The Zend Developer Zone has an excellent series on how to follow design patterns when programming in PHP5.
It starts off with an introduction to the topic, and then presents three pattern until now, Observer, Composite and Visitor. Each article is split into two parts and goes step-by-step from theoretical background over class models to real PHP code.
Professional AJAX is a new book in the Wrox Programmer to Programmer-Series, written by Nicholas C. Zakas, Jermy McPeak and Joe Fawcett. Sreejith has reviewed it and thinks it is the best book on the topic so far.
(via AJAX Blog)
On March 3rd, a first preview version of Zend Framework has been released to public.
Zend Framework is a high quality and open source framework for developing Web Applications and Web Services.
Built in the true PHP spirit, the Zend Framework delivers ease-of-use and powerful functionality. It provides solutions for building modern, robust, and secure websites.
Ivo Jansch has already looked at it and written a short review, but is in doubt that the Zend Framework is really a framework. Some insights into the licensing around it gives Stuart Herbert.
The O’Reilly Radar has figures about their book sales, showing the market for web programming literature has increased by 22% since last year, but also seeing books about JavaScript rising by 99%! Clearly, this is an indicator for the rising AJAX usage in web projects over the last months.
(via AJAX Magazine)
TechCrunch is hinting that the folks over at memeorandum did a slight redesign. I have to admit, it is hard to notice if you don’t actually look for it, but it is a little improvement. Like most of Web 2.0 sites, they now have boxes with rounded corners, the logo got a light 3D look and the content got a little narrower.
Looking at the comments on TechCrunch, reactions are mixed. Most people like it but don’t think they went far enough. Someone even suggested memorandum should hold a design competition, probably not the worst idea.
Geoff Oliver has written a nice little example of how to create a tabbed navigation that allows dynamic addition of new tabs. Support for deleteing them is lacking, butI guess could be easily put in.
Nathan Smith coded a very light-weight (only 8k) roll-over image gallery with nothing more than CSS, called Hoverbox.
Do you know SkimCSS already? It is a digg-style community driven site, focused entirely CSS.
If you want to have pop up menus that work without JavaScript but CSS-only, Stef Ashwell’s tutorial might help you. To be fair, it uses a very small piece of JavaScript to fix a missing feature in IE.
Photo sharing site BubbleShare has added a nice AJAX feature which is really cool.
Called BubbleZoom, it provides a 3x zoom on every picture available through BubbleShare. You can try it yourself, simply click the BubbleZoom button and hover the image to see it in action.
Microsoft’s Mountain View campus is hosting the “Under the Radar” conference today, where 32 companies show case their products for the “new web”.
There are live coverages over at Ajaxian and Under the Radar.
(via Ajaxian)
Dion Hinchcliffe has written an article stating sixteen elements of “Web 2.0 thinking”. Although they might sound a bit harsh here and there, they could provide a good inspiration for your next Web 2.0 project.
Craig Maloney has written a review on the book Foundations of AJAX by Ryan Asleson and Nathaniel T. Schutta, published by Apress.
Where Foundations of Ajax shines is it’s no-nonsense introduction, implementation, and expansion of the basics of Ajax programming, leaving the reader confidently ready to utilize the concepts within. The authors have seen the potential of Ajax, and competently convey their expertise and enthusiasm for this technology.
(found in AJAX Magazine)