For all of you who haven’t really heard, HipHop was created by Facebook to help them scale…I guess they have a lot of users or something.  Essentially HipHop compiles/translates PHP (script language) into compiled C++.  This makes good speed improvements, decreasing CPU usage.  As a lot of other developers have mentioned, this seems really cool and beneficial.

Simply, this benefits maybe 10% of PHP sites.  High traffic sites with load balanced servers…etc…etc..will benefit most.  I’d say the majority of PHP sites are utilizing drupal, wordpress or joomla.

How does this effect the other 90% of sites?
Just because you see these great stats doesn’t mean you need to go jump on the HipHop bandwagon.  The worst thing you can do is overcomplicate things, well maybe not the worst.  I will provide you with the list of things you need to do before you even consider using HipHop PHP:

1. Find Your Bottleneck: If you tell me your site is slow, the first thing I’m checking is your database.
2. Limit Your Database Calls
3. Budget Your “Cache”: APC is a bytecode optimizer that will save you so much headache, and needless DB calls.  Also, look into memcached.
4. Framework Hell: Many new developers find themselves here.  With all these “automagic” features it is hard not to end up there.  Don’t get too trigger happy with your autoloader.
5. HTTP Requests: Listen to Yslow and cut back on your HTTP requests.  Utilize a CDN if necessary.
6. Write C Extension: If you or the people you work with know C, then invest the time in writing your own C extension.  * A big reason for HipHop was the already huge codebase. *

Before I end this post and get bashed for hating on HipHop, please read.  I do not think HipHop is bad.  I think a lot of people who claim they need HipHop haven’t done their research or asked the right questions.  IF PHP IS YOUR BOTTLENECK THIS MAY BE YOUR ANSWER!

Here are what many great minds in PHP have to say about HipHop: http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/13958

* Notes: Anyone think there will be debugging issues with it being Compiled? *

On to the news.  I will be speaking at confoo.ca in Montreal about Browser Compatibility, titled/inspired by my blog post “Drawing the Line with Browser Compatibility”.  I’m very excited about the opportunity to speak about my career/passion, Web Development.  I recently gave a presentation to the Dallas PHP User Group, “Doctrine Overview”.  I think it went well and was also a good learning experience.

Finally, I need your help.  A presentation is only as good as the content being delivered.  I want to know what you, the manager/developer/owner, would like to learn about Browser Compatibility.  Would you like more information about how to combat browser incompatibility or possible guidelines/strategies to implement into your work flow?

Until next time…..you stay classy.

I recently read an article on smashing magazine, How to Effectively Communicate with Developers, and I can’t help but feel as the view is heavily skewed.  I have worked with  many great designers, but I have worked with equally amount of bad designers.  I’ve also worked with, seen, many bad developers who really do not posses the skills to take a design to production properly, so I feel your pain designers.  If you want a fullproof tactic to attack the problem, the solution is simple, get the developer inolved earlier.  When I worked in the advertising world here is the common scenario:

1. Countless design revisions have now pushed the 3 needed weeks to 1 week for development
2. Developer has no clue what the design looks like until it is 100% approved by client
3. The design has many aspects which will force the developer to make executive decisions

The majority of good developers have a good understanding how web sites/applications should work, but lack the creative eye that most designers bring to the table.  We, developer and designers, need to stop the condecending views and understand we both bring valuable information to the design/site flow.

The Solution
Get the developer involved with the client call or the first internal brainstorming meeting.  That way the developer can shoot down things that won’t work well or are just not possible (especially with the timeline), but the developer needs to be responsible and not say “no” just because it will be difficult.  Both the developer and designer want an amazing product to deliver to the client in the hopes of awards and portfolio build up.  Developers also need to keep the designer involved when the site is being developed.  Make sure the UI that is being developed fits with their design scheme or what their personal opinion is, most likely the designer will not comp out every page….that’s just wasteful.  Get the designer and developer involved early, and stay involved all the way to the end.  Simple, right?

I saw the movie “The Hangover” last night, and it was so funny….I will probably see it 3 times before it comes to DVD.  Since I live my life in constant movie quotes I posted one of the quotes to twitter, “Tigers love pepper…..They hate cinnamon”.  No big deal, but then I received a reply from someone who I do not follow and this person does not follow me.  I check the twitter profile, as I always do, and it seems it is a spam account.  They are advertising some url using a short url, lucky for me I have a short url expander plugin for Firefox.  Their url is http://****vegastrips.com/thehangover.

