I've just had a nightmare of a development problem. In a nut-shell, I've had to import data, (specifically content articles), from one server to another.
This is normally not a problem, but in this instance the source database had each article's content split into multiple 'page' rows. Also, the source database was developed and hosted by another company. They refused to install PHPMyAdmin, (for "security" reasons), and would not give me FTP access. All I had to work with was a terrible database admin system which they'd cobbled together.
My plan was to dump the data into a new database on our server, manipulate it there, then move the shiny clean data over to the live system. Things did not go to plan...
What it is with web designers and gradients? Oh yeah, rounded gradient edges, they're the worst. Bloody designers, I ask you...
I like to use alternating row columns in tables. If the tables in question are static HTML then updating the row colours, (when adding/removing/shifting rows), can become a real chore.
Using some of the wonderful W3C DOM Methods within Javascript I came up with a simple function to do all the work for me.
I have a Compaq Presario F500 laptop, which comes with a built-in Broadcom wireless network adapter. Vista Home Premium came pre-installed, but the system only has 1Gb of RAM, which is the it's maximum.
Vista is so power-hungry that things were never going to go well. The straw which broke the camel's back came one Sunday afternoon when I was surfing the web while listening to music on WMP. I navigated to a site with an embedded flash video and the system froze, completely. I rebooted and tried again but got the same problem, the system was totally maxing out. It's worth mentioning that I already had Aero and all the fancy, (read sparkly; pointless), effects turned off. I came to the conclusion that Vista had to go.
I remember back when I as learning PHP I had to write a directory "spider" function to list the contents of a directory. (Including sub-directories).
The approach I took involved reading the initial contents of the base directory into an array. The plan was then to loop through the array adding any sub-directories, (and their files), recursively.
A while back, I decided to use the Picasa system as a way of managing my photographs on my home PC and publishing the photos to the web.
I was planning on using the API for the system as provided by google, but I am limited to using PHP4 by my web host. (The PHP API classes rely on PHP5). So, I decided to create a PHP4 class for reading my Picasa web albums, ready to be dropped onto my website.
The class is basically a custom XML paser - quite a fun little project for a boring weekend!
I've just had some great fun trying to add a browser Favicon to a website I am working on. We don't get much client demand for these, so it's been a while since I've had the task of creating one.
I decided to read-up on Wikipedia and on W3.org before-hand and followed all of the suggestions therein. The result? Icons which show in Firefox, Safari and Opera but not IE 7 or 6. What a surprise!
I've been working on a site which uses the CodeIgniter PHP framework for a few days.
I added a custom CMS area to the site, which I wanted to place in a password-protected directory. I needed to turn the Rewrite Engine, (which CI uses extensively), off for the CMS' URL but for some reason Apache throws a spaz if you try to use the 'RewriteEngine off' directive along with the 'require valid-user' directive.
A year or so ago I was given the task of returning rows of data from a MySQL table in a randomised fashion. This in itself is fairly easy but the project which I was working on displays the data in a paginated format so a constantly shifting random data order would not work. The client also requested that the random order should "re-shuffle" every once in a while.
Well, the newest version of flashbulldog.co.uk is complete and about time too. The old site was designed and coded some years ago. To say that my skills as a web developer have advanced somewhat since then is an understatement to say the least!
A little bit about myself : I work in-house as a senior web developer specialising in LAMP. I also use Adobe Dreamweaver and Photoshop as the tools of my trade, in case you're interested. And no, I won't be holding any debates over which editing suite is best when it comes to web development. Make your own minds up!
I'll be updating the site regularly with tips, code examples and info so watch this space.