How-To Tutorials - Web Development

As you work on and develop your own WordPress themes, you will no doubt discover that life will go much smoother if you debug and validate at each step of your theme development process. The full process will pretty much go like this: Add some code, check to see the page looks good in Firefox, validate, then check it in IE and any other browsers you and your site's audience use, validate again if necessary, add the next bit of code... repeat as necessary until your theme is complete. Don't Forget About Those Other Browsers and Platforms I'll mostly be talking about working in Firefox and then 'fixing' for IE. This is perhaps, unfairly, assuming you're working on Windows or a Mac and that the source of all your design woes will (of course) be Microsoft IE's fault. You must check your theme in all browsers and if possible, other platforms, especially the ones you know your audience uses the most. I surf with Opera a lot and find that sometimes JavaScripts can 'hang' or slow that browser down, so I debug and double-check scripts for that browser. I'm a freelance designer and find a lot of people who are also in the design field use a Mac (like me), and visit my sites using Safari, so I occasionally take advantage of this and write CSS that caters to the Safari browser. (Safari will interpret some neat CSS 3 properties that other browsers don't yet.) Generally, if you write valid markup and code that looks good in Firefox, it will look good in all the other browsers (including IE). Markup and code that goes awry in IE is usually easy to fix with a work-around. Firefox is a tool, nothing more! Firefox contains features and plug-ins that we'll be taking advantage of to help us streamline the theme development process and aid in the validation and debugging of our theme. Use it just like you use your HTML/code editor or your image editor. When you're not developing, you can use whatever browser you prefer. Introduction to Debugging Have a look at our initial work-flow chart. I was insistent that your work-flow pretty much be as edit -> check it -> then go back and edit some more. The main purpose of visually checking your theme in Firefox after adding each piece of code is so that you can see if it looks OK, and if not, immediately debug that piece of code. Running a validation check as you work just doubly ensures you're on the right track. So, your work-flow really ends up looking something more like this: You want to work with nice, small pieces or 'chunks' of code. I tend to define a chunk in XHTML markup as no more than one div section, the internal markup, and any WordPress template tags it contains. When working with CSS, I try to only work with one id or class rule at a time. Sometimes, while working with CSS, I'll break this down even further and test after every property I add to a rule, until the rule looks as I intend and validates. As soon as you see something that doesn't look right in your browser, you can check for validation and then fix it. The advantage of this work-flow is you know exactly what needs to be fixed and what XHTML markup or PHP code is to blame. All the code that was looking fine and validating before, you can ignore. The recently added markup and code is also the freshest in your mind, so you're more likely to realize the solution needed to fix the problem. If you add too many chunks of XHTML markup or several CSS rules before checking it in your browser, then discover something has gone awry, you'll have twice as much sleuthing to do in order to discover which (bit or bits) of markup and code are to blame. Again, your fail-safe is your backup. You should be regularly saving backups of your theme at good stable stopping points. If you do discover that you just can't figure out where the issue is, rolling back to your last stable stopping point and starting over might be your best bet to getting back on track. Here, you'll primarily design for Firefox and then apply any required fixes, hacks, and workarounds to IE. You can do that for each piece of code you add to your theme. As you can see in the preceding figure, first check your theme in Firefox and if there's a problem, fix it for Firefox first. Then, check it in IE and make any adjustments for that browser. At this point, you guessed it, more than half of the debugging process will depend directly on your own eyeballs and aesthetics. If it looks the way you intended it to look and works the way you intended it to work, check that the code validates and move on. When one of those three things doesn't happen (it doesn't look right, work right, or validate), you have to stop and figure out why. Troubleshooting Basics Suffice to say, it will usually be obvious when something is wrong with your WordPress theme. The most common reasons for things being 'off' are: Mis-named, mis-targeted, or inappropriately-sized images. Markup text or PHP code that affects or breaks the Document Object Model (DOM) due to being inappropriately placed or having syntax errors in it. WordPress PHP code copied over incorrectly, producing PHP error displays in your template, rather than content. CSS rules that use incorrect syntax or conflict with later CSS rules. The first point is pretty obvious when it happens. You see no images, or worse, you might get those little ugly 'x'd' boxes in IE if they're called directly from the WordPress posts or pages. Fortunately, the solution is also obvious: you have to go in and make sure your images are named correctly if you're overwriting standard icons or images from another theme. You also might need to go through your CSS file and make sure the relative paths to the images are correct. For images that are not appearing correctly because they were mis-sized, you can go back to your image editor, fix them, and then re-export them, or you might be able to make adjustments in your CSS file to display a height and/or width that is more appropriate to the image you designed. Don't forget about casing! If by some chance you happen to be developing your theme with an installation of WordPress on a local Windows machine, do be careful with the upper and lower casing in your links and image paths. Chances are, the WordPress installation that your theme is going to be installed into is more likely to be on a Unix or Linux web server. For some darn reason, Windows (even if you're running Apache, not IIS) will let you reference and call files with only the correct spelling required. Linux, in addition to spelling, requires the upper and lower casing to be correct. You must be careful to duplicate exact casing when naming images that are going to be replaced and/or when referencing your own image names via CSS. Otherwise, it will look fine in your local testing environment, but you'll end up with a pretty ugly theme when you upload it into your client's installation of WordPress for the first time (which is just plain embarrassing). For the latter two points, one of the best ways to debug syntax errors that cause visual 'wonks' is not to have syntax errors in the first place (don't roll your eyes just yet). This is why, in the last figure of our expanded work-flow chart, we advocate you to not only visually check your design as it progresses in Firefox and IE, but also test for validation. Why Validate? Hey, I understand it's easy to add some code, run a visual check in Firefox and IE, see everything looks OK, and then flip right back to your HTML editor to add more code. After-all, time is money and you'll just save that validation part until the very end. Besides, validation is just icing on the cake. Right? The problem with debugging purely based on visual output is, all browsers (some more grievously than others) will try their best to help you out and properly interpret less than ideal markup. One piece of invalid markup might very well look OK initially, until you add more markups and then the browser can't interpret your intentions between the two types of markup anymore. The browser will pick its own best option and display something guaranteed to be ugly. You'll then go back and futz around with the last bit of code you added (because everything was fine until you added that last bit, so that must be the offending code) which may or may not fix the problem. The next bits of code might create other problems and what's worse that you'll recognize a code chunk that you know should be valid! You're then frustrated, scratching your head as to why the last bit of code you added is making your theme 'wonky' when you know, without a doubt, it's perfectly fine code! The worst case scenario I tend to see of this type of visual-only debugging is that the theme developers get desperate and start randomly making all sorts of odd hacks and tweaks to their markup and CSS to get it to look right. Miraculously, they often do get it to look right, but in only one browser. Most likely, they've inadvertently discovered what the first invalid syntax was and unwittingly applied it across all the rest of their markup and CSS. Thus, that one browser started consistently interpreting the bad syntax! The theme designer then becomes convinced that the other browser is awful and designing these non-WYSIWYG, dynamic themes is a pain. Avoid all that frustration! Even if it looks great in both browsers, run the code through the W3C's XHTML and CSS validators. If something turns up invalid, no matter how small or pedantic the validator's suggestion might be (and they do seem pedantic at times), incorporate the suggested fix into your markup now, before you continue working. This will keep any small syntax errors from compounding future bits of markup and code into big visual 'uglies' that are hard to track down and troubleshoot. PHP Template Tags The next issue you'll most commonly run into is mistakes and typos that are created by 'copying and pasting' your WordPress template tags and other PHP code incorrectly. The most common result you'll get from invalid PHP syntax is a 'Fatal Error.' Fortunately, PHP does a decent job of trying to let you know what file name and line of code in the file the offending syntax lives (yet another reason why I highly recommend an HTML editor that lets you view the line number in the Code view). If you get a 'Fatal Error' in your template, your best bet is to open the file name that is listed and go to the line in your editor. Once there, search for missing < ?php ? > tags. Your template tags should also be followed with parenthesis followed by a semicolon like ( ) ; . If the template tag has parameters passed in it, make sure each parameter is surrounded by single quote marks, that is, template_tag_name('parameter name', 'next_parameter');. CSS Quick Fixes Last, your CSS file might get fairly big, fairly quickly. It's easy to forget you already made a rule and/or just accidentally create another rule of the same name. It's all about cascading, so whatever comes last, overwrites what came first. Double rules: It's an easy mistake to make, but validating using W3C's CSS validator will point this out right away. However, this is not the case for double properties within rules! W3C's CSS validator will not point out double properties if both properties use correct syntax. This is one of the reasons why the !important hack returns valid. (We'll discuss this hack just a little further down in this article under To Hack or Not to Hack.) Perhaps you found a site that has a nice CSS style or effect you like, and so you copied those CSS rules into your theme's style.css sheet. Just like with XHTML markup or PHP code, it's easy to introduce errors by miscopying the bits of CSS syntax in. A small syntax error in a property towards the bottom of a rule may seem OK at first, but cause problems with properties added to the rule later. This can also affect the entire rule or even the rule after it. Also, if you're copying CSS, be aware that older sites might be using depreciated CSS properties, which might be technically OK if they're using an older HTML DOCTYPE, but won't be OK for the XHTML DOCTYPE you're using. Again, validating your markup and CSS as you're developing will alert you to syntax errors, depreciated properties, and duplicate rules which could compound and cause issues in your stylesheet down the line. Advanced Troubleshooting Take some time to understand the XHTML hierarchy. You'll start running into validation errors and CSS styling issues if you wrap a 'normal' (also known as a 'block') element inside an 'in-line' only element, such as putting a header tag inside an anchor tag (<a href, <a name, etc.) or wrapping a div tag inside a span tag. Avoid triggering quirks mode in IE! This, if nothing else, is one of the most important reasons for using the W3C HTML validator. There's no real way to tell if IE is running in quirks mode. It doesn't seem to output that information anywhere (that I've found). However, if any part of your page or CSS isn't validating, it's a good way to trigger quirks mode in IE. The first way to avoid quirks mode is to make sure your DOCTTYPE is valid and correct. If IE doesn't recognize the DOCTYPE (or if you have huge conflicts, like an XHTML DOCTYPE, but then you use all-cap, HTML 4.0 tags in your markup), IE will default into quirks mode and from there on out, who knows what you'll get in IE. My theme stopped centering in IE! The most obvious thing that happens when IE goes into quirks mode is that IE will stop centering your layout in the window properly if your CSS is using the margin: 0 auto; technique. If this happens, immediately fix all the validation errors in your page. Another big obvious item to note is if your div layers with borders and padding are sized differently between browsers. If IE is running in quirks mode it will incorrectly render the box model, which is quite noticeable between Firefox and IE if you're using borders and padding in your divs. Another item to keep track of is to make sure you don't have anything that will generate any text or code above your DOCTYPE. Firefox will read your page until it hits a valid DOCTYPE and then proceed from there, but IE will just break and go into quirks mode. Fixing CSS Across Browsers If you've been following our debug -> validate method described in the article, then for all intents and purposes, your layout should look pretty spot-on between both the browsers. Box Model Issues In the event that there is a visual discrepancy between Firefox and IE, in most cases it's a box model issue arising because you're running in quirks mode in IE. Generally, box model hacks apply to pre IE 6 browsers (IE 5.x) and apply to IE6 if it's running in quirks mode. Again, running in quirks mode is to be preferably avoided, thus eliminating most of these issues. If your markup and CSS are validating (which means you shouldn't be triggering quirks mode in IE, but I've had people 'swear' to me their page validated yet quirks mode was being activated), you might rather 'live with it' than try to sleuth what's causing quirks mode to activate. Basically, IE 5.x and IE6 quirks mode don't properly interpret the box model standard and thus, 'squish' your borders and padding inside your box's width, instead of adding to the width as the W3C standard recommends. However, IE does properly add margins! This means that if you've got a div set to 50 pixels wide, with a 5 pixel border, 5 pixels of padding, and 10 pixels of margin in Firefox, your div is actually going to be 60 pixels wide with 10 pixels of margin around it, taking up a total space of 70 pixels.. In IE quirks mode, your box is kept at 50 pixels wide (meaning it's probably taller than your Firefox div because the text inside is having to wrap at 40 pixels), yet it does have 10 pixels of margin around it. You can quickly see how even a one pixel border, some padding, and a margin can start to make a big difference in layout between IE and Firefox!

