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PHP Variables and constants

nospam@example.com (Abdussamad Abdurrazzaq) — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 21:40:00 -0800

Variables introduction

Variables are used by programmers to store values and to refer to those values in code. Variables in PHP need not be defined. Variable types also do not exist although variable scope does. All variables begin with a $ sign. Variable names can contain numbers, letters and underscores. Variable names can only begin with letters or underscores. PHP variables are case sensitive. For ex: $a is different from $A. Below are given some examples of valid variable names:

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Standards based coding is easy

nospam@example.com (Abdussamad Abdurrazzaq) — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 11:03:37 -0700

Coding according to w3c standards is a major selling point for website designers these days. But how hard is it really? Consider some of the differences between valid XHTML transitional and the usual sloppy HTML coding:

All tags in XHTML are written in simple letters. So no more <P> or <BODY> but <p> or <body>. Saves typing really.
All tags are closed even ones that you wouldn't close in HTML. For example: <br /> .
img tags need to specify alternate text like <img src="gg.gif" alt="somting" /> .Note also the self closing of the img tag.

These are just some of the simple changes you have to make to get your site to validate. So in essence its not really a lot of work!

PHP introduction, code delimiters, comments and statements

nospam@example.com (Abdussamad Abdurrazzaq) — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 19:04:30 -0700

Introduction

PHP Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP) is the most popular server-side scripting language on the world wide web. This guide is designed to introduce programmers familiar with other programming languages to PHP.

This guide will take the form of a series of posts that will cover PHP from the basics to intermediate level. In this post I will cover code delimiters, comments and PHP statements.

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CSS button hovers without the lag

nospam@example.com (Abdussamad Abdurrazzaq) — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 11:00:52 -0700

Both the hover (bottom) and normal (top) states of the button are in one image.

One of the best features of css is the ability to perform button hovers without java script. By button hovers I mean creating links that have different background images based on whether the mouse pointer is over the link or not. With CSS this is as simple as setting different background images for the a tag and the a:hover pseudo class:

a{
background-image:url("img/normal.png");
}
a:hover{
background-image:url("img/mouseover.png");
}

The image specified in the a:hover class will be displayed when the user moves the mouse pointer over an image. Once the user moves the mouse pointer away from the image it will revert to normal.png as specified in the a class.

This technique is an easy way to implement button hovers but it has one flaw. When the user moves the mouse over the link for the first time there is a time lag during which the mouseover.png image is fetched by the browser. Therefore the user does not see this effect immediately.Whats the solution? Well I discovered it while going through the code of the free wordpress theme freshy.

The author of that theme Julien De Luca uses an interesting techinque. Both the normal state and the hover state of the button are placed in the same image. However the position of the background is changed depending on hover or not:

a {
background-image:url("normal.png");
background-position:top left;
}
a:hover{
background-position:bottom left;
}

Using this technique you can remove the time lag because the browser has to fetch only one image that contains both normal and hover states.

Search engine optimization basics

nospam@example.com (Abdussamad Abdurrazzaq) — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 21:49:36 -0700

Search engines are used by all netizens to find useful content. Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the art of developing websites that enjoy a good position on search engine results pages. Website designers and developers are keen to see their websites succeed. Optimizing thier websites for search engine traffic can really help improve their website's visibility. In this post I examine some of the key factors that affect search engine rankings.
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