things to take into consideration. At the end of the day, the best way to build a website is from the ground up, with neat hand-built code. Which of course is all that us folks at Edge of the Web do!