Launching the Import and Export Wizard Click Start | All Programs| SQL Server 2008 and click on Import and Export Data (32 bit) as shown in the next figure. This brings up the - "Welcome to the SQL Server Import and Export Wizard”. Make sure you read the explanation on this window. Connecting to Source and Destination databases You will connect to the source and destination. In this example the data to be transferred is in a MS Access 2003 database. A table in the Northwind.mdb file available in MS Access will be used for the source. The destination is the 'tempdb' database (or the master database). These are chosen for no particular reason and you can even create a new database on the server at this point. Connecting to the Source Click Next. The default window gets displayed as shown. The data source is SQL Server Native Client 10.0. As we are transferring from MS Access 2003 to SQL Server 2008 we need to use an appropriate data source. Click on the drop-down handle for the data source and choose Microsoft Access as shown in the next figure. The 'SQL Server Import and Export Wizard' changes to the following. Click on the Browse... button to locate the Northwind.mdb file on your machine also as shown. For Username use the default 'Admin'. Click the Advanced button. It opens the Data Link properties window as shown. You can test the connection as well as look at other connection related properties using the Connection and Advanced tabs. Click OK to the Microsoft Data Link message as well as to the Data Link Properties window. Click Next. Choose Destination The Choose a Destination page of the wizard gets displayed. The Destination source (SQL Server Native Client 10.0) and the Server name that automatically shows up are defaults. These may be different in your case. Accept them. The authentication information is also correct (the SQL Server is configured for Windows Authentication). Click on the drop-down handle for the Database presently displaying <default> as shown. Choose tempdb and click on the Next button. Choosing a table or query for the data to be transferred You can transfer data in table or tables; view or views by copying them over, or you may create a query to collect the data you want transferred. In this article both options will described. Copying a table over to destination The Specify Table Copy or Query page of the wizard gets displayed as shown. First we will copy data from a table. Later we will see how to write a query to do data transfer. Click Next. The Select Source Tables and Views page gets displayed as shown. When you place a check mark for say, Customers, the Destination column gets an entry for the selection you made. We assume that just this table is transferred. However you can see that you can transfer all of them in one shot. This window also helps you with two more important things. First you can Preview... the data you are transferring. Secondly, you can edit the mappings, the scheme of how source columns go over to destination.

Passing information in and out The main reason for the simplicity of our Hello World example was that it neither took in any information, nor passed any information out—the rule always fired, and said the same thing. In real life, we need to pass information between our rules and the rest of the system. You may remember that in our tour of the Guvnor, we came across models that solved this problem of 'How do we get information into and out of the rules?'. Here is the spreadsheet that we will use as an example in this article: If we want to duplicate this in our model/JavaBean, we would need places to hold four key bits of sales-related information. Customer Name: String (that is, a bit of text) Sales: Number Date of Sale: Date Chocolate Only Customer: Boolean (that is, a Y/N type field) We also need a description for this group of information that is useful when we have many spreadsheets/models in our system (similar to the way this spreadsheet tab is called Sales). Note that one JavaBean (model) is equal to one line in the spreadsheet. Because we can have multiple copies of JavaBeans in memory, we are able to represent the many lines of information that we have in a spreadsheet. Later, we'll loop and add 10, 100, or 1000 lines (that is, JavaBeans) of information into Drools (for as many lines as we need). As we loop, adding them one at a time, the various rules will fire as a match is made. Building the fact model We will now build this model in Java using the Eclipse editor. We're going to do it step-by-step. Open the Eclipse/JBoss IDE editor that you installed earlier. If prompted, use the default workspace. (Unless you've a good reason to put it somewhere else.) From the menu bar at the top the screen, select File | New Project. Then choose Java Project from the dialog box that appears. You can either select this by starting to type "Java Project" into the wizard, or by finding it by expanding the various menus. In the Create a new Java Project dialog that appears, give the project a name in the upper box. For our example, we'll call it SalesModel (one word, no spaces). Accept the other defaults (unless you have any other reason to change them). Our screen will now look something like this: When you've finished entering the details, click on Finish. You will be redirected to the main screen, with a new project (SalesModel) created. If you can't see the project, try opening either the Package or the Navigator tab. When you can see the project name, right-click on it. From the menu, choose New | Package. The New Java Package dialog will be displayed, as shown below. Enter the details as per the screenshot to create a new package called org.sample, and then click on Finish. If you are doing this via the navigator (or you can take a peek via Windows Explorer), you'll see that this creates a new folder org, and within it a subfolder called sample. Now that we've created a set of folders to organize our JavaBeans, let's create the JavaBean itself by creating a class. To create a new Java class, expand/select the org.sample package (folder) that we created in the previous step. Right-click on it and select New Class. Fill in the dialog as shown in the following screenshot, and then click on Finish: We will now be back in the main editor, with a newly created class called Sales.java (below). For the moment, there isn't much there—it's akin to two nested folders (a sample folder within one called org) and a new (but almost empty) file / spreadsheet called Sales. package org.sample;public class Sales {} By itself, this is not of much use. We need to tell Java about the information that we want our class (and hence the beans that it creates) to hold. This is similar to adding new columns to a spreadsheet. Edit the Java class until it looks something like the code that follows (and take a quick look of the notes information box further down the page if you want to save a bit of typing). If you do it correctly, you should have no red marks on the editor (the red marks look a little like the spell checking in Microsoft Word). package org.sample;import java.util.Date;public class Sales {private String name;private long sales;private Date dateOfSale;private boolean chocolateOnlyCustomer;public String getName() {return name;}public void setName(String name) {this.name = name;}public long getSales() {return sales;}public void setSales(long sales) {this.sales = sales;}public Date getDateOfSale() {return dateOfSale;}public void setDateOfSale(Date dateOfSale) {this.dateOfSale = dateOfSale;}public boolean isChocolateOnlyCustomer() {return chocolateOnlyCustomer;}public void setChocolateOnlyCustomer(boolean choclateOnlyCustomer) {this.chocolateOnlyCustomer = chocolateOnlyCustomer;}} Believe it or not, this piece of Java code is almost the same as the Excel Spreadsheet we saw at the beginning of the article. If you want the exact details, let's go through what it means line by line. The braces ({ and }) are a bit like tabs. We use them to organize our code. package—This data holder will live in the subdirectory sample within the directory org. import—List of any other data formats that we need (for example, dates). Text and number data formats are automatically imported. Public class Sales—This is the mould that we'll use to create a JavaBean. It's equivalent to a spreadsheet with a Sales tab. Private String name—create a text (string) field and give it a column heading of 'name'. The private bit means 'keep it hidden for the moment'. The next three lines do the same thing, but for sales (as a number/long), dateOfSale (as a date) and chocolateOnlyCustomer (a Boolean or Y/N field). The rest of the lines (for example, getName and setName) are how we control access to our private hidden fields. If you look closely, they follow a similar naming pattern. The get and set lines (in the previous code) are known as accessor methods. They control access to hidden or private fields. They're more complicated than may seem necessary for our simple example, as Java has a lot more power than we're using at the moment.Luckily, Eclipse can auto-generate these for us. (Right-click on the word Sales in the editor, then select Source | Generate Getters and Setters from the context menu. You should be prompted for the Accessor methods that you wish to create.) Once you have the text edited like the sample above, check again that there are no spelling mistakes. A quick way to do this is to check the Problems tab in Eclipse (which is normally at the bottom of the screen). Now that we've created our model in Java, we need to export it so that we can use in the Guvnor. In Eclipse, right-click on the project name (SalesModel) and select Export. From the pop-up menu, select jar (this may be under Java; you might need to type jar to bring it up). Click on Next. The screen shown above will be displayed. Fill out this screen. Accept the defaults, but give the JAR file a name (SalesModel.jar) and a location (in our case C:tempSalesModel.jar). Remember these settings as we'll need them shortly. All being well, you should get an 'export successful' message when you click on the Finish button, and you will be able to use Windows Explorer to find the JAR file that you just created.

