From the makers of PHP, Zend is now offering their Zend Framework as a PHP alternative to Ruby on Rails and Django (Python). I’ve yet to take a close look at this framework, but it looks promising. If you’re a PHP coder it also carries the advantage of being familiar.
Looking to make your PHP scripts run a little faster? Check out these Simple Optimization Tips for PHP and MySQL.
The Particletree blog has an excellent tutorial on The Hows and Whys of Degradable Ajax. The technique involves creating a page that works like a traditional web application that processes information on page loads and refreshes. Then, if JavaScript is enabled, they have their scripts bypass the traditional functionality and replaces it with Ajax functionality.
Jeroen van der Meer has an article that takes a look at what’s coming in PHP 6. Some of the more noteable features are improvements to the OO features of the popular web scripting language including the addition of namespaces. Namespaces allows you to group variables, functions or objects under a certain name which lets the developer use the same name for a variable, function or object multiple times. Other featues include improved caching and some changes to the extensions that are packaged with the base PHP install.
Paul Whitrow has a handy PHP script that lets you insert a 5 Star Rating System into your web pages. The script uses small text files to store the data so no server-side database is required. Another nice touch is that the results display uses the hReview microformat.
Yahoo! Developer Network is now offering a PHP Developer Center with lots of great examples of using PHP with JSON, REST and serialized PHP.
The Ajax Lessons blog has a nice tutorial on Building Tabbed Content using a mix of JavaScript and PHP.
James Higgs has put together a really nice series of articles that will help you get up and running with the Subversion open source version control system.
PHPConfig by AnalogX provides a Windows GUI to the php.ini configuration file. Its a nice simple way to make small tweaks to your PHP development system.
Quick Lookup is simply the most amazing web programming reference I have come across in quite a long time. It is an AJAX enabled tool that allows for quick lookup of syntax for PHP, MySQL, JavaScript and CSS. You can load it into your sidebar for easy access.
