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Blogs » Archive for April 6th, 2004
phpGroupware and XSLT
If you’ve been around PHP for a while you’ve probably heard of phpGroupWare, now in it’s fourth year (for PHP that’s old), according to Sourceforge.
As Dan Kuykendall recently commented here, phpGroupware, The Next Generation is in progress. I’ve managed to have at least one meaningful chat, via email, with Dan in past, while fighting the never-ending deluge, and he’s got some very interesting ideas on the use of XSLT.
For example, head to the demo of the next gen phpGroupWare and login (user: admin, pass: temppass). Surf around and enjoy some nice visuals. Now for the surprise - “View > Source” from your browser…. where’s the HTML? Assuming you’re using a recent version of Mozilla or IE, you should see an XML document. Up at the top you should find something like;
It’s actually your browser transforming the page to something that looks nice. For browsers without a built-in XSLT processor, Dan transforms the page to HTML on the server side, with PHP. Provides an interesting alternative to way templating is normally done in PHP and may mean faster page loading for users of newer browsers plus opens the way for REST based web services (side note Sitepoint are also employing a …
Channel 9
MSDN’s new Channel 9 site hopes, as they put it, to provide “a way to listen in to the cockpit at Microsoft, an opportunity to learn how we fly, a chance to get to know our pilots.” In other words, it lets you see how the developers work, how they think, and allows you to open dialogue with them. Unlike at any other time when we’ve lived in the shadow of Microsoft, as developers, today we have amazing access to the company and the people behind it. Get involved, and who knows, that feature or that insight you’ve wanted to see might just get implemented.
It’s certainly a very readable and usable site, full of video, comments, and discussions brought to you from inside Microsoft.
In much the same way as blogs have put a human face on MSFT, Channel 9 has every opportunity of putting a friendly smile on that same face.
As with any community driven site, how useful and how successful it becomes depends on how active its membership becomes.
And, lets face it, sometimes its just nice to sit back at work with some headphones and watch some video, rather than straining those eyes reading text.
Macromedia FLEXing its Muscles
Not new news, but time i thought I’d chip in on the subject! If you want to create Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) or Server Side Flash Applications, then you may be interested in Macromedia FLEX which hinges around the use of Macromedia XML (MXML) to create rich applications.
If you think this is the ticket and just what you need, then take some sedatives before you consider purchasing it as the price tag is certainly on the heavy side; more aimed at the large enterprises rather than casual developers.
The question is how can the developers who can’t afford the price tag even consider developing and exploring the capabilities of the application?
Perhaps Macromedia will release a Developer Edition much as they did with Coldfusion with limited connections? I think the Flash community would embrace this idea.
Take a trip to the Macromedia Flex pages to view documentation, samples and white papers on the latest breed of RIA.
http://www.macromedia.com/software/flex/
Here’s the link to the Overview and Demonstration
http://www.macromedia.com/software/flex/productinfo/brz_overview/
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