This Week’s Link List (February 11, 2011)
In categorizing this week’s links, I was reluctant to put so many interesting links into the Miscellaneous category because I sometimes think of miscellaneous as implying a lack of importance. But note, that thought is wrong! Miscellaneous means “made up of many different things or kinds of things that have no necessary connection with each other.” There is no mention of (or even implication of) lack of importance in that definition. Some of this week’s most interesting links are in the made-up-of-many-different-things-or-kinds-of-things-that-have-no-necessary-connection-with-each-other-(not-unimportant) category…
- Conference news...
- Keith Casey's PHPBenelux 2011 recap (love this quote: "Show me why something is useful and better instead of just saying it."): http://caseysoftware.com/blog/phpbenelux-2011-recap
- Framework news...
- A SQLSRV module for CakePHP: http://phprepo.wordpress.com/2011/02/07/cakephp-sqlsrv-dbo/
- Michael Nitschinger provides insight into the Lithium Router: http://nitschinger.at/Understanding-the-Lithium-Router-Part-1
- Lukas Kahwe Smith weighs Symfony2 against Symfony 1.x: http://pooteeweet.org/blog/0/1875#m1875
- Another Zend Framework screencast, this time about "Unit Testing Doctrine 2 Entities" (Yes, a ZF screencast about testing Doctrine2 entities :-)): http://www.zendcasts.com/unit-testing-doctrine-2-entities/2011/02/
- How to add multi-language support with Zend_Translate: http://devzone.zend.com/article/12995-Creating-Multi-Language-Web-Applications-with-Zend_Translate
- On design patterns...
- Notes on the "observer" design pattern: http://labelmedia.co.uk/blog/posts/php-design-patterns-observer-pattern.html
- Giorgio Sironi introduces BDD (behavior driven development): http://css.dzone.com/articles/behavior-driven-development-0
- PHP programming...
- Derick Rethans looks at debugging variables using debug_zval_dum: http://derickrethans.nl/debugging-variables.html
- Matthew Weier O'Phinney on why namespaces matter (I love it when people explain why): http://weierophinney.net/matthew/archives/254-Why-PHP-Namespaces-Matter.html
- Prabath Siriwardena demonstrates how to use Curl with https: http://blog.facilelogin.com/2010/12/curl-with-https.html
- Debugging with Xdebug and PHPStorm: http://blog.k-fish.de/2011/02/php-xdebug-and-phpstorm-working.html
- Tools…
- Brandon Savage shares the 5 tools he can't develop without: http://www.brandonsavage.net/the-five-tools-i-cant-develop-without/
- In this podcast, Travis Swicegood introduces and demystifies Git: http://devzone.zend.com/article/12969-ZendCon-Sessions-Episode-036-Pragmatic-Guide-to-Git
- On writing and presenting...
- Marco Tabini on writing: "Writing is, first and foremost, about communicating.": http://blog.tabini.ca/2011/02/writing-101/
- This Zend Framewok webinar looks interesting. Here's the teaser: "For most developers, documentation is a necessary evil they'd rather skip. But really, is documentation that evil? Or is it actually useful?": http://www.zend.com/en/company/news/event/775_webinar-would-you-like-docs-with-that
- This an older post, but still relevant. Wish I'd read this before starting to do presentations: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/11TopTipsForASuccessfulTechnicalPresentation.aspx
- Options to consider when using stock photos (maybe useful info when building presentations): http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/design/free-paid-stock-photos/
- Miscellaneous...
- This helped my understand the controversy around "hashbangs": http://isolani.co.uk/blog/javascript/BreakingTheWebWithHashBangs/
- Top 10 SQL statements every SQL Server DBA should know: http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mssql/article.php/3923371/article.htm
- With the announcement of the IE9 release candidate this week, this post on IE9 performance is interesting: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2011/02/08/focusing-on-real-world-web-performance-with-internet-explorer-9.aspx
- If you ever need to consume OData with JavaScript, this library may be helpful: http://datajs.codeplex.com/documentation
- Corey Fowler shows how to get full IIS support running PHP in Windows Azure: http://blog.syntaxc4.net/post/2011/02/09/Installing-PHP-on-Windows-Azure-leveraging-Full-IIS-Support-Part-1.aspx
- Rafael Dohms walks you through managing test users for Facebook applications: http://blog.rafaeldohms.com.br/2011/02/07/managing-test-users-in-facebook/
- Rafael Dohms on the importance of mental breaks in problem solving (it works!): http://blog.rafaeldohms.com.br/2011/02/04/taking-a-break-to-solve-problems/
- This looks like a good tutorial for processing XML with jQuery (I haven't done the tutorial yet, but I plan to): http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/tutorials/x-processxmljquerytut/index.html
- Just for fun...Things we say wrong: http://www.whatyououghttoknow.com/show/2008/02/27/things-we-say-wrong/
Have a great weekend!
-Brian