Lets breakdown what they are doing.  Not only are they utilizing short urls to make it difficult for you to see their url, but they are adding “thehangover” to the end of their url.  This will get them brownie points with google.  They, spammers/scammers, are now utilizing twitter, short urls and SEO to beat people down for their scam.

With innovation comes mores headaches.

Grid Layouts
I think grid layouts is a great idea/concept for developing websites.  The problem usually resides with the designer.  Either 1. the designer didn’t design for a Grid layout or 2. the designer fails to fully comprehend the rules of designing grid (believe me it has happened before).

My Framework/Structure
The following is a list of files that make up my structure, as of today:

• default.css - Reset css
• forms.css - Anything that deals with forms (input, buttons, labels, fieldsets, etc.)
• ie.css - All IE overrides go here.
• master.css - This is the css file that does all the @import for all css files
• menu.css - I usually only use this when I utilize a drop down menu
• Typography.css - This contains all headings, links and helper classes (float_left, photo_left, highlight, etc.)
• Structure.css - All structural items are held here (Container, Header, Footer, etc.)

The most helpful part of what I do is probably my helpers.  When I structure a website I use .float_left, .float_right, and .float_contain.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27

/* Helper Classes
-------------------------------------------------------------- */
 
.clear         { clear:both; }
.float_left    { float:left; }
.float_right   { float:right; }
.float_contain { overflow:auto; }
 
.text_left     { text-align:left; }
.text_right    { text-align:right; }
.text_center   { text-align:center; }
.text_justify  { text-align:justify; }
 
.bold          { font-weight:bold; }
.italic        { font-style:italic; }
.underline     { border-bottom:1px solid; }
.highlight     { background:#ffc; }
.superscript   { vertical-align:top; font-size:xx-small; }
 
.photo_left    { float:left; margin:4px 10px 4px 0; }
.photo_right   { float:right; margin:4px 0 4px 10px; }
 
.nopadding     { padding:0; }
.nomargin	   { margin:0; }
.noindent      { margin-left:0; padding-left:0; }
.nobullet      { list-style:none; }
.nowrap		   { white-space:nowrap; }

1
2
3
4
5
6

<div id="Main" class="float_contain clear">
<div id="Content" class="float_left">
    Main Content</div>
<div id="Sidebar" class="float_right">
    Sidebar Content</div>
</div>

My floats are “contained” and this becomes very helpful with IE 6. Here is an example of a basic ie.css.

.photo_left,
.photo_right,
.float_left,
.float_right,
.float_contain {
	display:inline;
}
.float_contain {
	float:left;
}

Those who deal with IE 6 on a regular basis understand the most common bug is the “Double Margin” bug. This happens when you apply a margin to a floated element, by adding “display: inline;” it prevents the bug. It is also a good idea to “clear” at the end of a block to prevent IE6 from riding up on rows it shouldn’t be on.

Conclusion
I am  a huge advocate of frameworks in any language, because of the structure, documentation and ease of building a team.  I also believe that everyone should develop their own framework, even in the simplest form. By doing this you not only learn how the framework functions, but can help contribute or amend as it fits into your development process. My team finds my framework/structure easy to follow, and believe me I amend it based off of their opinions.  I think I may share my “framework” to the outside world just to make it more efficient.  Anyone interested in utilizing or providing feedback?

I was able to interact with people in the #phptek IRC channel, always some interesting conversations….plus I heard the WIFI was kind of bad LOL.

Then there was an (un)official twitter hash following: http://twitter.bivings.com, as you can tell these people love to twitter and used it to organize their nightly excursions.

Then we move to Flickr, where there were many pictures of people taking pictures lol, http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=all&q=phptek09+or+tek09&m=tags

Keith Casey was kind enough to post some video interviews from speakers/attendees of PHP|Tek, http://blueparabola.com/category/general/phptek.

Finally, all of the conference sessions and unconference presentations were posted to http://www.joind.in.  I’ve already read through a few of the presentations that were given.  I noticed Ed Finkler’s Robocop obsession, http://www.joind.in/talk/view/172.

I was able to get a quick little poll voted on by some of the attendees, I was hoping for a better turn out….but it’ll do.

