Justin Mason looks at using VNC for his desktop. His machine is too noisy so what better way to get a quiet PC?
I used to use VNC but it was too slow. I think you’d probably need a switched network with decent network cards and switches. I have decent network cards, but only a hub.
Monthly Archives: April 2003
Template Engines
Here’s an interesting article, Template Engines from the author of bTemplate.
In short, the point of template engines should be to separate your business logic from your presentation logic, not separate your PHP code from your HTML code.
That’s the short definition of what a template should do. I think it should also:
- Provide application and server security. It could be argued that PHP safe_mode provides a level of security against third-party code.
- Make it simple to maintain the template.
In my experience, Smarty syntax is clearer in a html template. Mixing php and html grates on my brain but obviously it’s a subjective matter that many people are happy with.
Nevertheless, if you’re sitting on the fence about using templates, read the above article. See what the author does in his examples, and make up your own mind if they’re useful or not. You might find yourself using Smarty afterwards anyway!
Blogshares tips
Tim has some excellent tips for all you blogshare traders. Make sure you sell your stock before May 1st!
b2 plugin support
On the b2 forums there are plenty of hacks and enhancements to b2. While there are guidelines to writing hacks they’re informal, and many hacks rely on changing existing code.
I’m using the Smarty plugins support to provide a consistent and documented way of writing plugins.
I created a simple “googleit” function already. It’s integrated into the post.tpl template of this blog and provides the “Search” link you see below.
Using Smarty plugins is easy. You create your function, call it a predictable name (smarty_function_name() where name is “googleit” for example), put it into a file and drop that file into the plugins directory.
The usual advantage of using Smarty caching applies here too. Once it’s cached the plugin isn’t loaded again until it’s called so you can drop as many plugins as you like into the plugin directory without suffering any speed loss!
Smarty Plugins – SmartyWiki
Lots and lots of Smarty plugins here!
The Register – on Piles
Short Reg article on Apple’s Piles – new ideas for their GUI. “Gestures” are talked about too.
I tried gestures for a while in my browser but they were too clumsy and difficult to use for me. They could make using a mouse easier for RSI suffers though.
phpPatterns() Updates
phpPatterns() has been updated with a wealth of articles! Stuff on Mozilla XUL, PHP5, PDF, APIs, PEAR::SOAP.
Excellent reading. The article on PHP5 is a bit of a rant aimed at PHP developers. PHP5 will make it more important than ever to be familiar with OOP and advanced programming techniques, as well as plain old procedural coding. We’re in for some interesting times ahead!
What's the point of Smarty?
Here’s a good comment off a Zend Smarty tutorial on why you should use Smarty.
With smarty all I had to do was write the engine in PHP and then all the deigners had to do was come up with the new templates. Then for each customer, there was 1 universal engine, one that I
would keep up to date and free of bugs. AWESOME.
That’s sorta how this site works too 🙂
Ireland – Eurovision
This is Ireland’s entry in the Eurovision. We (the Irish public that is) went mad for several weeks to pick out Mickey Harte singing “We’ve Got the World Tonght”. Of course I watched it only because Martina was watching it!
Show computed styles bookmarklet
Simon wanted a bookmarklet to examine the css style sheet of any particular html element on a page. Sil created a beautiful bookmarklet that displays the style properties of your page as you move the mouse over them! Wow! Tres nice!
Unfortunately another bookmarklet didn’t work worked strangely in Galeon 1.2.9 (and Moz 1.3). I had to open an close the Javascript console to get it to work I think.