Redesigned website and blog
I have finally gotten around to replacing my old website with a shiny new one. This has a lot more features and allows me to update the website more frequently. I will also be posting some of the new related “techy” news on the blog as well.
I have set up some sections to allow me to post some of my PHP/JavaScript code that I will be releasing, this will give me good grounds and a basic “code portfolio” to work and learn from. I have kept the design of the website as simple as possible but also easy to read.
Any questions please feel free to leave me a comment or contact me from the relevant pages.
CSS3 XHTML Template
Since the implementation of CSS3 into some of the modern browsers, eg. Webkit based browsers and Firefox we’re starting to see more and more websites use CSS3 to style the pages. I have made an example of how we can use “Rounded Corners” in CSS3 in a modern layout. I have provided the download at the bottom of the page.
The layout is a standard two column layout with a header, two menus and a footer – I have rounded the corners using the CSS3 standard of border-radius and added sample dummy content to the pages. Feel free to modify and use this template as you wish.
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Google Gears: LocalDB Example
I have recently been playing around with google gears; Gears is an open source project that enables more powerful web applications, by adding new features to your web browser such as interacting with the desktop, storing local data and running Javascript in the background. Here is a simple link manager I created to test out the LocalDB usage.
In this example I have made a link manager, where you can add/delete links from categories – as well as add/edit/delete existing categories. I have been using JQuery to automate some things, so if you use any of this code at all make sure JQuery is loaded beforehand.
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Teamspeak 3: Connection Class
Due to the recently released Teamspeak 3 BETA I have made a connection class in PHP to communicate with the server and fetch back information that I can display in a visual format. I have included a download ZIP for this that includes the PHP code, styles and icons used.
The full package includes a stylesheet and icons, see the archived file at the bottom of this post.
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Google Chrome Extensions
Google chrome have just released a BETA version of the extension gallery. You can check it out here. There are many good extensions already released. I have listed below some of the more interesting ones.
Speed Tracer (By Google) is one of the more advanced extensions available, this will provide you with detailed graph analysis of the speed that web pages are loaded.
Speed Tracer is a tool to help you identify and fix performance problems in your web applications. It visualizes metrics that are taken from low level instrumentation points inside of the browser and analyzes them as your application runs. Speed Tracer is available as a Chrome extension and works on all platforms where extensions are currently supported (Windows and Linux).
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Cloud Storage: Ubuntu One
I came across a free (and paid) cloud service from Ubuntu; the creators of the popular OS Ubuntu Linux. You can have a free account and have 2GB’s worth of storage costing you nothing. If you happen to run the Ubuntu OS, One integrates with the desktop; providing ‘drag and drop’ functionality for backing up files.
More information below.
Basic Tutorial PHP/MySQL (Part 1)
One of the most requested tutorials are those that explain how to connect and use a MySQL database server with PHP code. I have written a basic tutorial showing how to perform MySQL queries with PHP.
So you’re wanting to use a database with PHP to store your data? MySQL is a great open-source RDBMS (Relational Database Management System) that is widely available on many web hosting packages. Before we start make sure that you have access to both PHP and MySQL on your hosting package.
PHPCache Release
I have been working on a small class to cache functions in PHP. I have come up with a class that will allow you to convert any standard function into a cached function with just one line of code. The main advantage is if you are using a Linux based server for running PHP, as I have included (by default) for the cache files to write straight to the system RAM that greatly increases performance. Check out the code below.
This is the first release of the file up to now so if you have any problems let me know.
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