Book review: Expert PHP5 Tools
Book review: Expert PHP 5 Tools
ISBN: 1847198384
ISBN 13: 978-1-847198-38-9
Publisher:Packt Publishing
Author:Dirk Merkel
Book cover: Expert PHP 5 Tools
Short version: If you are working with PHP you’ll want to read this book. Covering topics like continuous integration, documentation and unit testing thoroughly it gives an insight of great value to any PHP developer.
Slightly longer version: This book is aimed at developers already working with PHP on a daily basis, or developers which are picking up PHP. It’s main focus is the environment of the PHP developer. Areas like unit testing, continuous integration, application deployment, proper documentation and version control might already be very familiar if you have been working with PHP for a while, but this book covers each of these important areas in detail and with prime examples on do and dont’s. Even if you feel like you are doing quite well I’m sure this book will give you a few “aha!” moments. If you are coming from a hobby-background these areas might not be your strongest suit, and this book will help you get a firm grasp on what a professional PHP setup is all about. The chapter on continous integration is based around phpUnderControl, which is a nice piece of software for this purpouse. However, I would have liked to see other alternatives like for example Hudson. Luckily, moving over to a different CI app is fairly easy after having set up a phpUC installation with the phing/ant configuration.
The book is available both as paperback and eBook from Packt. I’ve been reading the eBook, which worked quite well for me. PS: Convering the PDF to ePub will destroy some of the formatting.
Check out the sample chapter Documentation with phpDocumentor
Book preview: Expert PHP5 Tools
Book cover: Expert PHP 5 Tools
While I am currently reading PHP5 eCommerce Development I’ve also got lined up a copy of Expert PHP 5 Tools from Packt.
This book will enable you to take your PHP development skills to an enterprise level by teaching you the skills and tools necessary to write maintainable and efficient code. You will learn how to perform activities such as unit testing, enforcing coding standards, automating deployment, and interactive debugging using tools created for PHP developers – all the information in one place. Your code will be more maintainable, efficient, and self-documented.
Check out the sample chapter Documentation with phpDocumentor
Book preview: PHP 5 E-commerce Development
I have been reviewing some books from Packt Publishing lately, and I’m now expecting a copy of PHP 5 E-commerce Development in a few days. I have been looking forward to for a while, as I will be working on a similar project in the near future. Here is the lowdown:
Php 5 eCommerce Development Book Cover
This book will show you how to create your own PHP framework that can be extended and used with ease, particularly for e-commerce sites. Using this framework you will be able to display and manage products, customize products, create wish-lists, make recommendations to customers based on previous purchases, send email notifications when certain products are in stock, rate the products online, and much more.
You can check out the sample chapter Enhancing the User Experience now.
Streaming mp3 / audio with AS3, solving memory leaks
Posted by admin in ActionScript, Adobe, Audio, Flash on March 12th, 2010
This article is a result of my experiences with streaming MP3 streams with AS3 on a ATOM-based device. After playing a stream for a given period of time the Flash Player kept crashing for no apparent reason. After some investigation I found a memory leak within my streaming application, and after further investigation I was able to narrow it down to the Sound class in AS3 (with good help from this blog post by Madarco). I quote:
“While you listen to an mp3 in streaming mode: snd.loadSound(url, true), flash will keep in memory the music played.”.
Now, when you have a continuous stream this means trouble. The memory used by the stream will not be released until the stream is closed.
Based on the info provided in Madarco’s post I spent some time working on a solution that would satisfy my needs. I ended up with an approach that initiates a second stream once the first has a buffer of a given size. Once the limit is reached I initiate the second stream at zero volume, then use GreenSock’s VolumePlugin tween to cross-fade the two streams. Once this is done, I free the memory reserved by the first stream and swap the references.
A complete working implementation can be found at PasteBin. For the sake of demonstration I’m swapping streams after 500kb, but this is clearly not an ideal limit for real world usage. This can also be tweaked to take the amount of used memory and / or time played instead of just looking at the buffer size when deciding when to swap streams. I still have quite some testing ahead before I feel comfortable using this, but it’s a good start. Hope this can help others faced with the same problem.
Book review: Papervision 3D Essentials
Posted by admin in 3D, ActionScript, Adobe, Book, Flash, Flex, Game Development, Papervision, Review on March 11th, 2010
Book review: Papervision 3D Essentials (follow link to buy)
ISBN 1847195725
ISBN 13 978-1-847195-72-2
Publisher: Packt Publishing
Author: Paul Tondeur and Jeff Winder.
This review here is long overdue, but since work got a bit hectic, and I spent some time moving it got pushed back.
Papervision3D Essentials Cover
Short version: If you want to get started with Papervision 3D, get this book. It’s a well written, great introduction for people new to Papervision3D, as well as a good reference for more experienced developers. It covers everything from basics to filters, effects and performance topics.
Longer version: Before I started reading this book I had never used Pv3D except looking at some neat demos. I had some experience with OpenGL from way-back, so the basic 3d concepts were not new to me. As I got started I found that most of what I knew from general 3d graphics development was covered pretty well in the first few chapters. From the basic building blocks, to coordinate systems and primitives. The book starts out with a chapter dedicated to setting up authoring tools for compiling the code created during the book. Both Flash CS3/CS4 and Flex/Flash Builder is covered. After that it deals briefly with some core AS3 concepts before moving on to fundamental 3D subjects. Everything is explained really well, and as the book progresses trough the rest of the chapters it details subjects as drawing primitives, adding materials, setting up cameras and loading external models, then going on with particle systems, external models, filters and effects. A chapter is also dedicated to performance optimization. The book offers a number of good examples, also available on-line.
