The Apache/PHP/MySQL stack is immensely popular for web application development. Its components are powerful, versatile and Free. Unfortunately however, PHP comes with a default configuration that is not suitable for production mode, and may cause developers to use insecure techniques during the development phase. Inside is a check list of settings that are intended to harden the default PHP installation.
JavaScript is a fully-featured Object-Oriented programming language. On the surface, it shares syntactical similarities with Java and C, but the mentality is quite different. At its core, JavaScript is more similar to functional languages. Inside is a list of JavaScript tips, some offer techniques to simulate features found in C-like languages (such as assertions or static variables). Others are meant to improve performance and explore some of the more obscure parts of the web scripting language.
screen is one of my favorite GNU utilities; it provides a quick and easy way to have several open terminals and do multiple things at once. Another cool feature about screen is that it stays running even if the user logs out or disconnects. This enables the user to detach from their session and resume it later. This feature is a life saver when working on a remote machine through SSH. If I was disconnected for some reason, I can easily reconnect and resume my session.
screen is very easy to use. Below is a list of its main commands. Read on, experiment with them, and you will become proficient in screen in minutes. Believe me you will appreciate it.
Vim is one of the most popular text editors for Linux and Unix systems. Its text-based interface may look intimidating for newcomers, but underneath it there is a wealth of functionality to be learned. Experienced Vim users often feel much more productive using Vim than GUI-based text editors.
I've been using Vim on a daily basis for years to do a wide range of tasks, from casual editing of short text files, to managing large programming projects, and every now and then I come across a new feature that considerably helps in some aspect of text editing. For this reason, I decided to compile a list of such Vim tips in this post.
Update: I posted some news on this here.
Ever wondered how to create an interface like Google Personalized Home? In the first section of this article I'll demonstrate how to create a drag/drop portal in a few lines of JavaScript code, using the excellent Prototype and Scriptaculous JavaScript libraries. In the second section, I'll explain how to integrate this code into Drupal as a server backend for storing user settings. You may check the frontend here (tested with Firefox 1.5, IE6, and Opera 8.5), and download a reusable JavaScript Portal class and Drupal module for the backend at the bottom of this post.
Anyone interested in web development should have heard about the Model-View-Controller software pattern by now. This pattern emphasizes on separation of application's data model, UI (view), and control logic. The concept itself isn't new and has been around since 1979, but recently there have been many successful implementations of the pattern in the domain of web development.
Like any self-respecting web developer, I started to explore the available frameworks, and quickly settled on Python as a language and TurboGears as a framework. I viewed many webcasts and documents, then decided to practice my newly gained knowledge by writing a basic del.icio.us-like social bookmarking application in TurboGears. Now I'm documenting my work as a tutorial, hoping that other TurboGears newcomers would find something useful in it. The tutorial covers the following concepts:
There are also sections for the reasons behind my Python/TurboGears choice, and the installation process.
Please read on for the tutorial itself and an attachment of the project's source code at the end. I recommend viewing the code while working with the tutorial, as I didn't include imports or other tiny bits. In addition, the tutorial assumes good knowledge of Python.
I'm a Computer Science graduate, an Open Source enthusiast, and a Googler.
I'm 24 years old, and live in Dublin, Ireland.
This is my personal blog. The views expressed on these pages are mine alone and not those of my employer.
Learning Website Development with Django
A beginner's tutorial to building web applications, quickly and cleanly, with the Django application framework.
My first book. Published by Packt Publishing in April 2008.
