In the growing market of the software industry today, users are clamoring for client applications that can be run not only from a desktop environment but also from the Internet. Users want the same functionality and support from Web-based applications as they get from those on their desktop, preferably packed with a thin-client interface. The most common solution, currently, is to develop two separate Java applications: one that executes as a desktop application and one that simulates much of the functionality of a desktop application, but is accessed from the Web. This is a burden to developers, who are required to write two separate applications that perform the same on different execution environments, but it is also a financial burden to software companies, which are forced to provide support for two separate applications. To alleviate this problem, Sun Microsystems has introduced Java Web Start, a client-side technology that enables Java applications to launch either from a desktop or from a Web page. This eliminates the need to develop Java support for Web applications, and also provides an efficient means to upgrade, maintain, and manage client-side Java applications with the support of any common Web server.
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Gertjan Java guide, Java, java web start
If you’re looking to add some pizzazz to your PHP application, look no further—Adobe’s Flex is here to give your interface some polish. In this article Lennart Steinke shows us how to make a Flex widget with a PHP back end. Read carefully, because there’s a quiz at the end: for a limited time, every entrant scores a free Flex reference just for doing the quiz, plus three lucky winners will each receive a free copy of Adobe’s Flex Builder 3!
Flex is Adobe’s open source web application framework designed for speedy development of web or desktop applications. It allows you to build software that’s then compiled into a Flash (SWF) file, and can be run in any browser with the Flash plugin installed. Best of all, it’s fun to use. You can create great looking applications easily: eye candy and pleasing effects are built in, and can be added to your app with just a few lines of additional code. This allows you to create a cool application in a short amount of time.
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Gertjan Java, Javascript, PHP flash, flex, Javascript, PHP, tutorial
You can integrate your application with facebook in two way: with an IFRAME (using XFBML) or with FBML.
You can embed your content in a Facebook page through FBML or use an IFRAME
Facebook will be a proxy between your server and the user’s browser: it will load a page form your own server like a normal browser, parse it, “enhance” it with his components and then embed it in a Facebook page. You will use standard HTML tags plus FBML tags.
Pros:
- You can use almost standard HTML, but with some other tags like: ,
- Feature rich: with a simple tag integrate wall, comments, tabs, dashboard and many others components (Complete list of facebook tags)
- The url in the browser follow the navigation
- Faster when you need data from facebook database (groups, friends, etc.)
Cons:
- Slower page load times: restart the facebook chat at every request
- Can’t use standard JavaScript, only FBJS that’s almost equals but your existing scripts and libraries won’t work
- Its losing ground: Facebook is trying to take IFRAME/XFBML on par
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Gertjan PHP facebook, FBML, iframe, PHP, XFBML, Zend framework
When it comes to building web applications in PHP, performance isn’t typically a major concern. Features, usability and any business concerns are considered a greater priority, as they can be better demonstrated and visualised. Performance graphs don’t make the boss’s day.
So, why should you as a PHP developer, worry about performance? Quite a few reasons, in fact:
PHP-GTK 2 is out, and with it, a fantastic means for PHP developers to build useful, reliable cross-platform desktop applications. This tutorial will show you how to get up and running with PHP-GTK in no time and build your first desktop application.
Before you continue, have a brief read through my previous article on building desktop applications in PHP, for a bit of background to this tutorial. PHP-GTK is a PHP extension that provides bindings for the GTK window system. GTK, or Gimp ToolKit, provides a collection of visual elements called “controls” which you can use in your PHP application - essentially, these provide the visuals. The PHP bindings from PHP-GTK allow us as developers to manipulate these controls programatically, and from within PHP.
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Gertjan PHP desktop applications, PHP, PHP-GTK
Isn’t writing new code great? Wouldn’t the world be a better place if all were ever had to do is write software from scratch, not having to worry about methods of classes past? Unfortunately, we all know that this is not the case. In fact, estimates say that we spend around 80% of our programming time maintaining old code.
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Gertjan PHP advanced, debugging, PHP
As Web sites and Web-based applications become more important to commercial firms and other organizations, so too does the methods used for storing data online, such as customer contact information, system login details, product data, and much more. Rewritable flat files may be sufficient for extremely limited data for which security is not an issue. But for most Web sites and applications, a robust database is called for.
There are several relational database management systems (RDBMSs) from which you the developer can choose, ranging from expensive systems that can prove quite difficult to administer, to free and open source alternatives that may not have as many features as the proprietary RDBMSs, but can be much faster to set up and work with. Of these, MySQL is the hands-down favorite.
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Gertjan Windows install, mysql, tutorial, Windows
For most dynamic websites you will want to create “Search Engine Friendly” or “User Friendly” URLs, rather than using ugly and meaningless strings or IDs to reference your content. The way you interpret the URLs and use them to get your content is for another article and I won’t go into that right now, what I want to talk about is how to turn your page titles into versions that can be used in your URL.
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Gertjan PHP, SEO PHP, SEO, tutorial, url
Memcache is a tool which can cache objects in memory – and is often used for speeding up dynamic web applications. PHP has a built-in module for working with memcache, and its a simple and convenient way of introducing caching to your application.
PHP has a PECL module for talking to memcached – look up how to install for your system, but be aware that it isn’t bundled. It’s a good module to include on your system however, quite a few apps will take advantage of it where available.
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Gertjan PHP advanced, cache, Memcache, PHP, tutorial
The MVC architectural pattern is a smart and bright way of developing web-based applications. The acronym MVC stands for Model, View and Control: these are the three components that, according to the pattern, every application can (and should) be divided into. I would actually state that MVC is “the ultimate” way of developing apps but since IT is such a fast-growing/evolving discipline, I won’t dare being so bold and just say that it is certainly a topic every good developer should spend some time on.
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Gertjan PHP advanced, architectural pattern, controller, Framework, model, MVC, PHP, tutorial, view