Today, collaboration and team effort have become critical factors, both inside and outside of the workplace. More and more users want simplicity and familiarity with the tools they use day in and day out. They achieve this by searching in Google, reading in Wikipedia, writing on a blog, finding people on Facebook, being notified in a simple RSS reader, viewing friends, activities on Facebook, and bringing all of this together in iGoogle. Alfresco Share delivers all of this functionality to enterprise users, projects, and teams. Imagine a business user, if given the permission, being able to set up their project web site quickly, being able to invite users to the site, and assign permissions to users within that web site. What previously required a customized solution is now offered out of the box by Alfresco Share. Alfresco Share Alfresco Share (referred to simply as Share from now on) is built on the Alfresco enterprise-class document repository, and delivers out of the box collaborative content management. It simplifies the capture, sharing, and retrieval of information across virtual teams. Team members or project members can rapidly find relevant content or excerpts, look at past or similar projects, and stay on top of any relevant changes, in order to make them more efficient. Share is focused on collaboration tasks and includes integration with popular blogging, Wiki, and forum or discussion products, out of the box. It provides a great interface into more traditional document management libraries (think folders) as well. Keep in mind that all of the web site's contents and documents are still stored in the Alfresco repository. Therefore they are secured, versioned, searchable, and auditable. Share is an independent client application that accesses the repository through web scripts. It is built on the Alfresco Surf (referred to simply as Surf from now on) platform. Alfresco Share is a web application that runs on a machine that is separate from that of the repository. Share provides a paradigm for creating collaborative applications by aggregating Surf components, and incorporating new Surf components as they are developed. With Share, users can modify their workspaces to fit their collaborative requirements inside or outside of the organization. Users can invite their peers to share and collaborate on the project and the content. With the addition of Share, Alfresco delivers a Web 2.0 application that leverages Flash and AJAX with a polished interface, which any business person can enjoy. Features like Document Libraries, Search, Activity Feeds, Virtual Teams, personalized dashboard, N-tier Architecture, and draft CMIS support make it a really competent tool for collaborative content management. Share allows you to: Bulk-upload content, select content from thumbnails, and view it in a Flash viewer. The content is automatically generated in Flash format. This allows users to view content regardless of the original format. Search for people and experts to contribute to their projects as easily as searching for content. Share provides updates on what is new in a project, especially details of content that has been added, edited, or commented upon. Share can track deliverables and import the information into your personal calendar by using iCal. Use an interactive interface to configure a customizable dashboard, and sites, based on what is critical to a specific role or project. Share allows you to create a virtual team for projects and communities. Develop applications in an environment that uses lightweight scripting and reusable components, as well as deliver scalability and allow more users to access existing resources. The URL to access the Alfresco Share application is different from the URL used to access Alfresco Explorer. The Alfresco Share application can be launched in the web browser by visiting the URL, http://<server name> /share/ If you have already installed Alfresco in Windows, then you can invoke the Alfresco Share application by selecting the application, as shown in the following screenshot: You need to provide your authentication credentials, which are similar to those used in the Alfresco Share application. For the administrator, the default username and password are both admin. Once you have been authenticated, the Administrator Dashboard will be displayed, as shown in the following screenshot. At the top of the page you will find the application toolbar. This toolbar contains links to the various Share pages. Your Administrator Dashboard will look similar to the following screenshot: These components are as follows: Getting Started: This dashlet displays the instructions for getting started, and provides you with links to perform common tasks My Profile: This dashlet contains a summary of the personal details provided in your user profile Sites: This component displays the Site Finder page, where you can search for specific sites and manage the membership of Share sites People: This component displays the People Finder page, where you search for specific Share users Help: This component displays the online help available for Alfresco Share Logout: This component logs you out of the Alfresco Share application Search: This component enables you to perform a quick search for content in the current site, or across all of the sites

Understanding common errors There are five main areas that cause the majority of problems for Joomla! sites. Understanding these areas and the common problems that occur with in each of them is a very important part of fixing them and thus, our site. Even though there is a practically unlimited number of potential issues and problems that can occur, there are certain problems which occur much more regularly than others. If we understand these main problems, we should be able to take care of many of the problems that will occur on our site without needing to resort to hiring people to fix them, or waiting for extension developers to provide support. The five areas are: PHP code JavaScript code CSS/HTML code Web server Database We will now look at the two most common error sources, PHP and JavaScript. PHP code Because PHP code is executed on the server, we usually have some control over the conditions that it is subject to. Most PHP errors originate from one of four sources: Incorrect extension parameters PHP code error PHP version Server settings Incorrect extension parameters It is often easy to misunderstand what the correct value for an extension parameter is, or if a particular parameter is required or not. These misunderstandings are behind a large number of PHP "errors" that developers experience when building a site. Diagnosis In a well-coded extension, putting the wrong information into a parameter shouldn't result in an error, but will usually result in the extension producing strange or unexpected output, or even no output at all. In a poorly coded extension, an incorrect parameter value will probably cause an error. These errors are often easy to spot, especially in modules, because our site will output everything it processed up until the point of the error, giving our page the appearance of being cut off. Some very minor errors may even result in the whole page, except for the error causing extension, being output correctly, and error messages appearing in the page, where the extension with the error was supposed to appear. A critical error, however, may cause the site to crash completely, and output only an error message. In extreme cases not even an error message will be output, and visitors will only see a white screen. The messages should always appear in our PHP log though. Fixing the problem Incorrect extension parameters are the easiest problems to fix, and are often solved simply by going through the parameter screens for the extensions on the page with the errors, and making sure they all have correct values. If they all look correct, then we may want to try changing some parameters to see if that fixes the issue. If this still doesn't work, then we have a genuine error. PHP code error Extension developers aren't perfect, and even the best ones can overlook or miss small issues in the code. This is especially true with large, complex extensions so please remember that even if an extension has PHP code error, it may not necessarily mean that the whole extension is poorly coded. Diagnosis Similar to incorrect extension parameters, a PHP coding error will usually result in a cut-off page, or a white screen, sometimes with an error message displayed, sometimes without. Whether an error message is displayed or not depends partly on the configuration of your server, and partly on how severe the error was. Some servers are configured to suppress error output of certain types of errors. Regardless of the screen output, all PHP errors should be output to the PHP log. So, if we get a white screen, or even get a normal screen but strange output, checking our PHP log can often help us to find the problem. PHP logs can reside in different places on differently configured servers, although it will almost always be in a directory called logs. We may also not have direct access to the log, again depending on our server host. We should ask our web hosting company's support staff for the location of our PHP log, if we can't easily find it. Some common error messages and causes are: Parse error: parse error, unexpected T_STRING in... This is usually caused by a missing semi-colon at the end of a line, or a missing double quote (") or end bracket ()) after we opened one. For quotes and semicolons, the problem is usually the line above the one reported in the error. For missing brackets, the error will sometimes occur at the end of the script, even though the problem code is much earlier in the script. Parse error: syntax error, unexpected $end in... We are most likely missing a closing brace (}) somewhere. Make sure that each open brace ({) we have has been closed with a closing brace (}). Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_STRING, expecting ',' or ';' in... There may be double quotes within double quotes. They either need to be escaped, using a forward slash before the inside quote, or changed to single quotes. Fixing the problem Fixing a PHP code error is possible but can be difficult depending on the extension. Usually when there is a PHP code error, it will give a brief description of the error, and a line number. If nothing is being output at all, then we may need to turn error reporting up as described later. We will then go to the line specified to examine it and the lines around it to try and find our problem. If we can't find an obvious error, then it might be better to take the error back to the developer and ask them for support. PHP version The current version of PHP is 5.x.x and version 6.x is expected soon, but because many older, but still popular, applications only run on PHP version 4.x.x. It is still very common to find many Web hosting companies still using PHP 4 on their servers. This problem is even more unfortunate due to the fact that PHP 4 isn't even supported anymore by the PHP developers. In PHP 5, there are many new functions and features that don't exist in PHP 4. As a result, using these functions in an extension will cause it to error when run on a PHP 4 server. Diagnosis Diagnosing if we have the wrong PHP version is not obvious, as it will usually result in an error about an unknown function when the extension tries to call a function that doesn't exist in the version of PHP installed on our server. Sometimes, the error will not be that the function is unknown, but that the number of parameters we are sending it is incorrect if they were changed between PHP 4 and PHP 5. Fixing the problem The only real way to fix the problem is to upgrade our PHP version. Some web hosts offer PHP 4 or 5 as an option and it might be as simple as checking a box or clicking a button to turn on PHP 5. In case if our host doesn't offer PHP 5 at all, the only solution is to use a different extension or change our web host. This may actually be a good idea anyway, because if our host is still using an unsupported PHP version with no option to upgrade, then what other unsupported, out of date software is running those servers? Server settings One of the most common problems encountered by site owners in regards to server settings is file permissions. Many web hosting companies run Linux, which uses a three-part permission model, on their servers. Using this model, every file can have separate permissions set for: The user who owns the particular file Other users in the same user group as the owner Everyone else (in a web site situation this is mainly the site visitors) Each file also has three permissions that enable, or disable, certain actions on the file. These permissions are read, write, and execute. Permissions are usually expressed in one of two ways, first as single characters in a file listing or as a three digit number. For example, a file listing on a Linux server might look like this: drwxr-x--- 2 auser agroup 4096 Dec 28 04:09 tmp-rwxr-x--- 1 auser agroup 345 Sep 1 04:12 somefile.php-rwxr--r-- 1 auser agroup 345 Sep 1 04:12 foo The very first character to the left, a d or – in this case, indicates if this is a directory (the d) or a file (the -). The next nine characters indicate the permissions and who they apply to. The first three belong to the file owner, next three to those in the same group as the owner, and the final three to everyone else. The letters used are: r—read permission w—write permission x—execute permission A dash (-) indicates that this permission hasn't been given to those particular people. So in our example above, tmp.php can be read, written to, or executed by the owner (a user). It can be read or executed (but not written to) by other users in the same group (agroup) as the owner, but the file cannot be used at all by people outside the group.foo however, can be read by people in the owners group, and also read by everyone else, but it cannot be executed by them. As mentioned above, permissions are also often expressed as a three-digit number. Each of the digits represents the sum of the numbers that represent the permissions granted. For example: r = 4, w = 2, and x = 1. Adding these together gives us a number from 0-7, which can indicate the permission level. So a file with a permission level of 644 would translate as: 6 = 4 + 2 = rw4 = r4 = r or -rw-r--r-- in the first notation that we looked at. Most servers are set by default to one of the following: 644 -rw-r--r--755 -rwxr-xr-x775 -rwxrwxr-x All of this looks fine so far. The problems start to creep in depending on how the server runs their PHP. PHP can either be set up to run as the same user who owns all the files (usually our FTP user or hosting account owner), or it can be set up to run as a different user, but in the same group as the owner. Or it can be set up to be a completely different user and group, as illustrated here: The ideal setup, from a convenience point of view, is the first one where PHP is executed as the same user who owns the files. This setup should have no problems with permissions. But the ideal setup for a very security-conscious web host is the third one since the PHP engine can't be used to hack the web site files, or the server itself. A web server with this setup though used to have a difficult time running a Joomla! site. It was difficult because changing the server preferences requires that files be edited by the PHP user, uploading extensions means that folders and files need to be created by the PHP user, and so on. If the PHP engine isn't even in the same group as the file owner, then it gets treated the same as any site visitor and can usually only read, and probably execute files, but not change them. This prevents us from editing preferences or uploading new extensions. However, if we changed the files so that the PHP engine could edit and execute them (permission 777, for example) then anyone who can see our site on the internet can potentially edit and execute our files by themselves, making our site very vulnerable to being hacked by even a novice hacker. We should never give files or directories a permission of 777 (read, write, and execute to all three user types) because it is almost guaranteed that our site will be hacked eventually as a result. If, for some reason, we need to do it for testing, or because we need to in order to install extensions, then we should change it back as soon as possible. Diagnosis To spot this problem is relatively simple. If we can't edit our web site configuration, or install any extensions at all, then nine times out of ten, server permissions will be the problem. Fixing the problem We can start by asking our web host if they allow PHP to be run as CGI, or install suEXEC (technical terms for running it as the same user who owns the files) and if so, how do we set it up. If they don't allow this, then the next best situation is to enable the Joomla! FTP layer in our configuration. This will force Joomla! to log into our site as the FTP user, which is almost always the same user that uploaded the site files, and edit or install files. We can enable the FTP layer by going to the Site | Global Configuration page and then clicking on the server item in the menu below the heading. We can then enter the required information for the FTP layer on this screen. The FTP layer should only be used on Linux-based servers. More information about the FTP layer can be found in the official Joomla! documentation at http://help.joomla.org/content/view/1941/302/1/2/ If for some reason the FTP layer doesn't work, we only have two other options. We could change our web hosting provider as one option. Or, whenever we want to install a new extension or change our configuration, we need to change the permissions on our folders, perform our tasks, and then change the permissions back to their original settings.

