Last week I brought several books. (link). One of them (Professional Web 2.0 Programming) was a mistake. I intended to buy Professional Web APIs with PHP, which I did now. I already sold the Web 2.0 programming book in a couple of minutes.
I added: “Professional Web APIs with PHP: eBay, Google, Paypal, Amazon, FedEx plus Web Feeds” to my collection. And ofcourse some other books, but those are top secret 
I`ve decided to get started with PHP Web 2.0 programming myself. For this reason I`ve brought the following book:
This book is an addition to my bookcase because it goes in detail with subjects like SVG, REST, JSON, XQuery and mashups.
To get my Adobe Air and Flex skill up I`ve also grabbed 2 books about it;
The first book gives is a detailled guide to making your own Flex and Air skins with tools like Photoshop, Flash and Fireworks.
The second book tells me how to use Flickr, Amazon, Google, Twitter, and Last.fm in Adobe Flex/Air situations to make my own programs and mashups.
Pack Publishing asked me to do a review of their “CodeIgniter 1.7” book.
Since I’m familiar with Packt Publishing and books (not with reviewing) I said I’ll give it a go.
This book is for PHP programmers who are familiar or unfamiliar with model-view-controller framework CodeIgniter. After reading this book you should be able to use most of CodeIgniter`s features and make your own scripts which run on CodeIgniter.
CodeIgniter (CI for short) is an Open-Source PHP Model-View-Controller (MVC) framework. Multiple studies concluded that CodeIgniter is faster and lighter than other PHP frameworks like CakePHP and Zend Framework. This book is targeted at PHP programmers who want to save time, effort and cost by switching to the CodeIgniter framework.
There are several benefits of CodeIgniter:
For a full list of features I recommend you read this link.
Before reading this book I had no experience with MVC. I do have some experience with PHP/SQL and much experience with HTML/XHTML.
The books requirements are basic knowledge of HTML and PHP. Basic knowledge of (My)SQL is also recommended.
The book covers the following topics:
After reading the book I’m able to create and enhance websites with features found in the book. I can now tell my customers I make some “advanced” script myself.
The book still leaves me with few questions about advanced topics like database query caching. The book points to the CodeIgniter user guide (online), which fed my information hunger.
The book fulfilled my expectations.
I’ve placed the book in reach of my desktop. Programming can be overwhelming although CodeIgniter makes life easier. I’m happy to have this book in my bookcase! I’m very sure I’m going to use it on my next big PHP project.
I recommend this book to all PHP programmers who are looking for a framework to lower the workload. After reading this book you’re ready to replace most PHP scripts by your own custom made scripts based on CodeIgniter.
A sample chapter can be found here. It’s chapter 3: “Navigating your site”.
If you’re interested and read more, or buy the book you should check out this link.
Yesterday I`ve managed to get my new Cobalt to boot.
I`ve installed Strongbolt OS 1.0.6 on the machine and upgraded to Strongbolt 2.
This upgrade included a new bootrom kernel (2.6.23.8-i586), which includes some changes to be able to boot from a USB device.
Strongbolt 2 still uses CentOS 4 as backend.
Later this week I will put some effort into it to make the machine boot BlueOnyx 5.4, which is based on CentOS 5.4
By having a newer CentOS version I also have a newer kernel and the ability to use newer packages.
I can`t wait to get MySQL 5.5 and PHP 5.3 on the machine.
Another thing I still have to do is to buy another Cisco Serial cable to connect the two routers to my webserver.
I`ve decided to go with CodeIgniter as PHP Model-View-Controller framework.
To learn the basics of this open source framework I`ve chosen for the CodeIgniter 1.7 book by Packt Publishing.
The book describes how to start with CodeIgniter beginning with the installation. The first steps followed by connecting databases, creating HTML pages and forms, using sessions and add security etcetera. The final chapters include more advanced features like dynamic information and uploads.
My review of this book will be online somewhere in january.
A sample chapter, which describes the basics of MVC and CodeIngiter can be found here.
More information about the book and and a link to buy it can be found here.
Ramon`s Jukebox
