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Firefox 3.1 has Web Workers (threading) and Geolocation
The latest beta 2 release includes web workers, which are essentially threads allowing you to farm off Javascript heavy lifting to background processes so that the interface can continue to load without being impacted upon. The Mozilla developer center [sic] has an interesting article on implementing them; Using web workers, which includes a couple of worked examples based on the Fibonacci sequence. Geolocation is an interesting one for services like Twitter, Jaiku and possibly Facebook as it would allow users an easy way of updating all the services with their current location simply by Firefox broadcasting the information. Read more ⇒
CrunchBang Linux on the Eee Pc
So far I have tried out Ubuntu, eeeBuntu, EasyPeasy Linux and CrunchBang Linux (all of which are Debian based) on the Asus Eee PC. Ubuntu was a bit of an annoyance to get setup and it was troublesome trying to get all the buttons or the sound and microphone to work so I then tried EasyPeasy. It was easy to install (it already contains the Array.org kernal) and I liked the NBR interface with its easy to use tabbed system not to mention that after using Ubuntu it was nice to be able to see most of the system dialogues on screen (Ubuntu’s dialogues were so long they fell off screen! Read more ⇒
A bit slow off the mark with this one but Agavi 1RC1 has been released and it is of course looking very nice. The 1.0 feature set is complete and potential bug fixes are the only things standing between now and 1.0 in earnest. Features that I am particularly interested in include the recent refactoring of the configuration/routing files, the new validation interface and the addition of unit testing to the framework. Read more ⇒
A Good Windows Development Environment and Ubuntu Virtualbox
Often Linux just does it better! Often I find myself developing a Windows machine without access to a Linux development server, but I still need to access to some of the Linux binaries and features such as cron jobs, the at command and binaries such as imagemagick, pdftotext, etc. Some things can be emulated with ported binaries or through Cygwin, but I feel a lot more comfortable developing on a platform that is representative of the live server the web site will run on. Read more ⇒
Enabling sites and modules in Apache on Ubuntu or Debian
I really like the way the Apache modules and virtualhosts are seperated out on Debian into folders containing those, which are available and those which are enabled. There is one small problem with this – it is more work than before! Luckily there are some helper scripts. The Apache configuration files are layed out in the following way: mods-available – the actual text files containing the modules configuration sites-available – the vhosts text file for the site Read more ⇒
Securing SSH with Key Based Authentication
Certificates are a useful way of restricting access to your SSH server because a user must have three things to log onto the server: Username Password Certificate Normally they would only need to have a password and username, which can be guess at or (potentially) brute forced. Forcing the user to supply a certificate on log on means that they must also have a tangible source of identification (without the key file they cannot log in! Read more ⇒
Linux to Windows Server - Migrating and securing your crontab
In the PHP development arena the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) stack is very common, but once in a while a client will come through the door with a Microsoft background. So what do you do if your CMS or framework was built with a Linux base layer in mind? Sounds easy, but what if you have jobs loaded into your Linux crontab for processing mail outs or after hours records processing? Read more ⇒
To install the new XAMPP ensure you firstly uninstall and remove your current XAMPP folder. Upgrades are not supported with this version due to the differences one of which is the removal of PHP4 support from the XAMPP package. I like to install agavi via the pear package that is available: Open a command prompt and navigate to your XAMPP directory eg. D:\xampp\php Execute: pear channel-discover pear.agavi.org pear config-set auto_discover 1 pear config-set preferred_state beta pear install -a agavi/agavi Wait for a bit as it installs Read more ⇒
Twitter, Jaiku, Rejaw and Tumblr
It is clear from all usage reports that Twitter is definitely used by more people than the other services, but I am still not sure whether any of them are truly must have or useful. Rejaw and Jaiku are more in line with the Twitter model, but they allow users to make comments on posts. Jaiku goes further by allowing channels, which operate much like an IRC Channel. You follow the channel and when users post updates to it they are displayed in your feed. Read more ⇒
Freelancers: Costing your work
Recently I have been a fly-on-the-wall in an interesting discussion on the Auckland PHP User Group regarding the process of costing freelance work. So I thought I would toss my hat in the ring and give my opinion and summarise the interesting aspects. Let me just say now that I cannot tell you how much you should be charging or what you are worth, but I can help you avoid some pitfalls. Read more ⇒