Integrating Twitter with Magento Twitter (http://twitter.com) is a micro-blogging service, which allows its users to send short messages to their followers, answering the question "what are you doing now?" After registering a Twitter account, you can begin to follow other Twitter users. When they update their status, you will see it in your timeline of what people you follow say. When you sign up for a Twitter account, it is usually best to sign up as the name of your store—for example, "Cheesy Cheese Store" rather than "RichardCarter", simply because your customers are more likely to search for the name of the store rather than your own name. Tweeting: Ideas for your store's tweets If you look at other businesses on Twitter, you'll see that there are a number of ways to promote your store on Twitter without losing followers by being too "spammy". Some companies give voucher codes to Twitter followers—a good way to entice new customers Others use Twitter to host competitions for free items—a good way to reward existing customers You can also release products to your Twitter followers before releasing them to other customers Displaying your Twitter updates on your Magento store Twitter can be a powerful tool for your store on its own, but you can integrate Twitter with your Magento store to drive existing customers to your Twitter account, which can help to generate repeat customers. There are a few ways Twitter can be used with Magento, the most versatile of which is the LazzyMonks Twitter module. Installing the LazzyMonks Twitter module To install the LazzyMonks module, visit its page on the Magento Commerce web site (http://www.magentocommerce.com/extension/482/lazzymonks-twitter, and retrieve the extension key, after agreeing to the terms and conditions. Log in to your Magento store's administration panel, and open the Magento Connect Manager in the Magento Connect option under the System tab. Once this has loaded, paste the extension key in to the text box next to the Paste extension key to install label, as shown in the following screenshot: This will install the module for you. Return to your Magento store's administration panel, and you will see a Twitter option in the navigation. The View Tweets option allows you to view updates made to your Twitter account. The Post Update option allows you to update Twitter from your store's administration panel. Firstly, you will need to configure the module's settings, which can be found under the Twitter option of the Configuration section of your store's administration panel, under the System tab. The Twitter Login options are of particular interest. Here you will need to enter your Twitter account's username and password. Once this has been saved, you can post a status update to your Twitter account through Magento's administration panel: This then appears on your Twitter account: Your tweets will also be displayed on your store, as a block beneath other content and can be styled with CSS in your Magento theme by addressing div.twitter. Other ways to integrate Twitter with Magento The other way to integrate your Twitter feed with Magento is by embedding Twitter's widgets into your site. To use these, log in to your Twitter account, and go to http://twitter.com/widgets. You can then use the HTML provided within the Magento templates to insert your Twitter updates into your store. Adding your Twitter feed through Magento's CMS Alternatively, you can insert your Twitter account's updates into any page managed through Magento's Content Management System. In Magento's administration panel, select CMS | Manage Pages, and select the page that you want your Twitter stream to appear in. Within your page, simply paste the code that Twitter produces when you select the type of Twitter "badge", which you want to display on your store. Consider creating a new block for your Twitter statuses, so that it can be removed from pages where it is likely to be distracting (for example, the checkout page).

Introduction to iPhone It has been quite some time since Apple launched iPhone mobile and made a big wave across the world. Initially it got introduced in US market and within a year's time it was available all over the world. Though there are many who use iPhone mobile, I feel it is important to have an introduction to the device in general, its capabilities and what potential it has for programmers to get the full value for the money. If you have not held an iPhone, I suggest you should do that first. This will motivate you to know more about the device like how Apple implemented it. Some may like the curves, many would like the way it functions, but for me, its sleek, big yet compact form, touch technology and the biggest screen are some of the really cool things. Everyone knows about the "touch technology” of the device, especially the multi-touch which takes care of two fingers touching the screen at the same time at different places. But there is more to iPhone than touch. Other important features are: Location finding: using GPS it figures out where it is at that point of time in the world Accelerometer and Orientation: which give it the ability to detect motion in three dimensions Programmable Vibrator, Camera, address book Such features make iPhone more than a just a phone. Technically, the iPhone exists in two largely similar versions: the 2007 original release and the 2008 3G release. It is a 4.7- or 4.8-ounce computing device. Each device contains a 620 MHz ARM CPU that has been under clocked to improve battery performance and reduce heat. Both devices include 128 MB of dynamic RAM (DRAM), and from 4 to 16 GB of Flash memory. The primary difference between the two devices centers on the global positioning system (GPS) and networking. Some technical specifications: iPhone is built on Apple’s OS X, which itself is built on Unix. iPhone has 480 x 320 touch screen Supports a mobile version of Safari browser Supports LAN and WAN networking using Wi-Fi Uses GPS over Wi-Fi Programming Basics In 2008, Apple released the iPhone SDK, a developer toolkit that allows programmers to develop iPhone application. iPhone SDK lets you develop two type of applications—Web development and Native iPhone Application development. Web applications primarily run on a browser using HTML, CSS and some programming language that can generate dynamic content (Java, ASP, .NET, JSP, Ruby….). Native applications run on iPhone like any other application on the device. They use iPhone software development kit (SDK) released by Apple with the inbuilt frameworks and other frameworks that it support. Ignoring for a while that web and native applications have vast difference in the way they are build and they look, the fact is, they both can produce similar result and for some users it may not be easy to differentiate between them. Interesting isn’t it? Later in this article we will discuss about native application development using the tools and programming language iPhone supports. iPhone SDK uses the Objective-C language, which is an extension to the C language. Like any other mobile, iPhone too has a different programming platform; Windows Mobile (VB.NET/C#) and Android (Java) use object-oriented languages and are identical in syntax. However, Objective-C takes a totally different approach. Being different it creates a learning barrier especially for beginners dealing with Mac OS for the first time. Objective-C as implemented by Apple is built entirely around Objects. It is used throughout the iPhone OS’s frameworks. Windows, views, buttons, sliders and controllers exchange information with each other in the form of events and actions in order to make the program run. A header file (.h) and a source code (.m) file together represent each object in Objective-C. iPhone OS frameworks provide many standard classes that come with the framework, but sometimes you may have to write your own subclasses. When you do this, you’ll need a new header and source code class together to represent the new subclass in your project. The iPhone OS is divided in to four layers (Cocoa touch, Media, Core Services, Core OS), as represented in the diagram. Each layer contains variety of frameworks that you can use in your application/program. Initially, you would be dealing with the top layer. Cocoa touch - the base framework, that you will deal most of the time. It contains the UI-Kit framework which includes window support, event support and user-interface management. Media – the framework that provide the protocols to deal with audio and video build in iPhone. Core Services – the frameworks used in all applications, data types. Core Operating System – the kernel level software. Dealing with threading, networking, I/O, memory etc… What you need for iPhone Development To get started with iPhone programming, you would need the following: An Intel Mac running Mac OS X Leopard v10.5.4 or higher The iPhone SDK for iPhone OS, which you can download from http://developer.apple.com/iphone. The iPhone SDK contains all the tools and utilities you need to develop iPhone applications. In particular, it comes with Xcode 3.1(the development IDE) and the iPhone Simulator that allows you to test your application without needing a real device. Though, you can test the applications on the simulator, it is a good idea to register yourself on the iPhone developer program with a nominal fee. This registration gets you a secured certificate issued by Apple and can be used to test developed applications on the device itself. Hence, two more things are essential if the application has to be tested on the device iPhone mobile device iPhone develop program registration If you are serious about taking up iPhone development, I suggest that you to go for the registration process first before anything else. The registration process in itself is free, but to get the certificate you may have to pay a nominal fee ($100 for individuals). All this process could take up quite some time and meanwhile, you can gear up with all the skills and know-how to proceed with the first application. For more information, see "Accessing the iPhone Developer Program Portal.” The best way to learn iPhone programming is to get your hands dirty and start coding. To start coding, you’ll need iPhone SDK and XCode IDE that comes along with the SDK. Assuming, you are already done with the installation, you can find XCode application icon in the /developer/applications folder. Before starting with the application, take a second and think what you would like to name the first application, I will call it "FirstApp". This point is important to keep in mind as the name of the application, subsequent to installation on device, appears on the home screen. The purpose of the application could be anything, but what you want to call it and what you want it to appear as on the home screen starts by naming the application.

