In the past two years, increased browser support has transformed CSS3 from a fringe activity for Safari geeks to a viable option for enterprise level websites.While cross-browser support is often too weak for CSS3 to hold up a site’s main design, front-end developers commonly look to CSS3 solutions for progressive enhancement in their sites. For instance, a developer might add a drop-shadow in Firefox, Safari and Chrome using -moz-box-shadow and -webkit-box-shadow, and then be comfortable with this design enhancement falling off for IE users.But wouldn’t it be great if...

Used in casting shadows off block-level elements (like divs)..shadow { -moz-box-shadow: 5px 5px 5px #ccc; -webkit-box-shadow: 5px 5px 5px #ccc; box-shadow: 5px 5px 5px #ccc;}The horizontal offset of the shadow, positive means the shadow will be on the right of the box, a negative offset will put the shadow on the left of the box.The vertical offset of the shadow, a negative one means the box-shadow will be above the box, a positive one means the shadow will be below the box.The blur radius, if set to 0 the shadow will be sharp, the higher the number, the more blurred it will be.ColorExample...

I attended this weekend my first Ruby conference, Ruby Lugdunum in Lyon. Besides cool talks and the fun of meeting people like Nick, Blake, or Laetitia, my friend Camille & I did a surprise lightning talk about how PHP is better than Ruby. Here are the slides and a more detailed transcript:A lot of free hosts: it’s easy to find a PHP host, you just have to google “free php host” and you find a ton of free PHP/MySQL hostsBigger community: The PHP community is really huge, and it’s really easy to find a PHP developerEasy to learn: Most people in the IT field have so...

I am retiring from PHP as my language of choice for personal side projects and new programming ventures. This was not an easy decision to come to, but one that I think is necessary for my love of programming to continue. You see, I'm not only a programmer because I love programming, but because I can not do anything else.HistoryIt all started in 1999 when I was in 8th grade. The Internet was really starting to get interesting and I wanted to start programming. I had picked up basic HTML, so I could render a webpage but I really wanted to make it more interactive. The language of choic...

As web designers, we all seem obsessed by HTML5 and CSS3 at the moment. Endless posts, tutorials and discussion about them dominate the blogosphere. But how much are we learning that can be applied today?Don’t get me wrong. We all need to understand HTML5 and CSS3. And a lot of it can be used today.My point is that we seem to be spending a disproportionate about of time reading up on the subject when so many other areas deserve our attention.While others are reading yet another tutorial on CSS animation, why not broaden your horizons by researching subjects that will allow you to offer ...

I've long looked at JavaScript as a second-class citizen in the programming world. Early on, it was the source of numerous security problems; it was a nice bit of glue to patch together HTML applications with a bit of styling, but nobody would use it for serious code; and so forth. Java, Ruby, Python, they were the languages for doing real work. But my attitude toward JavaScript has changed completely in the past few years. JavaScript has "grown up." I'm sure there are many JavaScript developers who would take issue with that judgement, and argue that JavaScript has been a capable, mature, and...

A few minutes ago, I noticed one strange thing when I did my PHP web application development.The situation is described below:I want to display a user's profile using a query parameter user=user_id as the parameter. And also the session variable when user logs in  is $_SESSION["user"].So before displaying the user's profile, I need to either get the query string parameter user and create a local variable called $user and assign value to it as $user=$_REQUEST["user"].Here comes the strange thing,every time after the local variable $user is changed,the session variable $_SESSION["user"] is ...

Problem:I’m working on a wamp system, and have started playing around with sockets. I enabled sockets via the wamp interface:wamp : PHP settings : PHP extensions : php_socketsand could run my php file via my browser.When trying to run the same file via the command prompt (start : run : cmd), I got the following error:Fatal error: Call to undefined function socket_create() in … on line …Solution:The command prompt uses a different php.ini file to the apache server.The Apache php.ini file is accessible via the taskbar icon, and is located at:X:\WAMP INSTALL DIR\Apach...