Entries by John Behrens

Some days ago i started my first Java project including a GUI, first i began with using eclipse and the beginning was fine, until i came to that point were i had to create the GUI Interface. I didn´t had the intension to define my GUI in writing lines of code, i was mostly searching for something to design a GUI by moving arround some buttons and editor boxes like in Visual Studio or Delphi. After a few tryouts with outdated tutorials i could finally install the Visial Editor for Eclipse by using this tutorial, i noticed that comfortable solution i am searching for, searching arround how to work with it i just found out, the VE is propably not able to do what i tried. So i decided to try out Netbeans, and i were completly satisfied, download and installation were quite easy and the GUI Designer does it´s work almost perfectly, you don´t have to waste your time in configurating layouts just move them arround with drag and drop, almost as good as in Delphi. So what i decided was stop to use Eclipse for that Java stuff and start to use Netbeans and so far Netbeans hits all of my needs exactly, even seems to be more out of one piece than eclipse. Maybe gonna try it out Netbeans for PHP aswell.

Here is a list of my most used Symfony command line rool commands Generate a new module php symfony generate:module application modelname Generate Schema from database

I always build the Schema from the Database, cause it is easier to Maintain the Database than the Schema file, you can use yoru default Database tool e.q. PhpMyAdmin or MySql Workbench, even there is no chance that sombody implements Database changes wich could be overwritten.

Generate Model Generating the Forms Generate Module from Table

Note: the TableNameCamelCase is using Uppercase letter before any underscore e.q. TableNameExample for table_name_example

Well calculating age in PHP seems to be not that big thing Date calculation is something wich would be a good topic for Programming for Beginners Lesson 2 It is not that much used cause Databases give a lot of nice date calculating functions like MySQL DateDiff or similar function on other Database. PHP has not had a DateDiff function from home until PHP 5.3, unfortunatelle the PHP Version on server was 5.2.4 so i could not use the PHP DateDiff Function from the new DateTime Functions. Cause i was a bit lazy i thought it might be easy to find a usefull function to calculate Age in PHP but anything i found was a bunch of useless forum discussions and not 100% correct working answers so i wrote an own one. The problem is 365 days is not the correct number of days for a year. Every 4 years there are 366 cause of the leap year But every 100 years there is no leap year. Like 1900 But every 400 years there is. Like 2000 So for every 4 years of age, this method gets wrong one more day. A more correct calculation would be Could still have some combinations were it returns a wrong result, so the first example is still better. Maybe i gonna past a full datediff function later once, otherwise upgrade to PHP 5.3, so as i will do soon.

Well i was at some agency in Munich for a job interview who dress theirselves to be very strong in SEO like having big industrial customers, to determine my SEO knowledge they asked me a question like "How long do you need to put a Photoshop design into SEO HTML" well i just said SEO is more than building clean HTML and i don´t know what their photoshop templates look like. However at the moment i got some job but sometimes people searching for webdevelopers even do not know that somebody who is doing web and software development for more than 8 years might nog be satisfied with only coding HTML pages or configurating a stupid properitary undocumented CMS system.

Yesterday i just completed my last job at a Bank in Munich (München) by introducing a new freelance PHP developer, well this Senior Consultant position had been nice but i am even watching to get back to something more web related than developing financial applications based on PHP and Oracle and a lot of AJAX stuff working together with Sophis Risque. I had an already signed contract with a big recruitment agency for working at a nice online Portal in München but unfortunately they canceled it without giving me a notice on time, so from today i am free to hire again. The job market is not that bad in the moments a lot of people are searching for Webdevelopment Consultants, but i haven have to decide where to go. I worked in Hamburg, München, Amsterdam and London before, and i still would like to go to Rotterdam, den Haag, Utrecht, Stockholm, Copenhagen or maybe somewhere else in the Netherlands, Denmark or Sweden. I think it should be a Position in Webdevelopment again either a nice online project or an interesting web application, cause SEO (Search Engine Optimization) positions are not that well paid. Maybe i could find something with a bit more focus on Symfony Framework or Zend Framework at a nice company, the other option is to just start working on some own web 2.0 projects which i would like to finish. If you know somebody who is searching for a Senior PHP Developer or Consultant in Germany, Netherlands or Skandinavia feel free to contact me.

Well i finally got some Network access and time to block from symfonycamp 2008 in Holland, camp has a really nice concept they got 3 big dutch army tents, and 2 other tents with chairs for dinner and the sessions. Unfortunatelly the typical dutch rain does not make it that comfortable but it s still okay, only some of my clothes got wet and my car got stucked so far. The Sessions of the first day haven´t been that interesting mostly a lot of general talk about symfony, a bit bashing to other Framworks, CMS, ORM-Layers, so until know the most benefit is more in networking and experience exchange directly with people than what you get offered at the sessions.

Well this was a question on a Test today when i applied as a Senior Webdeveloper at a big online Portal owened by a large Software company from Redmond, in gerneral i was a bit supposed about it and felt like if i am back in my 10th degree informatic class, of cause i did not know the new line character from my mind, am i a bad programmer now? Another task was create an php script for a "Guess a number from 1 to 100 game and some SQL stuff, i was completly supposed to this job interview where i was sitting for about 45 min alone in a room and doing that test and don´t think those kinds of test give a really good indication wether somebody is suitable or a job or not.