Web enabling business data is one of the key devices used to advertise and market products. This can be done with various technologies such as VB, ASP, JSP, ASP.Net and many others. This article shows how you may view data from a table on a MySQL database server on a web page using ASP.NET. The table used in this tutorial was the one described in the first article in this series on Exporting data from MS Access 2003 to MySQL. This article by Dr. Jay Krishnaswamy explains how to populate a GridView on an ASP.NET web page by data retrieved from a MySQL Server. MySQL.Data.MySqlClient is a connector (provider) provided by MySQL which you can use with the .NET Framework applications whose details may be reviewed here. MySQL is well integrated with Visual Studio (MySQL Visual Studio Tools: MySQL.VisualStudio.dll). Overview We first create an ASP.NET 3.5 Website Project (even .NET Framework 2.0 should be OK) in Visual Studio 2008. We then drag and drop a GridView ASP.NET control on to the Default.aspx page. We will then use the smart task on the GridView and follow it up to bring data to the GridView. Then we build the web site project and display the data in the GridView on the Default.aspx page. Create a ASP.NET 3.5 Web Site Project Launch Visual Studio 2008. Click File | New |Web Site... to open up the New Web Site window as shown. Change the default name of the web site to something suitable. Herein it is named WebMySQL as shown. Drag and drop a GridView Control From Toolbox under Data find the GridView Control. Drag and drop this control on to the Default.aspx page as shown. The GridView is 'unbound' when it is dropped and has a few template columns and the smart tasks menu. The menu item is shown in its drop-down state and  displays the menu items under 'Choose Data Source'. Click on the <New Data Source...> item in Choose data source. This will bring up the Data Source Configuration wizard as shown. Herein you need to choose a source of the data you are trying to bring into the application to be bound to the GridView control. You have several options here and for the present article we will be using data from a database. Click on the Database icon as shown in the previous figure. With this you will be specifying an instance of SQLDataSource1 as your source of data. Click OK. This will take you to the next window shown here. Herein you will try to establish a connection to the data source. In the combo-box shown you may see some of the existing connections you have previously established one of which may initially show up. Herein we will be making a new connection. Click the New Connection... button. This brings up the Add Connection window which gets displayed with the default data source, the Microsoft SQL Server Compact 3.5 as shown. Connecting to MySQL Before establishing the connection make sure that your MySQL Server is running. If you have not started you may do so as described in the article mentioned earlier(the first article). You can start the server from the command line as shown in the next figure. Click the Change... button to open the Change Data Source window as shown in the next figure. This window shows a number of Data Sources one of which is the MySQL Database. Scroll down and highlight MySQL Database as shown and click OK. This will bring you back to the Add Connection window with form controls appropriate for making a connection to a MySQL Database. The Server name; user name and Password are appropriate to the MySQL Server on the local computer and you should enter those appropriate for your installation. You may also test the connection as shown. Click OK after the connection is successful. This adds the connection information to the Configure Data Source wizard. You may expand the connection string item to review the connection string created by your entries. Click Next. Here you have an option to save the connection string to the Application Configuration File. This is a recommended practice and hence shown checked. Click Next. Here you will be selecting the set of columns that you want to bring in to your application. It has already chosen the 'employees' table on the MySQL database Testmove. Choose several columns from the list of columns. The SELECT statement is shown at the bottom of the above figure. If you were to click Next you would probably face a page which throws an exception. The square braces [ ] shown for each of the columns is not acceptable to the server.  Click on the first option, "Specify a custom SQL Statement or stored procedure" and then click Next. This opens the "Define Custom Statements or Stored Procedures" page with a Query Builder... button. Here you can not only select columns but also other data modification operations such as Update, Insert and Delete. For now we will be doing just a selection.

Adding jQuery to your page As we have discussed above you can download the latest version of jQuery from jQuery site (http://jquery.com/) and can be added as a reference to your web pages accordingly. You can reference a local copy of jQuery using <script> tag in the page. Either you can reference your local copy or you can directly reference remote copy from jQuery.com or Google Ajax API (http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3/jquery.min.js) Prerequisite Knowledge In order to understand the code, one should have the basic knowledge of HTML, CSS, JavaScript and basic knowledge of jQuery. Ingredients Used HTML CSS jQuery Photoshop (Used for Designing the Button Background) Preview/Download If you would like to see the working example, click the following link: http://www.developersnippets.com/snippets/jquery/alphabetical_glossary/alphabetical_glossary.html. And if you would like to download the snippet, click the following link: http://www.developersnippets.com/snippets/jquery/alphabetical_glossary.zip. Figure 1: Snapshot of "Simple Alphabetical Glossary using jQuery" Figure 2: Overview of div’s and Listings used Figure 3: Image used for Listings (CSS Sprite) Successfully tested The above application is successfully tested on various browsers like IE 6.0, IE 7, IE 8, Mozilla Firefox (Latest Version), Google Chrome and Safari Browser (4.0.2) respectively. HTML Code Below is the HTML code with comments for you to better understand. <div id="body-container"> <div class="glossary-container"> <ul class="firstUL"> <li id="a" class="selected">A</li> <li id="b">B</li> <li id="c">C</li> <li id="d">D</li> <li id="e">E</li> <li id="f">F</li> <li id="g">G</li> <li id="h">H</li> </ul> </div> <!-- Close of glossary-container --> <div class="content-container"> <!-- A --> <div id="content-for-a" style="background-color:#d2e2fc"> <!-- Content for A --> </div> <!-- B --> <div id="content-for-b"> <!-- Content for B --> </div> <!-- C --> <div id="content-for-c"> <!-- Content for C --> </div> <!-- D --> <div id="content-for-d"> <!-- Content for D --> </div> </div> <!-- Close of content-container --></div> <!-- Close of body-container --> Explanation of HTML Code To get the UI shown in above screenshot, I have written some HTML div tags to hold the Glossary terms in one container and the results in another container. CSS styles are used to assign some nice colors. <div id="body-container">.....</div> I have used "body-container" as the main container to catch hold of other two div containers. <div class="glossary-container">.....</div> "glossary-container" contains a glossary term that is Alphabets, as of now in this example I have used alphabets only from "A" to "H". <div class="content-container">.....</div> In "content-container" I have arranged all the results or definitions of glossary terms, for each and every glossary term I have used separate <div> tags like for Alphabet "A" --- <div id="content-for-a" style="background-color:#d2e2fc">....</div>, and given default background color as "background-color:#d2e2fc" which highlights the definition accordingly. After going through the HTML code, we will have a glance on CSS styling. This is very important to give a good look and feel to the application. Explanation of CSS Code <style>/* Making margin and padding to 0, since by default the body will be allocated some amount of pixels of margin and padding. */body{ margin:0; padding:0;}#body-container{ width:415px; /* Given a constant width of 415px to body-container div */ height:500px; /* Given a constant height of 500px to the div */ margin:0 auto; /* This will align the div to center */ border:1px solid #3285ef; /* Giving the border */}#body-container .glossary-container{ clear:both; /* This will not allow floating elements on either sides */}#body-container .content-container{ height:430px; /* Given a constant height of 430px to the div */ width:415px; /* Given a constant width of 415px to the div */ overflow:auto; /* Scroll bar is shown when content is more than specified height */ font-family:'Arial',Verdana,Tahoma; /* Taken the default font to 'Arial' */ font-size:10pt; /* Making font size to 10 points */ clear:both; /* This will not allow floating elements on either sides */}#body-container .content-container div{ padding-left:10px; /* Left padding given as 10px */ border-bottom:1px #666666 solid; /* In order to separate each terms given bottom border color as #666666 (gray) with 1px */}#body-container .content-container div h2{ margin-top:0px; /* Making the top margin to 0px */}#body-container .content-container p.return-to-top{ color:#0066FF; /* Giving text color to Return to top text */ text-decoration:underline; /* The text will be underlined */ text-align:right; /* Text will be aligned to right */ margin-right:10px; /* Given some margin 10px to right */ cursor:pointer; /* Making the cursor to 'hand' */}.firstUL{ padding:0px 0px 0px 10px; /* Given some padding to left and 0 padding to top, right, bottom */ margin:0px; /* margin to 0px */ background-color:#3285ef; /* Given background color */}.firstUL li { background:transparent url(images/link_sprite_img.jpg) no-repeat scroll 0 0; /* For all li’s(listings) given default background image using CSS Sprite concept */ display:inline; /* Listings will be placed in a line */ font-family:'Arial',Verdana,Tahoma; /* Setting the font to 'Arial' */ font-size:16pt; /* Setting the font size to 16 points */ font-weight:bold; /* Making the text to bold */ padding:10px 15px 22px; /* Given some padding to top, right, bottom and left */ line-height:70px; /* This property specifies the line height */ cursor:pointer; /* Making the cursor to 'hand' */}.firstUL li.selected{ background:transparent url(images/link_sprite_img.jpg) no-repeat scroll 0px -57px; /* When any listing is highlighted, we are given the background to image using CSS Sprite concept */ color:#ffffff; /* Making the font color 'white' */ font-weight:bold; /* Making text bold */}</style> Explanation of jQuery Code In order to work your jQuery code, as mentioned above in "Adding jQuery to your page" section, we need to include jQuery JavaScript file onto your web page using <script> tag. <!-- jQuery --><script language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery.js"></script> I have downloaded the jQuery file from jQuery site and kept it on my local machine. To see the scrolling effect, you need to include the following plugin: <!-- scrollTo Plugin --><script language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery.scrollTo-min.js"></script> You can get the above plugin at this location—http://plugins.jquery.com/project/ScrollTo The above two .js files should be in included in <head> tag in order to utilize those in our code. jQuery Code <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">$(document).ready(function() { //below code is for high-lighting the link and scroll to particular DOM Element as well $(".firstUL li").each(function() { $(this).click(function() { //On click of any Alphabet $(".firstUL li").removeClass("selected"); //Initially remove "selected" class if any $(this).addClass("selected"); //Add "selected" class for the clicked one elementClick = $(this).attr("id"); //get respective 'Id' for example 'a','b','c'.. etc., $(".content-container").scrollTo($("#content-for-"+elementClick), 800); //scrollTo particular DOM Element $(".content-container div").css({'background-color' : '#ffffff'}); //set the background color to default, that is white $(".content-container #content-for-"+elementClick).css({'background-color' : '#d2e2fc'}); //set the background color to light-blue to that div }); }); //When "Return to Top" is clicked highlight the first Alphabet that 'A' and scroll to top. $('.return-to-top').click(function(){ $(".firstUL li").each(function() { $(".firstUL li").removeClass("selected"); //Remove classname "selected" }); $("#a").addClass("selected"); //Add a class named "selected" to the first Alphabet $(".content-container").scrollTo($("#content-for-a"), 800); //This is for scrolling to particular element that is "A" here... $(".content-container div").css({'background-color' : '#ffffff'}); //set the background color to default, that is white $(".content-container #content-for-a").css({'background-color' : '#d2e2fc'}); //set the background color to light-blue to that div });});</script> Summary In this article, we saw how to create a Simple Alphabetical Glossary using jQuery. We have learnt how we can highlight particular DOM Element, how we can scroll-to particular div element using scroll-to plugin, and learnt how we can add the background-color to a div using CSS properties.

