Devit!

Last night I was struggling through setting up my laptop for web development by installing Apache, PHP and MySQL. Every time I do it I remember “this never works!”. As many times as I have done it, it never seems to get any easier. I keep doing it manually because I convince myself I like having that level of control and at some point I will understand it all. I should mention a valid point – these packages rarely include the most recent versions of all software. Each time an individual update to any one of these components is made, then they must recompile and redistribute the entire package.

But there are a lot of people who don’t care about understanding it and just want it to work. So I’ve compiled a list of install packages that do all the installation and configuring for you. I’m going to stick to Windows solutions (WAMP) as if you’re developing on Linux then you probably like the infinite configuration.

Take a look at these Apache, MySQL, PHP install packages:

• WAMP server – Apache, PHP5 + PECL, SQLiteManager, MySQL 5, phpMyAdmin
• XAMPP - Apache, MySQL, PHP + PEAR, Perl, mod_php, mod_perl, mod_ssl, OpenSSL, phpMyAdmin, Webalizer, Mercury Mail Transport System for Win32 and NetWare Systems v3.32, Ming, JpGraph, FileZilla FTP Server, mcrypt, eAccelerator, SQLite, and WEB-DAV + mod_auth_mysql
• The Uniform Server – Apache, MySQL, PHP, phpMyAdmin

Or visit the Wikipedia article to get more details on these and other WAMP packages.

It’s hard to know – if we had a wider choice of fonts on the web, would it encourage better designs? Perhaps. It will also increase the ability for those users who loved the BLINK tag to create pages far more horribly designed than we have seen so far. Think of all those home made flyers & posters using the Comic Sans font. I don’t think that font can look good in anything other than comics.

But I have to concede that these atrocities should not result in the punishment of those designers who would use them wisely. There is still a long road ahead for font support on the web but as a web developer my vote is for more options than less.

Read about the history and state of web fonts here: CSS @ Ten: The next big thing

This list in the link below may be from last year but it could very well save the average developer from a headache or two. The items on this list are definitely classified as time savers. If you’re a php developer I suggest checking out the story linked below.

Here’s #1 from the list:

Use ip2long() and long2ip() to store IP addresses as integers instead of strings in a database. This will reduce the storage space by almost a factor of four (15 bytes for char(15) vs. 4 bytes for the integer), make it easier to calculate whether a certain address falls within a range, and speed-up searches and sorts (sometimes by quite a bit).

Check out the rest here: 10 things you (probably) didn’t know about php

When it comes to laying out a website with CSS it is important to consider how each layout might affect your users. There’s often a lot of confusion surrounding how various layouts work. Evaluating the pros and cons is very important when you try and pick the ideal type of layout for a website. Failing to consider the pros and cons can have disastrous effects on a websites usability. When you’re trying to determine the best layout for a clients website be sure to consider the users. After all – even the most beautiful website is useless if 10% of it’s users can’t view it properly. The link below will hopefully help you understand the problems and advantages of fixed, fluid and elastic layouts.

CSS Layouts: The Fixed. The Fluid. The Elastic