Think Different

Here's a quick overview of what has changed between PH4 and PHP5. PHP5 for the most part is backwards compatible with PHP4, but there are a couple key changes that might break your PHP4 script in a PHP5 environment. If you aren't already, I stronly suggest you start developing for PHP5. Many hosts these days offer a PHP5 environment, or a dual PHP4/PHP5 setup so you should be fine on that end. Using all of these new features is worth even a moderate amount of trouble you might go through finding a new host! Note: Some of the features listed below are only in PHP5.2 and above. Object Model The new OOP features in PHP5 is probably the one thing that everyone knows for sure about. Out of all the new features, these are the ones that are talked about most! Passed by Reference This is an important change. In PHP4, everything was passed by value, including objects. This has changed in PHP5 -- all objects are now passed by reference. PHP Code: $joe  = new  Person (); $jo...

User Interface Design Principles 1. The Client Is Not The User The client may think she knows what the user wants, but she cannot. This is because the client is not the user. This brings me to the second principle: 2. Don't Give The Client What She Thinks The User Wants If the client does not know what the user wants and you give her what she is asking for, you are doing her a disservice. You will ultimately be delivering an application that does not meet user's needs. Your client may initially be happy that you have given her exactly what she asked for but will she remain happy when the product is rejected by users? I have seen too many designers and developers who are aware of these two principles but proceed to reach the wrong conclusion from it. Namely, that they know the user better. Which brings us to our next principle, which is, simply: 3. You Do Not Know What Your User Wants You may be a user interface designer or developer with many years of experience but yo...

Drupalcon San Francisco — last week, David Peterson ( @davidseth ) caught up with Dries Buytaert ( @Dries ), the creator of Drupal, to discuss where Drupal is heading, what challenges are ahead and what keeps him going. Dries Buytaert: What do you want to talk about? David Peterson: I wanted to talk about where you see the big shifts happening — touching on Tim O’Reilly’s keynote address where he talked about the future of devices and cloud data. Also, I was in the Warner Brothers Drupalcon session and they said the biggest problem they were facing is not music piracy. It’s actually the fragmented way that people access content. The website is no longer the focal point; it’s actually the Nintendo Wii’s, the Xbox, PlayStations and mobile phones. So with that in mind, where do you see things going and how will Drupal facilitate that? DB: Right. DP: So let’s start with a very basic question. When do you think a stable beta version of Drupal 7 might land? DB: So, Drupal 7 has about a 100...