tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-44646362709215706942011-11-28T02:29:30.349+02:00Weaving CSS and jQuery into a Zend Framework powered PHP applicationTjorriemorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00514079567159149167noreply@blogger.comBlogger261100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4464636270921570694.post-90171148596946715792010-01-17T13:55:00.000+02:002010-01-17T13:55:47.169+02:00

Basically this website is very simple. Does have a back end to upload the items. www.rabbiryan.co.za

Tjorriemorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00514079567159149167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4464636270921570694.post-20964069374137775852010-01-17T13:51:00.000+02:002010-01-17T13:51:36.063+02:00

It does happen sometimes that when you put your newly developed web application to a server it shows a blank page on start up. If you have it on your local machine and it shows 'unable to connect', that normally means that your wampserver or xampp is not running. Turning on your apache server will normally fix it for local development, but what about when it happens on the server? I've found

Tjorriemorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00514079567159149167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4464636270921570694.post-56980052202434970812009-10-10T08:11:00.000+02:002009-10-10T08:11:41.228+02:00

Alsafe was the first website I made in my career of web development. This was when I started my career on 12 Oct 2008. It was still procedural code, so nothing out of the ordinary. It has a cart-to-quote system.

Tjorriemorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00514079567159149167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4464636270921570694.post-86624064796198657672009-10-08T20:32:00.002+02:002009-10-08T21:13:22.314+02:00

I prefer to use output buffering. It's useful if you have a page which have a lot of dynamic content that needs to be processed or rendered. It prevents that the page loads in parts. It will allow that the output is sent all at once to the user's browser. I start and end the buffering at the beginning and end of my layout script. To start put ob_start() at the beginning. This function will turn

Tjorriemorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00514079567159149167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4464636270921570694.post-77871984017345389012009-09-01T23:24:00.007+02:002009-09-01T23:59:30.507+02:00

first screencast, hope it works (doubt it considering the software and mic i used). it's about jFlot, a jquery plugin to render graphs. quite neat (for me at least).

Tjorriemorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00514079567159149167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4464636270921570694.post-54018193604784007822009-07-24T08:13:00.000+02:002009-07-24T08:13:00.464+02:00

I've made a new website for myself and everyone that wants to use it — Ripsurance. It is a very cool idea about how you can save money on household insurance. I still need to implement graphs, etc. Currently it's not getting any hits, but I'm not actively improving it at the moment either. Anyway, I thought the spiral design was cool — especially since I'm not a designer. Take care

Tjorriemorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00514079567159149167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4464636270921570694.post-74107067211914536032009-07-23T08:02:00.001+02:002009-07-23T08:02:00.322+02:00

CSS Text-decoration is not often used in content. My, myself and I do not use it much. At most I'll underline links and such. Never use blink, nuf said. Here's the spec: 'text-decoration' Value: none | [ underline || overline || line-through || blink ] | inherit Initial: none Applies to: all elements Inherited: no (see prose) Percentages: N/A Media:

Tjorriemorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00514079567159149167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4464636270921570694.post-45710961409231601512009-07-22T08:55:00.000+02:002009-07-22T08:55:00.317+02:00

Let's make a Zend form for our contact page. I will finish the controller and mail functionality in a later post: application/forms/contact.php class Form_Contact extends Zend_Form { public function init() { $hash = new Zend_Form_Element_Hash('hash'); $hash->setSalt('zendweaves'); $name = new Zend_Form_Element_Text('name'); $name->setLabel('Name:') ->setRequired(true) ->

Tjorriemorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00514079567159149167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4464636270921570694.post-92229613036529167432009-07-21T08:32:00.000+02:002009-07-21T08:32:00.712+02:00

CSS has a text-transform property — I believe it's hugely underused. Text-transform will be best used where you wish to capitalize headings. All lowercase for footnotes and such. Capitalize is also useful, but the drawback is that it doesn't lowercase non-first letters. Here's the spec: 'text-transform' Value: capitalize | uppercase | lowercase | none | inherit Initial:

Tjorriemorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00514079567159149167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4464636270921570694.post-52498430790803547712009-07-20T08:09:00.000+02:002009-07-20T08:09:00.204+02:00

Zend has a very nice feature in that you can add your stylesheets and javascripts to your layout. I normally always load a few of these sheets and scripts for every website. The downside is that the user needs to make a lot more requests to the server, but other than that it really improves coding time and reusability. Let's look at stylesheets first. Adding javascripts will be the same method.

Tjorriemorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00514079567159149167noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4464636270921570694.post-72154525978288462432009-07-17T08:09:00.000+02:002009-07-17T08:09:00.454+02:00

I've created a site a year or so back — Aviya. It was my very first site. Since then it has come a long way. I first made the site with procedural coding, and early this year when I started learning OOP did I move it over to Zend. I'm almost busy everyday updating and tweaking the site. The site has a contact form. On the backend Aviya can upload poems and blog articles. I also generate my

Tjorriemorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00514079567159149167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4464636270921570694.post-47681556971856099512009-07-16T08:00:00.003+02:002009-07-16T08:00:04.191+02:00

CSS has a line-height property for fonts. I normally use 1.4em for the line-height, as the text sometimes cross at 1em. Here is a demonstration of the line-height in use: First obvious think you'll notice is that line-height only works on block elements and not on inline elements. Secondly, you'll notice that as the font size was set at 10px, the last paragraph at 2em, it's height is 20px.

Tjorriemorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00514079567159149167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4464636270921570694.post-90032799769935481972009-07-15T09:00:00.000+02:002009-07-15T09:00:06.350+02:00

Using a layout in Zend is called a two step view. That's because it has a view for the layout file and a view for the content specific to the url request. How do we add a layout to our Zend application? Easy. Firstly, we need to add it to our application.ini to ensure that it is loaded by Zend_Application. /application/configs/application.ini resources.layout.layoutPath = APPLICATION_PATH "/

Tjorriemorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00514079567159149167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4464636270921570694.post-17328927249673706032009-07-14T08:16:00.000+02:002009-07-14T09:56:22.704+02:00

Font-variant is very rarely used. I have never used it myself. What it does is that it select the small-caps variant of the font specified. In effect it makes everything uppercase but it's at the same height as a normal letter. For example: I think it's best used as heading in the sidebar, etc. Here's the spec: Value: normal | small-caps | inherit Initial: normal Applies to:

Tjorriemorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00514079567159149167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4464636270921570694.post-62815802820842465412009-07-13T08:09:00.000+02:002009-07-13T10:43:01.660+02:00

We are quickly going to look at getting your first page up. If you have set up quickstart guide you will already have your first page correctly set up. The Zend Framework Quickstart guide really gives an excellent explanation of this: Model-View-Controller So what exactly is this MVC pattern everyone keeps talking about, and why should you care? MVC is much more than just a three-letter acronym

Tjorriemorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00514079567159149167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4464636270921570694.post-8684283196995169972009-07-10T08:00:00.001+02:002009-07-10T08:00:03.908+02:00

Font-style is basically just the style for making the font italic. There is by default three settings you can use: normal italic oblique There is not much difference between italic or oblique. Both look the same. I think it's mainly there for classification. Anyway, here's the spec for font-style as by w3c: 'font-style' Value: normal | italic | oblique | inherit Initial:

Tjorriemorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00514079567159149167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4464636270921570694.post-60799007498700579742009-07-09T08:23:00.001+02:002009-10-10T08:05:16.830+02:00

The application.ini file is like the global variables for a Zend website. It holds the settings your application will use. It is a good practice not to use globals on a website, so instead we use a registry. The purpose of the application.ini file is to save the configuration of your website, e.g. the database parameters.The advantage of using Zend_Application is that it will automatically load

Tjorriemorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00514079567159149167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4464636270921570694.post-45143107507923269262009-07-08T08:00:00.004+02:002009-07-08T09:45:33.221+02:00

I highly recommended everyone using jQuery to use the jQuery UI. You can go to their homepage and download the file here. The current version is 1.7.2 which is the stable version. I attach that file every time I make a website, even if I don't use the features. Yes, not the best of practices, but I use it almost on every website. The jQuery UI are divided into 3 parts (mainly): 1)

Tjorriemorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00514079567159149167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4464636270921570694.post-5276598923568194792009-07-07T08:00:00.005+02:002009-07-07T09:36:22.450+02:00

Font-weight is what makes text bold. Firstly, let's make it clear that's it's easier to style the elements in the external stylesheet than to do the styling inline. You can use 'b' tag to make elements bold by wrapping it around the text, although it's recommended now to rather use 'strong' tags instead. I don't use any of those two. Let's quickly look at the standard options. There's normal,

Tjorriemorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00514079567159149167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4464636270921570694.post-87892192536072600622009-07-06T08:00:00.002+02:002009-07-09T11:57:43.381+02:00

Zend_Application will automatically bootstrap the file, but that doesn't mean we can't go and put in our own little code there. The bootstrap file is now a class. It extends Zend_Application_Bootstrap_Bootstrap. To run a method within the file upon bootstrap, the function must start with _init, e.g. function _initViewHelpers() As Zend_Application will load the settings from the application.ini

Tjorriemorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00514079567159149167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4464636270921570694.post-44958369088557199962009-07-03T08:00:00.005+02:002009-07-03T10:23:40.248+02:00

jQuery has a nice feature. When a browser loads a page, the elements aren't available to the page until it's been loaded by the browser. This means that when you run a javascript script, it won't execute if the element isn't already loaded. A way to ensure that everything has loaded is to use the onload attribute on the body tag. The problem with this is that it has to wait until it has loaded

Tjorriemorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00514079567159149167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4464636270921570694.post-79983898678705255002009-07-02T08:00:00.005+02:002009-07-08T10:22:02.964+02:00

Font sizes plays a huge role in every website. Because minimalistic sites are still popular, it shows how typography is more than powerful than you would think. The most common font sizes being used are: 9, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 24, 36. These are normally in pixels. Other formats available are: pt, in, cm, mm, pc, em, ex and %. But that's not where it ends. You can also use a relative value: '

Tjorriemorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00514079567159149167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4464636270921570694.post-55964536081077072932009-07-01T08:00:00.013+02:002009-07-07T10:48:22.962+02:00

Because Zend uses a htaccess file that redirects requests to the index.php file, it is actually the most important file in your application. Luckily, it's also extremely easy to set up because of Zend_Application. First thing we tell the index file is where is our library. Yay. That big pile of 17.9MB that you need to upload everytime to each client's server: set_include_path(implode(

Tjorriemorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00514079567159149167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4464636270921570694.post-84280894603088558162009-06-30T08:00:00.005+02:002009-07-06T12:18:49.476+02:00

Today we are going to look at how to add the jquery library to your website in the Zend Framework. Firstly you need to download the jquery library here. At the time of this writing the current release is v1.3.2 and the size is about 55.9KB Save/move that file to your 'js' folder, .e.g. c:\wamp\www\MyProject\public\js\jquery.1.3.2.min.js Next step is to add it to your layout. Currently I'm

Tjorriemorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00514079567159149167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4464636270921570694.post-46277315939346016072009-06-29T11:44:00.006+02:002009-07-06T11:54:15.004+02:00

Font-families are the CSS style that define which font is used on your web pages. Here I quickly look at the fonts which is 'safe' for web development. Fonts are divided into a lot of categories, but for web development there is mainly four categories: sans-serif serif script monospace For web development, there is mainly 8 safe fonts to use: Arial (and Arial Black) Comic Sans MS Courier New

Tjorriemorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00514079567159149167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4464636270921570694.post-48776589071089086492009-06-26T16:46:00.003+02:002009-07-03T11:26:44.492+02:00

Setting up and using the Zend Framework will definitely be something daunting to the first time user of Zend. And if you moved over from procedural to Object Oriented Programming [OOP] it will also be very confusing. This article covers setting up and running the Quickstart guide from the Zend’s website. Firstly, the Zend Framework is a library you use. Download it here. Secondly, you need to

Tjorriemorriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00514079567159149167noreply@blogger.com1