Planet PHP

190. Google Chrome vs Firefox: Chrome is Catching Up on Features for Web Developers

Posted on: 2012-07-26

Google Chrome browser seems to have practically reached the leadership of the market share of browsers among the generality of the users. However, Firefox still leads in the preference of the majority of Web developers.

This article is a follow-up of another written last year entitled "Top 10 Reasons Why Firefox is still Better than Chrome for Web Development".

This time it includes a point by point response from Renato Mangini of Google Chrome Developer relations team on the issues raised in the past article to explain which issues were addressed or can be overcome somehow.

Read this article to learn more on how Google Chrome is catching up on Firefox, as well find out about other less known cool features of Chrome that can improve your Web user experience.

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189. The 7 Main Optimizations of PHP 5.4 - Lately in PHP podcast episode 25

Posted on: 2012-07-04

The PHP 5.4 includes 7 main optimizations that made PHP work more efficiently in terms of the speed and memory usage efficiency.

That is the main topic discussed in episode 25 of the Lately in PHP podcast on which Manuel Lemos received Gustavo Lopes, a PHP core developer.

Listen to the podcast, watch the podcast video or read the transcript to learn more about these and other interesting PHP topics discussed on this episode.

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187. The Secret PHP Optimization of version 5.4

Posted on: 2012-06-14

PHP 5.4 introduced several performance optimizations. One of them was not discussed much in the PHP community but it may affect the performance of your code depending on the way you write it.

Read this article to learn more about this less known PHP 5.4 optimization and what you need to do to make your PHP code take advantage of this optimization to run faster spending less memory.

The article also talks about a speculation of what PHP 6 and Zend Engine 3 can be in the future using explicitly declared types of variables and function return values to generate code that makes PHP applications run much faster.

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186. Do PHP Developers Need and will Adopt PHP Coding Standards? - Lately in PHP podcast episode 24

Posted on: 2012-06-04

The PHP Standards Group is trying to push new specifications for PHP coding standards. Whether PHP developers need and will adopt these standards was one of the main topics discussed by Manuel Lemos and Arturs Sosins in episode 24 of the Lately in PHP podcast.

They also discussed the complaints of Linus Torvalds on the limitations of GitHub handling Git pull requests and whether that will affect the processing of pull requests to the PHP core project.

Other topics include the latest PHP 5.4.3 and 5.3.13 bug fixes, the chart of PHP releases over time, and the JavaScript Innovation Award initiative that is about to start and repeat the success of the PHP Innovation Award.

Listen to the podcast, watch the video recording or read the transcript to learn about these and other interesting PHP related topics here.

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184. Using DaDaBIK to create a PHP CRUD Database Front-End without coding

Posted on: 2012-05-09

DaDaBIK is an Open Source PHP project which allows you to create Web front-end and simple database applications without coding. The new stable version 4.4 of DaDaBIK was released recently.

Read this article to learn more about DaDaBIK and how you can use it to productively create your PHP applications.


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183. Will it ever Matter if PHP Sucks? - Lately in PHP podcast episode 23

Posted on: 2012-05-07

Once in a while we see fans of other languages writing long articles on why PHP sucks and you should not use it. But will that ever matter?

That is one of the main topics discussed by Manuel Lemos and Ernani Joppert in the episode 23 of the Lately in PHP podcast, for the first time also recorded in video using Google Hangouts On Air.

They also covered other polemic ideas for future PHP versions like the pure PHP script proposal, making function names case-sensitive and the option to skip optional function parameters.

Another interesting topic discussed in this podcast is about the proposals for HTTP 2.0 protocol.

Listen to the podcast, watch the video recording or read the transcript to learn about these and other interesting PHP related topics.

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182. Making the Web Faster with HTTP 2 Protocol

Posted on: 2012-05-03

The HTTP protocol version 2.0 is in the process of being defined. There was a call for proposals and several researchers submitted specifications and ideas that can make the Web faster and better in several other aspects.

Read this article to learn about the details of these proposals and what Web developers can expect to prepare to take advantage of the planned improvements of the HTTP 2.0 protocol.

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180. Will PHP development Migration to Git improve non-Core Developer Contribution Interest? - Lately in PHP podcast episode 22

Posted on: 2012-04-05

The PHP development migrated to a Git repository. With the integration with GitHub it became easier for non-core developers to submit pull requests with bug fixes and new feature improvements to PHP.

Will this new possibility make it PHP core developers accept more contributions from non-core developers? That is one of the main topics discussed by Manuel Lemos and Ernani Joppert in the episode 22 of the Lately in PHP podcast.

They also talk about the upcoming PHP 5.4.1 release, as well about the repercussion of a recently article that aims to encourage more PHP developers to embrace Object Oriented Programming, and the top packages of the PHP Programming Innovation Award edition of 2011.

Listen to the podcast or read the transcript to learn more about this and other interesting PHP topics.

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178. Why is it better to develop in PHP with classes (OOP)?

Posted on: 2012-03-21

Some developers code their PHP projects writing classes of objects.

Others also write classes but do it just because they see others doing it without being able to explain why classes are a good thing.

Others do not write classes but reuse other people code written in the form of classes.

Others completely refuse to write or reuse other developer classes because they do not see much point in doing it.

Read this article to learn why it is better to develop your PHP projects based on object classes.

You may also learn how to convert your global code based classes into properly written classes that you can reuse in multiple projects besides other benefits of using Object Oriented Programming in PHP.

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177. Is PHP Source Quality really Good or is it still Insecure? - Lately in PHP podcast episode 21

Posted on: 2012-03-01

A study from Coverity claims that the source code of Open Source projects such as PHP has a low defect rate.

Meanwhile, a few weeks ago, the security expert Stefan Esser claims that PHP source security bug prevention has a lot to be desired because PHP core developers do not have the habit of using source code auditing tools to prevent security bugs.

The matter of the PHP source code quality and security bug prevention was one of the main topics discussed by Manuel Lemos and Ernani Joppert in episode 21 of the Lately in PHP podcast.

Among other interesting topics, they also discuss the new features of Apache 2.4 and whether it is already possible for PHP sites to take advantage of this new Apache release.

Listen to the podcast now or read the transcript to learn about these and other interesting PHP related topics.

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