So finally i got in first contact with Google Chrome, it doesnt seem that bad, the user interface looks very lightwight. When i was browsing arround i didn´t see that much speed difference compared to other browsers so i think ill keep on testing.

Just a simple JavaScript example how to display a overlying div on the whole page which is blocking all underlying links and forms and also handles problems with selectboxes in IE Browsers. Sometimes it is neccesary if you wan´t to prevent the user clicking around on the site example during an html loading process. Sometimes it can be more usefull to only put it on a part of the site so the user can still access main site navigation. Java Script Example using prototype

With some surprise today i was reading about Googles new web browser on a general news site As far there is only a comic released about it and google announced to put a beta downloadable for today. First Official document was a comic describing the Browser Development and features.
Google gived official reasons for the Browser that they were afraid that Microsoft could integrate it´s search engine more to the Internet Explorer, but Google was already founding millions to the Firefox foundation. So maybe their real intense was to integrate there services to a browser in a way which would be too much for the Firefox Browser.

If you take a look at the comic you seem a new service of malware of fishing detection, of cause in principial it is not a bad thing if your browser warns you if a site is malicious or not, but it is also mean that someone in this case google is deciding which sites are good and which one are bad. This mechanism could be easily used to determine sites as "bad content" maybe becouse of harmful information like porn to children or gouverment critical sites to chinese people. So if google is able to put there browser as a leader out to the web they would not only be able to control which search results a user is getting, they also might have control over what the user is browsing that might be an dangerous point of information control.
In further surely they will use it to put own services like youtube, orkut, google search, google mail more in front to other party services wich will extend their domination on market.
At all the technical concept of the Google Chrome Browser doesn´t seem that bad, so i would test it out at least i would have to to see my sites working on it if they are getting a wide market range. But finally Googles Chrome Browser has one target, more domination on the web. It is not grabbing for IE users only but also for FireFox users and trying to bind web users to Googles services.
Maybe google browser is just a first part and soon they are going to release a Google OS, maybe a slimed down Linux or BSD mostly optimized with a simple window manager for use of Google APS and Google Chrome Browser.

At the moment the job market for IT Professionals is doing really well so also recruitment agencys or job sites have new ideas. Now you can create a skill clound and search jobs by your given skills, i just tested out and here is my skill cloud but i am not sure if they aren´t doing a simple keyword search with no relevation of the skill weight cause they suggested me ASP jobs in first result. mySkillCloud

I just signed up Symfony Camp 2008, a 2 day meeting in the mid of the Netherlands. Interesting not too comercial Symfony Camp with a lot of experts from the Symphony Scene, interesting topics like and "Friday 17.30 Drinks and BBQ", Debugging, symfony performance, Propel vs Doctrine or Lessons learned at Yahoo. I am not sure yet if i will book a hotel or sleep in the provided dutch army tents.

Today i just got once more an offer for an contract as HTML Frontend Developer with just HTML, CSS and JavaScript skills, i am wondering who might be specialized in Frontend jobs just for HTML GUIs. 1998 Years ago everybody told 90DM(45EUR) for HTML coding is a lot too much HTML can be done by everybody and sure there will be no more jobs for HTML Developers coders, now 10 years later there are still jobs offered for a good rat. Anyhow if i would manage a project i would also hire HTML coders to keep the Developers who really like to program way from the HTML stuff. But who is focussing on HTML more people from the design part, certainly since web 2.0. there is a lot less weight put on design of websites so maybe designers focus more on HTML/CSS, or are there any people with real software development focusing on HTML coding ? For myself i wouldn´t consider to go on a job like that as long my fridge is not empty, cause i would be bored a lot in coding HTML like i did back in 1998.

When i tried to read from an rss file to import into symfony i got an error

Fatal error: Call to undefined method SimpleXMLElement::__toString() in ....lib/symfony/plugins/sfPropelPlugin/lib/vendor/creole/common/PreparedStatementCommon.php on line 596

While for printing out a string readen by SimpleXML is jost okay, for Symfony it is not. For normal output it is just okay to write. It works fine. The solution is to convert the value to a real string. For setting values also the simplexml object of type string works.

After some abstenence on the SEO Sector i visited Google Webmaster Tools, First thing i did was adding one of my domains. One thing you need to do after adding a site is verify it ? There are 2 possibilities to do that. One is uploading a File the Other one is Adding a Metatag to your site. I decided for the Metatag which is lookling like this

<meta name="verify-v1" content="Ie1Yq6cHpdij9utSIedj3hIUOEI4d3S3Rh7QOHXUk=" />

After you have verified your site you can remove the Meta tag or file again. First thing i tried out was the Web Crawl which gives you information about indexed HTTP Errors and Indexed not found faults. What i found there were about 34 Indexed URLS which were pointing to an very old version of a gallery script, so i decided to add an new role to my .htaccess file

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} /oldgallery.php(.*)$ RewriteRule ^oldgallery.php$ /gallyery/newgallery.php [R=301,L]

I wasn´t able to rewrite the old query string so i, cause it seems a bit complicated changing ?oldvar=value to ?newvar=value by an RewriteRule after searching arround for one hour and finding some none working solutions i decided to save time and just make a change to my PHP script, but i ll keep on searching.