Did your company pay for you to attend PHP|Tek?
Yes: 8
Some: 3
No: 3

OK guys now use those stats to leverage your company and/or boss to send you to PHP|Tek next year….I know I will.  I enjoyed the event from my seat at home, but just like a baseball game…it just isn’t the same unless you see it live!

1. Design a site way beyond 980 pixels, I prefer 960.
2. Use a non-web standard font for content….you (designer) have just forced me to explain to account service and the client why their fonts don’t look right.
3. If the website is only 8 pages, there is no need to design a search feature.  Rule of thumb….if I can click to every page from the homepage, then I don’t need a search.
4. Email layouts: Why would you use nothing but large jpg images?  Please know large emails are labeled as spam.  Also, don’t use too many background images, because many email clients do not like. (you can still use old school background attribute)
5. Email layout width is much smaller than a website, so please do not send me an email that is 1,000 pixels wide….thanks!

The most common response I get when I send a design back to a designer due to one of the many infractions I’ve listed above is, “Your destroying my creativeness”.  No, sir/mam I’m helping you design better for the web.  A good designer can make something amazing, while still working within constraints.

Anyways, I welcome everyone to post their rants, we’re ranting…not complaining ;), about designers and for designers to post their rants about developers…..come on…let it out….it’ll make you feel better ;).

I had seen Lorna’s name around the community, but I never really saw her blog until I started learning Zend Framework.  I found her blog post about Zend_DB very informative, even though I prefer utilizing PHP Doctrine.  Lorna is a member of PHP Women and will be speaking on multiple topics at PHP|Tek next week.  Also, she works for, what I consider an amazing contributer to the PHP community, IBuildings.

Alright guys go and show all these developers some love and start following their blogs, but be sure to keep heading back to Jakefolio.com

Jonathan Snook
Jonathan Snook is an author/co-author/blogging machine.  He focuses in front end development (XHTML/CSS/Javascript), but also has a lot of love for PHP Cake, I’m not a huge fan of Cake….but that’s a whole other issue.  Jonathan constantly updates his blog and interacts with all his visitors/commentors.  Also, be sure to check out his “Delicious-ly Linked” section for new articles that he has read and deemed good enough to share.

Chris Cornutt
Chris is the guy behind such sites as phpdeveloper.org and joind.in.  He is also a fellow member of Dallas PHP.  He has been around the community for some time now, and was also on the php advent calendar this year.  He will be speaking at PHP|Tek this year….dicussing everyones favorite topic of “PHP Frameworks”.  If you haven’t already started reading his latest series, Working Towards Better Deployment, then you’re missing out my friend.

Cal Evans
If his witty blog posts weren’t enough to attract you then maybe taking a read on some of his books will.  I started following Cal after I read his book, Guide to Programming with Zend Framework.  The reviewers of the book failed to realize a few things.  This book is for experienced php developers who understand MVC Frameworks and it’s a introduction to the framework, I’m sorry it isn’t the Zend Framework Bible reference guide you were hoping for.  At the time I believe it was the only Zend Framework book, but don’t quote me on that.

Sean Coates
I just recently started following Sean.  I don’t know if anyone else constantly reads Smashing Magazine like I do, but their PHP articles have been extremely lacking in value.  One particular article was so poorly received that Chris Shiflet and Sean Coates “Revisited” the article.  You can always expect PHP to be talked about, and recently some Adobe AIR discussion.  If you’re real lucky he may drop some tips on Brewing your own beer!
Well guys I hope this clarifies why I added these developers/bloggers to my “Fellow Bloggers” list and I hope you too will follow and heckle them on their blogs.

I’m currently writing some articles for a tutorial site, so I can’t post them to my site until they’ve been posted/published on the tutorial site.  I am also starting a few monthly articles.

Around the Community

This is will be a monthly article with a few common questions asked to developers from around the Web Development world.

Review my code/site
The title says it all.  You, the user, can submit some code or your site for review by myself and other viewers of Jakefolio.  I promise I won’t be too harsh….maybe a little ;).  Don’t worry though, I too will post some of my code/sites to be reviewed by you the users…..don’t hold back…I can handle it.

Also, if you have a blog and you want to be featured under “Fellow Bloggers” then feel free to contact me.  ** Must be web development related and updated frequently, if your last post was 3 months ago that does not count as frequent lol. **

Be sure to follow me on Twitter so you can always have the most up to date rants and articles!