Isaac wants his web site to have the following features: An "About me" page—showing his personal profile and interests A page that will list all of his publications A Blog to tell the world what he is currently doing, with a list of the latest blog posts displayed on the front page A Contact form that site visitors can use to send an email to I.M. Smart Theme Smart has chosen the "AD The Morning After" theme (which is a contribution to the Drupal project) because he loves the design. The front page will feature a teaser for Smart's profile at the top of the content area, and a list of his most recent blog posts in a block at the bottom of the front page. The final layout of Smart's web site can be seen in the following screenshot: Build I.M. Smart's site Okay, this guy Smart doesn't appear particularly likeable does he, and isn't this quite typical of university professors? But let's put our prejudices aside for a couple of hours and get his work done for him. The major tasks in building the web site for Isaac Smart will be: To create a new Content type called "Publication", under which he can list all of his work To be able to allocate terms to describe each added work To be able to display a Page view of the list of publications To be able to create a Block view of the list of his daily blog posts To create a simple Contact form Modules In order to create the desired web site, we will be using some essential Drupal modules. Optional Core modules The following optional Core modules will be required: Blog—will enable him create his blog posts Taxonomy—will enable him to classify his blog posts Comment—will allow all visitors to his web site to comment on, and to discuss his blog posts and publications Contact—will allow site visitors to send him personal messages Upload—will allow the upload of files into content Contributed modules The following contributed modules will also be used: Taxonomy Menu—will allow taxonomy vocabularies to be transformed into menus easily IMCE—will give the ability to upload and manage files and images Image—will allow the inclusion of images in content Basic content Smart's site is quite basic. The About Me page can be safely created from the Story Content type, and that is what we are going to do. However, to add an element of danger to the project, we will be including a new Content type for his publications, and we will call it just that—"Publication". Create a new Content type By navigating to the Administer page of the site and then to the Content management section, we will find the Content types link. If we access this page, then we will see the various Content types listed there. Here, we need to create a new Content type for "Publication". To create the "Publication" Content type: Click on the Add content type link at the top of the page. You will then be presented with a form. Add the Content type description and the general rules for the adding and display of content for this new Content type, in the places where they need to be in the form. Here are some guidelines: In the Identification fields, add the Name and the Description of the Content type (in this case "Publication"). In the Submission form settings, you can choose the titles that you want to give the fields. By default, you are presented with Title (for the title of the submission), Body (for the main story), and also fields specifying the minimum length of the article before it can be accepted for submission, as well as another place where you can describe submission guidelines for this Content type. Leave this at the system default setting. In the Workflow setting we need to determine the default options: Do you want the article to be immediately published and available for use on the site, immediately after submission? If so, select the Published checkbox. Do you want to promote the article to the front page? If so, select the Promoted to front page checkbox. Do you want the article to remain at the top of the list of contents on the site? If so, select the Sticky at top of list checkbox. In the Comments settings panel, indicate whether you want to allow comments to be made on articles of this Content type or not, and if you do, how these comments will be handled. As previously mentioned, Smart wants to allow comments to be added to his publications by site visitors. Categorize content We first need to establish how the content is going to be organized for use on the site. This is quite easy because we have created only one new Content type, named Publication, that will have taxonomy terms—Books and Papers—attached to it. By doing this, we will have set the ground rules for how content will be created and displayed on the site. Categories or terms may be used to further classify items that, even though they fall under the same Content type, need to be grouped with others with which they bear a close similarity. In this case, Smart's Publication list includes Books and Papers, which, even though they are both publications, would do well if grouped separately. So we must now create the new categories and establish relationships between these new categories and the new Content type. Go to the Taxonomy link under the Content management section on the Administer page, and click on it to get to the Taxonomy page. If you have started a new site, then at the foot of this page, you will see a notice that there is no vocabulary available for your new categories. The vocabulary is a term by which a collection of categories (or terms) can be collectively described. In this case, let us create a vocabulary that we will call Publications Type. We will do this by clicking on the Add vocabulary link at the top of the page. This is what we will be entering into the form for this new vocabulary: In the Identification panel, let us enter the Vocabulary name, and a Description, as well as any Help text that will guide Smart when he comes across this vocabulary. For Publication, we have used Publications Type as the Vocabulary name. For the Description, we have entered The type of publication. Is it book or paper? For the Help text, we will be instructing Smart to Select appropriate publication. We need to associate this vocabulary with a Content type. We have created it specifically for Publication, so we will naturally select the Publication checkbox. For the Settings, we declare that the selection of a term from this vocabulary is Required, and that Smart must choose a term from the supplied list. Moreover, because a Publication can be either a Book or a Paper but never both, a posted content may not have more than one term associated with it. Therefore, leave all of the other checkboxes with the system default settings. The completed vocabulary page is shown in the following screenshot: On returning to the Taxonomy page, we can see the new vocabulary that we have just created is listed. Now we need to add the terms for the vocabulary. We do this by clicking on the add terms link and completing the form that we will be presented with. At this stage, forget about the Advanced Options link at the bottom, because we only have a single level of terms. If you click on the list terms link on the vocabulary, then you will be presented with a list of the terms that you have created, in the order that these terms will be presented to Smart. If you don't like this order, then just drag the ones you want to change to the location that you want. Test the submission form Now, let us test our content submission form and see how it works. In order to do this, you click on the Create content link (on the lefthand side of your page), and select Publication. You will then get a form, as shown in the following screenshot: Using this form, Smart will be able to post the details of his many publications to his web site. However, he doesn't know a thing about HTML (which proves that he isn't so great after all) and will definitely have problems while uploading images into his posts. So, we will give him an easy way to do this. Images Download the IMCE and Image modules. Install and enable them. It is also essential that you have the Upload module enabled. The TinyMCE editor (even though it is not essential) will permit Smart to edit his pages without knowing any HTML. Download the editor, if this feature is required. Having done this, return to Administer | Content management | Content types, and select the Publication Content type. At the bottom of the page, you will see a new panel for Image Attach settings. Enable Attach images, and now the Publication Content type will be ready to incorporate images. To confirm this, go to the Create content link for the Content type. Near the bottom of the page you will find the Attached images panel, as shown in the following screenshot, where you can upload images for your content. Do the same for the Blog entry, Story, and Page Content types. If you have configured your TinyMCE editor correctly, then you can similarly post images into the Body of your article by using the image upload function in TinyMCE. We will also ensure that the Attach images functionality has been enabled in all of the other Content types. Then, in the Workflow settings for each Content type, deselect the Promoted to front page checkbox, or else you will end up with a very unruly front page display. Create the About Me page The About Me page, as we have decided, should really be quite straightforward and will be created from the Story Content type, which is recommended for content that is static. From the admin menu, click on the Create content link, and then select Story. This will give you a form, which is similar to the following screenshot: The handy WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor, which is an emulation of desktop software like MS Word or Open Doc (with which most people will probably be accustomed), will make it easy for Smart to create his personal information page, and format it to his satisfaction. Tips and trapsWe have used this approach because Smart is the only person having a personal profile on this web site. Otherwise, it will not be adequate, and we may have to call up some other modules, especially the CCK module, which will enable us to create new form fields to make submissions more intuitive (for example, to present defined fields for name, education, interests, and so on). Because Smart wants this to feature on the front page, we will just promote the About Me page to the front page before saving it. The Menu settings field is optional, and it is only used if you want to add the item to the menu system. We will add the About Me page to the <Primary links>.

A couple of days ago, a client asked me for an easy way to develop PHP applications. Naturally, I told him the best way would be to pay me for doing it! Just kidding… "Use the NetBeans IDE", I said to him, almost automatically. "But… isn’t NetBeans something related to Java?" he answered back, with a startled grin on his face. "My dear friend, you can use NetBeans to develop software on Java, PHP, C++, and almost any other programming language I’ve heard of! You could even use it to work on a WordPress live Web site!" I said to him triumphantly. And that’s when a small light bulb lit up inside my mind... I introduced him to VirtualBox and the world of virtual machines, the Turnkey Linux LAMP appliance, and how to make all these software applications collaborate between each other. And that’s how this article was born. So now, my dear readers, let’s get on with the action! Oh, and feel free to skip any section you don’t need, ok? Download and Install VirtualBox Go to the VirtualBox Web site and download the most recent version: http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/3.0.4/VirtualBox-3.0.4-50677-Win.exe After downloading VirtualBox, install it with all the default options (remember to register with Sun!). Download the Turnkey LAMP appliance Go to the Turnkey Linux Web site and download the LAMP appliance: http://www.turnkeylinux.org/download?file=turnkey-lamp-2009.02-hardy-x86.iso . Download the NetBeans PHP IDE Go to the Sun Web site and download the NetBeans PHP IDE here. After downloading NetBeans, install it with the default options. Create a virtual machine Open VirtualBox and click on the New button to create a virtual machine (VM). In the following screenshot I used the VirtualPHPDev name for my VM, but you can use whatever you want; just don’t use strange characters or signs: Choose Linux and Ubuntu as the Operating System and Version, respectively. Click on Next to continue. Leave the default values for RAM and hard disk. When finished, click on the VirtualBox Settings button to open your virtual machine’s settings dialog, select the CD/DVD-ROM category, enable the Mount CD/DVD drive option, select the ISO Image File button and then click on the Invoke Virtual Media Manager button . Click on the Add button in the Virtual Media Manager to open up the Select a CD/DVD-ROM disk image file, go to the directory where you downloaded the Turnkey LAMP appliance and double-click on it to add it to the Virtual Media Manager: Click on Select to close the Virtual Media Manager, and then click on OK to exit the Settings dialog. Now you can click on the Start button to start your LAMP virtual machine: Select the Install to hard disk option in the Turnkey Linux menu screen and press Enter to start installing the LAMP appliance on your virtual machine. Eventually the following screen will show up: Select the Guided option and press Enter to continue. The installer will ask if you want to save changes to disk. Select Yes and press Enter. The installer will start the disk formatting process and then you’ll get to the root password screen. Type the password twice for the root user, and then do the same for the MySQL user. The installer will continue and, after a while, the following installation completion screen will show up: Select No, press Enter and then close the virtual machine typing shutdown -r now at the system prompt. You’ll return to the VirtualBox main screen. With your LAMP virtual machine selected, click on the Settings button to open the settings dialog box. Select the CD/DVD-ROM category and disable the Mount CD/DVD drive option. Then select the Network category, change the Attached to: option to Bridged Adapter and click on OK to continue: You can start your LAMP virtual machine now. When ready, the following screen will appear: The Bridged Adapter mode lets your virtual machine act as if it were another PC on the LAN, and consequently, it will have a different IP address. Write down the IP address shown in the Turnkey Linux Configuration Console screen, because you’ll need it to configure the NetBeans IDE later. You can minimize the LAMP virtual machine window now.