The authors are clearly very comfortable with the subjects they are covering, and discussing pretty much every topic in a language that makes it easy to follow, also for less experienced developers. In my opinion this is a very well written book that I would not hesitate to recommend to beginning developers as well as experienced.
Book review: Flex 3 with Java
Posted by admin in ActionScript, Adobe, Book, Flash, Flex, Frameworks, Java, Review on February 8th, 2010
Book review: Flex 3 with Java (follow link to buy)
ISBN: 1847195342
ISBN: 13 978-1-847195-34-0
Publisher: Packt Publishing
Author: Satish Kore
Flex 3 with Java Cover
Short version: If you are a Java / PHP developer seeking to get started with Flex, building on your skills as a server-side developer, this book will do you good. If you are new to software development, or just started out I would recommend you check out Essential ActionScript 3.0 by Colin Mook, then come back to this book when you have some experience doing applications with AS3.
Slightly longer version: Some time ago I reviewed Mastering phpMyAdmin 3.1 from Packt Publishing, and since they had some interesting books on Flash / Flex I volunteered to review a few more.
First out is Flex 3 with Java. It’s a 300 page book, dealing with Flex, Java and how you can build solutions using BlazeDS as a backend.
I first checked out Flex back when the Flex 3 beta came out. At that time I was doing PHP with the Prado Framework, and instantly felt like home within the Flex IDE. However, I never took the time to really get into Flex, and my knowledge of ActionScript was pretty limited at the time.
I’ve now been working with AS3 for six months, and I’ve got a pretty solid grip on it. Most of the work I’m doing is pure AS3 (no Flash IDE, no Flex SDK), but I’ve got some very interesting side-projects built on Flex in the works as well.
The book assumes you have no experience with Flex / Actionscript from earlier. Now, it is clearly written for a more tech-savvy audience. You do not need to be a experienced developer to follow the subjects covered, but it will most certainly help to have done some software development before picking it up. The author gets a bit ahead of himself on some topics in the book, but it’s not a big problem. However, I would have liked to see a “who is this book for” section at the beginning, stating that this books is well suited for developers wanting to pick up Flex.
As expected it spends the first few chapters dealing with installation on the Flex SDK / tools as well as a brief but good coverage of AS3 and the basics of MXML.
Going into this book I was expecting the majority of the contents to cover the actual interop between Java and Flex. The book clearly deals with much more than that. Given that I’ve been trough a number of Flex and AS3 books the last months I think I would have preferred a book that was focusing more of it’s energy on the core subject instead of peripheral topics such as styling, packaging and deployment and i18n support. I totally agree that these subjects are important to master, but I think it would have been better if the book focused more on the actual interops topics as mentioned above. For me the books falls a bit between two chairs, as it does not spend enough time on basics to give the complete beginner a deep enough intro to Flex and AS3, yet not enough on the heavier side for the more experienced developer.
Oh, the book is also available as PDF if you prefer that.
Download Chapter 5 – Working with XML
PS: Check back soon as I will have a review of Papervision3D Essentials ready!
Evening reading #2
Posted by admin in Evening reading on November 6th, 2009
Tonight it’s time to get started on the Christmas beer. The Norwegian beer-club “Norøl” is hosting a Christmas beer festival tonight, which should be pretty good. Perfect warm-up for the Oslo Whiskyfestival tomorrow. On a side-note, I picked up S.T.A.L.K.E.R. – Shadow of Chernobyl a couple of years back when it was first released. After playing the first mission I was so disappointed that I uninstalled it. Last week I decided to give it another go, and I came across a mod called STALKER Complete 2009 which improves everything from game mechanics to graphics. The game is now very playable, and a perfect substitute for Fallout 3. If you are into that kind of thing, go pick it up. Steam has a 5 euro special on it these days, so there is no excuse to not get it. Also, check out “the real STALKER“. Looks fun (if you don’t mind some radiation sickness).
Now, for some links:
- Adobe Browserlab
- Batman arrested in drunken Bigg Market brawl
- Unveiled: The luxurious £2m underground mansion designed to keep away prying eyes
Evening reading #1
Posted by admin in Evening reading on November 5th, 2009
After some time of inactivity I’ve decided to breath some life into this blog. This post is the first under the category “Evening reading”, which contains rambling on current events and some good reads I’ve come across. Expect more of these. As for content in general I’ve got a couple of book reviews lined up, some notes on my experiences with Actionscript3 and Flex, and a post on setting up your own dump of Geonames / GeoIP.
- Windows 7 had 8 million testers, biggest beta ever
- Darwinian evolutionary theory will help find alien life, says Nasa scientist
- A Black Hole Engine That Could Power Spaceships
On a side note, I’m moving by the end of the month. Hooray for a new place!
Adobe CS4 can’t be installed on a case sensitive file system?!
So, Adobe CS4 suite apparently does not support case sensitive file systems. In this day and age this is plain out retarded. I wish Apple would make case sensitive the default FS when installing OSX. That would probably light a spark for Adobe.
Book preview: Papervision3D Essentials and Flex 3 with Java
Posted by admin in 3D, ActionScript, Book, Flash, Flex, Frameworks, Java, Media, Papervision on October 6th, 2009
Following my review of Mastering phpMyAdmin 3.1 Packt Publishing was kind enough to send me a couple of more books to review. While I am waiting for these books to get here I have gotten my hands on some sample chapters. Check them out!
Papervision3D Essentials
Papervision3D Essentials Cover
Authors Jeff Winder, Paul Tondeur
ISBN 1847195725
ISBN 13: 978-1-847195-72-2
Download Chapter 8 – External models
Flex 3 with Java
Flex 3 with Java Cover
Author Satish Kore
ISBN 1847195342
ISBN 13 978-1-847195-34-0
Download Chapter 5 – Working with XML
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