You Know What’s Scary?

That I’m looking for hosting companies using my e-mail address and getting spam about hosting plans on my other e-mail address…

And the addresses are not even on the same domain.

PHP: Destroy your objects

Why it’s importand to unset, destroy your objects and unset database results?

Simply, because you free up used memory and you leave more processing power for other processes.

If you don’t use a variable, array, etc. but you need to process something else simply unset that element.

If you don’t use an object anymore create a __destruct function for it.

Old Marketing vs. New Marketing

Old marketing - focus groups

New marketing - launch and learn

 Meatball Sundae - Seth Godin

Web Development on Windows vs. Mac OS X vs. Linux

Mac OS X is a Unix based operating system, so by default we get all the goodness that a *nix system has to offer.

I prefer developing on mac. The whole GUI is nice. The main downfall of developing on this system would be that you cannot test the website / web application on IE, only in a virtual server enviroment. There’s Bootcamp, but that’s just not the same.

Of course there’s another type of programmer who prefers Linux coding in a command line :)  “Because real programmers do it on the line!”

Another good reason to switch development to a mac is the “built-in” apache and php that comes with every Mac OS X, you only have to install a database of some sort.

Better User Experience With Hidden Profiles And Autolearn

The concept of hidden profiles is simple. It’s not visible for the site’s users therefore not editable by them.

Let’s say we have a site where visitors can sign up, becoming members of the site. They have the option to edit their personal profile: profile image (avatar), name, email, phone, password, etc.

Now assume that on the site are game reviews. Now we want to give the option for our users to change the font size, line height of the text for better reading and to create a better user experience. Now, it’s a little annoying that every time a user wants to read a game review, he/she has to change the font size.

Of course we can save this value into the session, but why not create a hidden profile and save it there. This way our application can learn users’ behaviour and save these values into the user’s hidden profile. And not just font size, line height, but more complex behaviours for ex. a user each time browses the most popular reviews. Save this value into his hidden profile so next time the most popular reviews show up first.

Although we can give the option to change these values in their personal profile, but then this profile page would be far from simple. Picture 10 - 15 tick buttons on the page each representing a different option.

A good practice though is to give the option to turn off/on this auto learning feature.

Auto learning could be very powerful if handled correctly. For ex. let say we count each time a user changes the text’s font size. And let say after 3 changes we save the font size value into his hidden profile and next time the font would be of this value.

Tools: 4 MySQL GUI’s Free (phpMyAdmin alternatives)

Analyzed it from different aspects:

1. Cross platform (Windows, Mac, Linux)
2. Features
3. Speed
4. Exporting / Importing capabilities

Found:

I. HeidiSQL

1. You could compile the source for other platforms, but the binary is Windows only. So it’s a NO

2. Features: Not very rich, just for simple database administration like adding, deleting inserting tables, etc. But I didn’t find the more complex features like indexes, views, etc. I suppose you can do it in the query windows, but then why calls itself a GUI? So I give the features a POOR

3. Speed: It’s a desktop application. Application loading and the SQL queries are GOOD

4. Exporting / Importing: It can export / import to SQL, CSV files, it can import files into BLOB fields. So it’s GOOD

II. Navicat Lite

1. Cross platform: Available for Windows, Mac, Linux. It’s a YES

2. Features: Rich features, indexes, views, store procedures are all there. GOOD

3. Speed: Desktop app. FAST

4. Export / Import : Can export but not import (only in full version, remember this is a lite edition) which is very BAD

III. SQLYog

1. Cross platform: NOPE Windows only.

2. Features: GOOD everything is there.

3. Speed: FAST. app and sql query

4. Export / Import: VERY GOOD. Only SQL though, but options for setting different parameters like drop table is exist, export structure only or data only or both, etc.
IV. DB Designer 4

1. Cross platform: Windows, Linux, but not Mac. I say ENOUGH

2. Features: Different features available. As addition you can design the database schemas. GOOD

3. Speed: Not very fast. At least on my machine… SLOW

4. Import / Export: GOOD

Conclusion:

Depends on which platform do you want to develop. But setting up MySQL on one machine and using the desktop app on another, then I would prefer SQLYog. It has all the features available, most important it can export/import correctly. I don’t care if it’s not exporting to CSV, XML, Excel… I’m using a MySQL GUI I expect to export it into SQL.

IE8 Beta 1 Is Out, Let’s Hope Will Be Better

I hope that the final version will be better then this. I tested it and not quite satisfied, yet.

First of all the IE7 Emulation doesn’t emulate IE7 correctly. Just check out the Gmail menu.

IE7 focused on security (what?), IE8 will be focusing on usability. Hmm. Just press CTRL+T to open a new tab, it says: “You just opened a new tab”. Well doh, i know that!

IE8, I admit it even the beta 1 is very fast. Google Maps doesn’t working. It breaks the whole page.

ACID2 is ok. Will the final version work in ACID3 too? (It would be nice)

As a final note I think Microsoft still has some design issues…check out the icons on the image below…