Working with theme files A theme file is conceptually similar to CSS while its implementation is like that of a Java properties file. Essentially a theme is a list of key-value pairs with an attribute being a key and its value being the second part of the key-value pair An entry in the list may be Form.bgColor= 555555. This entry specifies that the background color of all forms in the application will be (hex) 555555 in the RGB format. The list is implemented as a hashtable. Viewing a theme file A theme is packaged into a resource file that can also hold, as we have already seen, other items like images, animations, bitmap fonts, and so on. The fact that a theme is an element in a resource bundle means it can be created, viewed, and edited using the LWUIT Designer. The following screenshot shows a theme file viewed through the LWUIT Designer: The first point to note is that there are five entries at the bottom, which appear in bold letters. All such entries are the defaults. To take an example, the only component-specific font setting in the theme shown above is for the soft button. The font for the form title, as well as that for the strings in other components is not defined. These strings will be rendered with the default font. A theme file can contain images, animations, and fonts—both bitmap and system—as values. Depending on the type of key, values can be numbers, filenames or descriptions along with thumbnails where applicable. Editing a theme file In order to modify an entry in the theme file, select the row, and click on the Edit button. The dialog for edit will open, as shown in the following screenshot: Clicking Clicking on the browse button (the button with three dots and marked by the arrow) will open a color chooser from which the value of the selected color will be directly entered into the edit dialog. The edit dialog has fields corresponding to various keys, and depending on the one selected for editing, the relevant field will be enabled. Once a value is edited, click on the OK button to enter the new value into the theme file. In order to abort editing, click on the Cancel button. Populating a theme We shall now proceed to build a new theme file and see how it affects the appearance of a screen. The application used here is DemoTheme, and the code snippet below shows that we have set up a form with a label, a button, and a radio button. //create a new formForm demoForm = new Form("Theme Demo");//demoForm.setLayout(new BorderLayout());demoForm.setLayout(new BoxLayout(BoxLayout.Y_AXIS));//create and add 'Exit' command to the form//the command id is 0demoForm.addCommand(new Command("Exit", 1));//this MIDlet is the listener for the form's commanddemoForm.setCommandListener(this);//labelLabel label = new Label("This is a Label");//buttonButton button = new Button("An ordinary Button");//radiobuttonRadioButton rButton = new RadioButton("Just a RadioButton");//timeteller -- a custom component//TimeTeller timeTeller = new TimeTeller();//set style for timeLabel and titleLabel(in TimeViewer)//these parts of TimeTeller cannot be themed//because they belong to TimeViewer which does not//have any UIID/*Style tStyle = new Style();tStyle.setBgColor(0x556b3f);tStyle.setFgColor(0xe8dd21);tStyle.setBorder(Border.createRoundBorder(5, 5));timeTeller.setTitleStyle(tStyle);Style tmStyle = timeTeller.getTimeStyle();tmStyle.setBgColor(0xff0000);tmStyle.setFgColor(0xe8dd21);tmStyle.setBgTransparency(80);tmStyle.setBorder(Border.createRoundBorder(5, 5));*///add the widgets to demoFormdemoForm.addComponent(label);demoForm.addComponent(button);demoForm.addComponent(rButton);//demoForm.addComponent(timeTeller);//show the formdemoForm.show(); The statements for TimeTeller have been commented out. They will have to be uncommented to produce the screenshots in the section dealing with setting a theme for a custom component. The basic structure of the code is the same as that in the examples that we have come across so far, but with one difference—we do not have any statement for style setting this time around. That is because we intend to use theming to control the look of the form and the components on it. If we compile and run the code in its present form, then we get the following (expected) look. All the components have now been rendered with default attributes. In order to change the way the form looks, we are going to build a theme file—SampleTheme—that will contain the attributes required. We start by opening the LWUIT Designer through the SWTK. Had a resource file been present in the res folder of the project, we could have opened it in the LWUIT Designer by double-clicking on that file in the SWTK screen. In this case, as there is no such file, we launch the LWUIT Designer through the SWTK menu. The following screenshot shows the result of selecting Themes, and then clicking on the Add button: The name of the theme is typed in, as shown in the previous screenshot. Clicking on the OK button now creates an empty theme file, which is shown under Themes. Our first target for styling will be the form including the title and menu bars. If we click on the Add button in the right panel, the Add dialog will open. We can see this dialog below with the drop-down list for the Component field. Form is selected from this list. Similarly, the drop-down list for Attribute shows all the attributes that can be set. From this list we select bgImage, and we are prompted to enter the name for the image, which is bgImage in our case. The next step is to close the Add Image dialog by clicking on the OK button. As we have not added any image to this resource file as yet, the Image field above is blank. In order to select an image, we have to click on the browse button on the right of the Image field to display the following dialog. Again, the browse button has to be used to locate the desired image file. We confirm our selection through the successive dialogs to add the image as the one to be shown on the background of the form.

What is agility Agility includes effective, that is, rapid and adaptive, response to change. This requires effective communication among all of the stakeholders. Stakeholders are those who are going to benefit from the project in some form or another. The key stakeholders of the project include the developers and the users. Leaders of the customer organization, as well as the leaders of the software development organizations, are also among the stakeholders. Rather than keeping the customer away, drawing the customer into the team helps the team to be more effective. There can be various types of customers, some are annoying, and some who tend to forget what they once said. There are also those who will help steer the project in the right direction. The idea of drawing the customer into the team is not to let them micromanage the team. Rather, it is for them to help the team to understand the user requirements better. This needs to be explained to the customers up front, if they seem to hinder the project, rather than trying to help in it. After all, it is the team that consists of the technical experts, so the customer should understand this. Organizing a team, in such a manner so that it is in control of the work performed, is also an important part of being able to adapt to change effectively. The team dynamics will help us to respond to changes in a short period of time without any major frictions. Agile processes are based on three key assumptions. These assumptions are as follows: It is difficult to predict in advance, which requirements or customer priorities will change and which will not. For many types of software, design and construction activities are interweaved. We can use construction to prove the design. Analysis, design, and testing are not as predictable from the planning's perspective as we software developers like them to be. To manage unpredictability, the agile process must be adapted incrementally by the project's team. Incremental adaptation requires customer's feedback. Based on the evaluation of delivered software, it increments or executes prototypes over short time periods. The length of the time periods should be selected based on the nature of the user requirements. It is ideal to restrict the length of a delivery to get incremented by two or three weeks. Agility yields rapid, incremental delivery of software. This makes sure that the client will get to see the real up-and-running software in quick time. Characteristics of an agile process An agile process is driven by the customer's demand. In other words, the process that is delivered is based on the users' descriptions of what is required. What the project's team builds is based on the user-given scenarios. The agile process also recognizes that plans are short lived. What is more important is to meet the users' requirements. Because the real world keeps on changing, plans have little meaning. Still, we cannot eliminate the need for planning. Constant planning will make sure that we will always be sensitive to where we're going, compared to where we are. Developing software iteratively, with a greater emphasis on construction activities, is another characteristic of the agile process. Construction activities make sure that we have something working all of the time. Activities such as requirements gathering for system modeling are not construction activities. Those activities, even though they're useful, do not deliver something tangible to the users. On the other hand, activities such as design, design prototyping, implementation, unit testing, and system testing are activities that deliver useful working software to the users. When our focus is on construction activities, it is a good practice that we deliver the software in multiple software increments. This gives us more time to incorporate user feedback, as we go deeper into implementing the product. This ensures that the team will deliver a high quality product at the end of the project's life cycle because the latter increments of software are based on clearly-understood requirements. This is as opposed to those, which would have been delivered with partially understood requirements in the earlier increments. As we go deep into the project's life cycle, we can adopt the project's team as well as the designs and the PHP code that we implement as changes occur. Principles of agility Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of useful and valuable software. To meet this requirement, we need to be able to embrace changes. We welcome changing requirements, even late in development life cycle. Agile processes leverage changes for the customer's competitive advantage. In order to attain and sustain competitive advantage over the competitors, the customer needs to be able to change the software system that he or she uses for the business at the customer's will. If the software is too rigid, there is no way that we can accommodate agility in the software that we develop. Therefore, not only the process, but also the product, needs to be equipped with agile characteristics. In addition, the customer will need to have new features of the software within a short period of time. This is required to beat the competitors with state of the art software system that facilitate latest business trends. Therefore, deliver the working software as soon as possible. A couple of weeks to a couple of months are always welcome. For example, the customer might want to improve the reports that are generated at the presentation layer based on the business data. Moreover, some of this business data will not have been captured in the data model in the initial design. Still, as the software development team, we need to be able to upgrade the design and implement the new set of reports using PHP in a very short period of time. We cannot afford to take months to improve the reports. Also, our process should be such that we will be able to accommodate this change and deliver it within a short period of time. In order to make sure that we can understand these types of changes, we need to make the business people and the developers daily work together throughout the project. When these two parties work together, it becomes very easy for them to understand each other. The team members are the most important resource in a software project. The motivation and attitude of these team members can be considered the most important aspect that will determine the success of the project. If we build the project around motivated individuals, give them the environment and support they need, trust them to get the job done, the project will be a definite success. Obviously, the individual team members need to work with each other in order to make the project a success. The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is a face-to-face conversation. Even though various electronic forms of communication, such as instant messaging, emails, and forums makes effective communication possible, there is nothing comparable to face-to-face communication. When it comes to evaluating progress, working software should be the primary measure of progress. We need to make sure that we clearly communicate this to all of the team members. They should always focus on making sure that the software they develop is in a working state at all times. It is not a bad idea to tie their performance reviews and evaluations based on how much effort they have put in. This is in order to make sure that whatever they deliver (software) is working all of the time. An agile process promotes sustainable development. This means that people are not overworked, and they are not under stress in any condition. The sponsors, managers, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace of development, testing, evaluation, and evolution, indefinitely. The team should pay continuous attention to technical excellence. This is because good design enhances agility. Technical reviews with peers and non-technical reviews with users will allow corrective action to any deviations from the expected result. Aggressively seeking technical excellence will make sure that the team will be open minded and ready to adopt corrective action based on feedback. With PHP, simplicity is paramount. Simplicity should be used as the art of maximizing the amount of work that is not done. In other words, it is essential that we prevent unwanted wasteful work, as well as rework, at all costs. PHP is a very good vehicle to achieve this. The team members that we have should be smart and capable. If we can get those members to reflect on how to become more effective, at regular intervals, we can get the team to tune and adjust its behavior to enhance the process over time. The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams. Therefore, for a high quality product, the formation of the team can have a direct impact.

