Archive for February, 2007
Delphi for PHP to be released in march
By Justin Silverton
From the codegear website:
Delphi for PHP offers all the features and functionality needed to rapidly and visually create powerful PHP applications, new PHP components, and package existing PHP code into reusable visual components. Delphi for PHP does this all with seamless support for MySQL®, InterBase® from CodeGear, and other SQL databases and it does it with an open source VCL for PHP. Microsoft® Windows® RAD developers will now have the familiarity and ease of use that Delphi and C++Builder® have always provided, and can move into PHP development with speed and confidence,” said Swindell.
Features:
- RAD environment for PHP
- VCL for PHP – Open source PHP 5 visual component library with more than 50 extendable and reusable components with seamless AJAX integration
- Out-of-the-box database integration with InterBase, MySQL, Oracle®, Microsoft SQL Server, and other popular databases
- Integrated PHP debugger
- Deployment of PHP applications on Windows, Linux, Solaris and other platforms
- Internationalization support for applications
- Drag and drop database application development using the Data Explorer for InterBase and MySQL
- Code editor with Code Insight, Code Explorer, and Code Templates, making it easier and faster to write PHP code
Price
Delphi for PHP is scheduled to be available in March. The product will be available for an introductory price of $249; special academic pricing will also be available.
Microsoft interested in ruby
By Justin Silverton
In a recent article here:
Microsoft is “very interested” in the Ruby programming language and also plans to expand its Expression design tools line, a Microsoft official said this week.
During an Internet chat with InfoWorld, Forest Key, Microsoft director of Web and client user experience marketing for the company’s developer division, acknowledged Ruby is on the company’s radar screen. Asked if the company would accommodate the Ruby on Rails Web framework, which is based on Ruby, in Expression, Key said, “Ruby is currently more of a ‘developer’ concept for us.”
“We are very interested in Ruby and have lots of thinking going on,” but nothing to announce at this time, Key said. He advised chatters to “stay tuned.”
Key added he was not the Microsoft person to comment in detail on this subject because he did not know the company’s plans. One chatter expressed wishes for an IDE for Ruby on Rails from Microsoft.
SapphireSteel, meanwhile, has shipped Ruby in Steel Developer, a Ruby environment for Visual Studio.
Commenting on the future of the new Expression line, Key said the company was “just getting started with V1 (version 1) of the Expression Studio,” which includes the suite of Expression tools.
One area targeted for expansion is interaction design, which pertains to designing the actual interaction or structure of an experience rather than just designing the onscreen pieces. A goal is to better tie Visio, the company’s diagram drawing software used by many interaction designers, to Expression and the company’s Visual Studio software development platform.
Sapphiresteel can be found here.
Dell users want linux
By Justin Silverton
In a recent article here
The new team of leaders at Dell is weighing a request to give customers the option to purchase PCs with the Linux OS, instead of the default Windows, after thousands of users voted for that idea on a company blog.
The idea appeared Friday on a company-hosted blog called Dell Idea Storm. CEO Michael Dell unveiled the blog Feb. 16 as part of his effort to reinvigorate the struggling company. Dell said he hoped to use the blog to collect users’ feedback and improve customer service.
Since then, company executives and department heads have been monitoring the site, paying closest attention to the ideas winning the most votes, Dell spokeswoman Caroline Dietz said on Wednesday.
The most popular threads on Wednesday included demands for Linux-based laptops, consumer PCs that are not pre-loaded with unsolicited applications and requests for Sun Microsystems’ OpenOffice applications instead of Microsoft’s Office suite. Popular requests also included a preference for Mozilla’s Firefox Web browser instead of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, and pleas for Dell to stop routing service calls to operators in overseas countries such as India.
The actual posts can be found here
Here is the top story:
“Offer the 3 top free Linux versions for free pre-installation on all Dell PCs.
Quality free and open source software drastically lowers the cost of new PCs, and helps prevent software piracy. For example OpenOffice.org, the Microsoft Office alternative, can shave hundreds of dollars off the price of a new PC. Cast your vote for OpenOffice and other free software.
Offer easy multi-boot options with Windows Vista, Windows XP, or NO Windows (yes, Linux can entirely replace Windows!)
Offer trade-ins and Linux CDs for older model Dell PCs. Cast your vote for the mini Linux Dell PC and the Universal Education Dell PC, both utilizing free software”
Red hat to be more compatible with Windows
By Justin Silverton
In a recent article:
“In the latest example of a Linux distributor looking to get closer to Microsoft, Red Hat said Tuesday that it has joined the Interop Vendor Alliance, a group of tech companies working to make their products more interoperable with those produced in Redmond.
Red Hat says most of its work within the group will focus on making its middleware more compatible with Microsoft’s and will build on efforts previously undertaken by its JBoss division. The goal, Red Hat says, is to ensure that its products can perform well in environments in which Windows also plays a large role. Shaun Connolly, Red Hat’s VP for product management, says the company is looking to make its user experience “transparent and seamless in spite of heterogeneous environments.
Red Hat’s announcement came a day after Microsoft and Novell outlined a roadmap for products designed to work in either Windows or Linux environments. The companies said they will focus their joint efforts on building more efficient, cost-effective products for facilitating server virtualization, Web services implementations, directory and identity interoperability, and document format compatibility”
Will linux finally have compatiblity with Microsoft windows? Given the history of Microsoft, I don’t think we are going to see a completly open .doc standard anytime soon.
Top 5 free content management systems
By Justin Silverton
After looking though many free content management sytems (CMS) over the past month or so, I have come up with a list of the top five.
These are also all written in PHP.
Features
- Easy User and group management
- Group-based permission system
- Admin panel with multiple language support
- RSS module
- Module API for easy extendability
Front-end Demo here
Admin Demo here
username: admin
password: demo
Features
- Built-in photo gallery
- BBcode support
- MMCache and eAccelerator support
- Site-wide cache-based template system
- Debugging system and page query list
Front page demo here
Admin Demo here
Username: admin
Password: Demo123 (Case Sensitive)
3) Bitweaver
Features
- SEO friendly urls
- Content spam protection (automatic no-follows)
- Many formats supported (TikiWiki, HTML, BBCode, Wikipedia (aka MediaWik))
- Hotwords - allow you to specify particular words that can be associated with a URL
- Generate PDF documents from all Content
Front-page demo here
Admin demo here
Username: admin
Password: demo
4) Drupal
Features
- SEO Friendly URLs
- Many community modules
- Role based permission system
- External authentication source support with Jabber, Blogger, and LiveJournal
- Blogger API support
Front-end demo here
Admin demo here
Username: admin
Password: demo
5) Joomla
This is one of the most mature, free (did I mention open source), content management systems available. Also a fork of a CMS called Mambo. How are they different?
Joomla version 1.0 is derived from Mambo 4.5.2.3 but includes many additional bug fixes and security patches. Joomla version 1.5 is an extensive refactoring of the API as is Mambo version 4.6 to its codebase. Both applications continue maintain a similar user inferface (look and feel), similar default component and module sets. Both Joomla 1.5 and Mambo 4.6 will include internationisation support. Joomla will use an easy-to-use ‘ini’ format for their translation files while Mambo uses the ‘gettext’ format. Joomla 1.5 will correctly support the UTF-8 character set. Joomla 1.5 also includes many new features such as additional authentication models (LDAP, Gmail, etc), xml-rpc client-server support. It also natively supports database drivers for MySQL 4.1+ (on PHP 5) and has improved support for MySQL 5 as well as the groundings to support other database engines.
Demo here