The Painter interface Painter defnes the fundamental interface for all objects that are meant to draw backgrounds or to render on a glass pane. This interface declares  only one method—public void paint(Graphics g, Rectangle rect)—for drawing inside the bounding rectangle (specifed by rect) of a component. The library provides a class that implements Painter and is used as a default background painter for widgets and containers. This is the BackgroundPainter class that has (you guessed it) just the one method paint, which either paints the background image if one has been assigned or fills in the bounding rectangle of the component with the color set in its style. When we want to paint a background ourselves, we can write our own class that implements Painter, and set it as the background painter for the relevant component. The DemoPainter MIDlet, discussed in the next section, shows how this is done. The DemoPainter application This application creates a combo box and uses a theme to set the style for the various elements that are displayed. When the application is compiled without setting a custom background painter, the combo box looks as shown in the following screenshot: The MIDlet code has the following statement commented out in the MIDlet. When uncommented, this statement sets an instance of ComboBgPainter as the background painter for the combo box. combobox.getStyle().setBgPainter(new ComboBgPainter(0x4b338c)); The recompiled application produces the following display showing the new background color: The class responsible for drawing the background is ComboBgPainter, which implements Painter. The constructor for this class takes the color to be used for background painting as its only parameter. The paint method determines the coordinates of the top-left corner of the rectangle to be painted and its dimensions. The rectangle is then flled using the color that was set through the constructor. class ComboBgPainter implements Painter{ private int bgcolor; public ComboBgPainter(int bgcolor) { this.bgcolor = bgcolor; } public void paint(Graphics g, Rectangle rect) { g.setColor(bgcolor); int x = rect.getX(); int y = rect.getY(); int wd = rect.getSize().getWidth(); int ht = rect.getSize().getHeight(); g.fillRect(x, y, wd, ht); }} Drawing a multi-layered background In actual practice, there is hardly any point in using a custom painter just to paint a background color, because the setBgColor method of Style will usually do the job. Themes too can be used for setting background colors. However, painters are very useful when intricate background patterns need to be drawn, and especially if multiple layers are involved. PainterChain, described in the next section, is a class designed for handling such requirements. The PainterChain class It is possible to use more than one painter to render different layers of a background. Such a set of painters can be chained together through the PainterChain class. The only constructor of this class has the form public PainterChain(Painter[] chain) where the parameter chain is an array of painters. The contents of chain will be called sequentially during the painting of a background, starting from the element at index 0 to the last one. There are two methods of the PainterChain class that provide support for adding painters to the array underlying the chain. A new painter can be added either to the top (the prependPainter method) or at the end (the addPainter method) of the array. The array itself can be accessed through the getChain method. PainterChain implements Painter so that the setBgPainter method can be used to set a PainterChain as well as a lone painter, which means the paint method also is present here. The function of paint in PainterChain is to call the paint methods of the painter array elements one by one starting at index 0. The DemoPainterChain application that comes up next shows how a chain of painters can be used to draw the multiple layers of a background. The DemoPainterChain application The DemoPainterChain example uses alphaList to show a painter chain in action. After organizing the form and the list, we set up a painter array to hold the three painters that we shall deploy. Painter[] bgPainters = new Painter[3]; Once we have the array, we create three painters and load them into the array. The frst (lowest) painter, which will fll the bounding rectangle for the list with a designated color, goes in at index 0. The next (middle) layer, at index 1, will draw an image at the center of the list. Finally, the topmost layer for writing a text a little below the center line of the list is inserted at index 2. bgPainters[0] = new Eraser(0x334026);try{ bgPainters[1] = new ImagePainter(Image.createImage( "/a.png"));}catch(java.io.IOException ioe){}bgPainters[2] = new TextPainter("This is third layer"); Now we are ready to instantiate a PainterChain object, and install it as a background painter for the list. PainterChain bgChain = new PainterChain(bgPainters);alphaList.getStyle().setBgPainter(bgChain); The list itself will be drawn on top of these three layers, and the background layers will be visible only because the list is translucent as determined by the transparencyvalue 100, set by the AlphaListRenderer instance used to render alphaList. The list now looks as shown in the following screenshot: A close inspection of the screenshot that we have just seen will show that the layers have indeed been drawn in the same sequence as we had intended. The three painters are very similar in structure to the ComboBgPainter class we came across in the previous example. The Eraser class here is virtually identical to ComboBgPainter. The other two classes work in the same way, except for the fact that TextPainter draws a line of text, while ImagePainter draws an image. class TextPainter implements Painter{ private String text; TextPainter(String text) { //set the text to be written this.text = text; } public void paint(Graphics g, Rectangle rect) { //get the dimension //of background int wd = rect.getSize().getWidth(); int ht = rect.getSize().getHeight(); //create and set font for text Font textFont = Font.createSystemFont( Font.FACE_PROPORTIONAL,Font.STYLE_BOLD,Font.SIZE_LARGE); g.setFont(textFont); //set text color g.setColor(0x0000aa); //position text slightly below centerline int textX = wd/2 - textFont.stringWidth(text)/2; int textY = ht/2 - textFont.getHeight()/2 + 3; //write text g.drawString(text, textX, textY); }}class ImagePainter implements Painter{ private Image bImage; ImagePainter(Image bImage) { //set the image to be drawn this.bImage = bImage; } public void paint(Graphics g, Rectangle rect) { //get the dimensions //of background int wd = rect.getSize().getWidth(); int ht = rect.getSize().getHeight(); //position image at center int imageX = wd/2 - bImage.getWidth()/2; int imageY = ht/2 - bImage.getHeight()/2; //draw image g.drawImage(bImage, imageX, imageY); }} When an image is used on the background of a form, we have seen that it is scaled to occupy the entire form real estate. But if the same image is used as an icon for a label, then it is drawn in its actual size. This task of scaling the image for backgrounds is taken care of by BackgroundPainter, which is used as the default bgPainter.

What is content in the context of Drupal? We can certainly say that 'content' is any material that makes up the web page, be it Drupal-generated content, such as the banner and buttons, or user content, such as the text of a blog. Within Drupal, 'content' has more narrow parameters. When you create a story in Drupal, it is stored in a database as a node, and is assigned a node ID (nid). Some would say that, with respect to Drupal, content is limited to objects (stories, and so on) that can receive comments created by users, and are assigned a node id. Others say that it is any object in Drupal that can be on a page. These technical discussions can cause your eyes to glaze over. It would seem that the latter definition makes the most sense; however, there is one additional factor that we need to consider, and that is the layout of the Drupal admin functions. Drupal provides admin functions for creating and maintaining content, and these functions list only those objects that receive a node id. Other objects, such as Blocks, are created and maintained elsewhere. What are the types of content in Drupal? The following table lists the content types that ship with Drupal by default: Content Type Description Blog entry A blog, or weblog, is an author-specific content type that is used as a journal or diary, among other things, by individuals. In Drupal, each blog writer can, depending on the site's settings and their permissions, add attachments, HTML, or PHP code to their blog. A good example of a blog can be found at: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/, which demonstrates an interesting use of the blog content format. Book page A book is an organized set of book page types (actually any type can be used nowadays), which are intended to be used for collaborative authoring. Book pages may be added by different people in order to make up one single book that can then be structured into chapters and pages, or in whatever structure is most appropriate, provided it is in a hierarchical structure. Because pretty much any data type can be added to a book, there is plenty of scope for exciting content (think of narrated or visual content complementing dynamic book pages, created with PHP and Flash animations, to create a truly unique Internet-based book-the possibilities are endless!). A good example of a book is the documentation provided for developers on the Drupal site, found at: http://drupal.org/node/316. This has been built up over time by a number of different authors. You will notice that if you have the Book module enabled, an additional outline tag is presented above all/most of the site's posts. Clicking on this tab allows you to add that post to a book-in this way, books can be built up from content posted to the site. Forum topic Forum topics are the building blocks of forums. Forums can only consist of forum topics and their comments, unlike books, which can consist of pretty much any content type. Information in forums is categorized in a hierarchical structure, and they are extremely useful for hosting discussions as well as community-based support and learning. Forums are abundant on the Internet and you can also visit the Drupal forums to get a feel for how they operate. Page The page type is meant to allow you to add basic, run-of-the-mill web pages that can be found on any site. About us or Terms of use pages are good candidates for the page type, although you can spruce these up with a bit of dynamic content and HTML. Just look on any website to see examples of such pages. What about comments? Comments are not the same as the other node types discussed in the previous table. While there may be exceptions, the terms 'node' and 'content' are synonymous with respect to Drupal. While, technically, they are content, consider the fact that one cannot create a comment without first having another node to add the comment to. Instead, you can tack comments onto other content types, and these are very popular as a means to stimulate discussion among users. You can see comments in action by logging into the Drupal forums, http://drupal.org/forum, and posting or viewing comments on the various topics there. How to work with content types? It is possible to specify some default behavior for each of the content types. To do this, go to Content types under Content management to bring up the following page: Each content type has a set of editable configuration parameters, so to get a good idea of how they work, click on the edit in the Book page row. The edit page is broken up into four sections dealing with the following: Identification – Allows you to specify the human readable name and the name used internally by Drupal for the associated content type, as well as to add a description to be displayed on the content creation page. Submission form settings – Allows you to set the field names for the title and body (leaving the body blank removes the field entirely) as well as specify the minimum number of words required to make the posting valid. Again, it is possible to add in submission guidelines or notes to aid those users posting this content type. Workflow settings – Allows you to set default publishing options, multilingual support, and specify whether or not to allow file attachments. Comment settings – Allows you to specify default comment settings such as read or read/write, whether or not comments are allowed, whether they are to appear expanded or collapsed, in which order and how many, amongst other things.