Microsoft IE8 passed Acid2

Wow this is nice and hot news! Finally IE is taking the standards seriously. The lawsuit of Opera to IE might have an effect afterall..

As a team, we’ve spent the last year heads down working hard on IE8. Last week, we achieved an important milestone that should interest web developers. IE8 now renders the “Acid2 Face” correctly in IE8 standards mode.

Now, with all that context, I’m delighted to tell you that on Wednesday, December 12, Internet Explorer correctly rendered the Acid2 page in IE8 standards mode. While supporting the features tested in Acid2 is important for many reasons, it is just one of several milestones for the interoperability, standards compliance, and backwards compatibility that we’re committed to for this release. We will blog more on these topics. Here’s a relevant video.

For IE8, we want to communicate facts, not aspirations. We’re posting this information now because we have real working code checked in and we’re confident about delivering it in the final product. We’re listening to the feedback about IE, and at the same time, we are committed to responsible disclosure and setting expectations properly. Now that we’ve run the test on multiple machines and seen it work, we’re excited to be able to share definitive information.

Ok, you might be wondering what is Acid2 Test. I myself was not familiar with it until now.

The Acid2 test was developed by the Web Standards Project (WaSP) as a challenge to browser developers. In a single page, the test makes use of a broad range of features from several different web standards that developers have wanted to have in browsers for some time, and it uses them to display a deceptively simple smiley face.

Now we can sleep real tight that in the coming future, developers and designers will have less headache making their website CSS based Happy New Year IE!

A glimpse to the shiflett.org look

I’ve been a fan of Chris Shiflett’s site since late last year. One thing that really made me come back to this site was not the content but the design - I am not an RSS fan :D. I tried to mimic it and got a very poor outcome. The site is very easy on the eyes. Even the color is gray, I like how he played it with orange so it does not look so boring. The background images looks like wallpaper but it just complements everything. It looks so neat with the metal like surface. I like the fonts — I am a fan of Arial and Verdana - and specially the icons. I love the spacing and alignment of the content! I could not find a thing that I don’t like.

When I read the About section of his website the more I respect him. Shame on me I tried to mimic his site without really considering the background story. Everything was well planned - xhtml validity, accessibility, icons, content, GUI… Just to give you a snippet of what he said:

Accessibility was a baseline design ethic. The markup is ordered logically. The contrast should be sufficient for most users, and text resizing is accommodated as far as possible in the default style; relative values are used for everything. There’s an additional single-column “light” style (linked via the utilities menu above the search form). The site has been manually checked to Priority 2 plus conformance to the WCAG 1.0 with extra screen reader checks for critical objects like the calendar.

I haven’t seen really someone discusses this but he is an expert so I think that should just be really taken into consideration, right? Not everyone I guess but it is a good starting point for me to take notice. I’ll be a little more aware now when I design the next petixe look. If you notice, I am doing some experimentation with my site. I will be releasing this to the public anyway so I’ll try to make it a little close to perfect with the accessibility chu chu… (chu chu means etc.)

Why use twitter?

This one is something to think about why you would want to use twitter. Much more convincing than what Shiflett has discussed.

Wordpress template

Finally, I have uploaded the template. It’s not 100% working yet, I am still working on the coding part as I don’t have much time to tinker on it, there are specific functionality I want to achieve and I’ve search for current plugins on that unfortunately I have not found one but for sure this week this one is done. Please feel free to comment on it, I’d appreciate any comment

Another good news for today. I will be releasing a new free version of this. Check out for that soon!

New template for Petixe!

While having a week vacation - 4days of no work due to the Halloween season and 3 days of sick leave - I was able to complete my design. I’m quite happy about the result. Let me know what you think. I’m coding it now to wordpress template and will release it as free as a beer when I have another one.. lol..

I was inspired to work on it more by an article that says talents are not showered by God alone, it takes a lot of hard work and I truly agree on that! This work, I think, is more than a month in the making. Ofcourse I only do this when I have spare time but the concept of creating one already begun last year, getting inspirations from other sites, doing a lot of drafts, etc. Thankfully the image from vikifloki is awesomely great and it’s perfect for what I have foreseen. Image is really one of my most important ingredient because I mostly refer to that for the colors and structure of the site. It may not be an award winning design but I am truly happy that FINALLY there is an outcome of all those information gathering, drafting and tinkering I have done and I am very much satisfied of it. Well, even if I am satisfied, I would greatly appreciate any comment on it so that I can improve my work in my future projects

Updates and Events

It’s been already a while since I transferred the site here and still got no new post! I have a lot of ideas to talk about but lacks the time to write them. The things that keeps my mind busy - another website, the reason I bought this domain but now made to this one instead of “that”, studying Drupal, widgets and meeting up with the local Php users.

Recently I’ve met with PHPUGPers (great people) and talked about a few things. I’m excited about the upcoming event this December 1 although I am not able to come Well there is also another BIG EVENT for the Promet team this upcoming late November so I’m quite preparing (and praying) for that now :D. Back to the Dec 1 event, as a Php user, I am excited to know there are local events like this and recommend everyone to join. The Goal of the meeting is about Gathering of country’s best tech-talents, professionals and web developer’s promoting the use of PHP and opensource solutions in the enterprise and schools. There are already some subjects I like

Tentative Topics/Sessions this year:

1. CodeIgniter with Aptana (PHP) by Roger Filomeno (Mobile Specialist, TechBiz Asia Group Pte Ltd)
2. TipidPC: How it was made! (PHP) by Jesus Domingo (Frontend Engineer, Yahoo! Singapore)***
3. Database 101 using MySQL (Database) by Cherrie Anne Domingo (Multinational Investment Bank Corporation)
4. Sulit:Ads made Easy (Business) by RJ David (CEO, Sulit.com.ph)
5. Defensive Design (Web Design) by AJ Batac (Director of Operations, Webcore Canada)***
6. CSS and the Web (Web Design) by Angela Sabas (Frontend Engineer, Yahoo! Singapore)***
7. Test Driven Development in PHP:Recap (PHP) by Andre John Cruz (Application Developer, Barclays Singapore)***
8. IT Trends (Business) by JR Yap (CIO, MobileXchange)
9. Zend Core and Oracle (Database) by Clodelio Delfino (Moderator, PHPUGPH)
10. PHP in Schools: A Visit (PHP) by Anne Michelle Santos (Web Developer/Professor, University of Santo Tomas)
11. Exploring OpenSUSE 10.3 (Linux) by Reuben Ravago (CEO, OLM Technologies)
12. Stealth Startup Product Launch by AJ Batac (Director of Operations, Webcore Canada)***

I just wish I have a modified soul I can use to watch the other event for me. To find out more about this event, visit this thread.

For ticket reservations, visit: http://www.jotform.com/form/72883452322.

Reserve your tickets early to avail our early bird promo and get a 50% off discount on the ticket prices and special ticket promos.

• Student Tickets for Php 100 (Orig. Price: Php 200)
• Professional Tickets for Php 500 (Orig. Price: Php 1,000)
• Student Special Promo - Buy 2 Take 1 for Php 200 (Orig. Price: Php 400 )
  
• Professional Special Promo - Buy 2 Take 1 for Php 1,000 (Orig. Price: Php 2,000)
  

Promo ends on November 16, 2007.

Convenient Javascript Functions

At the javascript.crockford.com site, I found some really cool functions I wish I have known them earlier.

• typeof
• isEmpty()
• entityify()
• quote()
• supplant()
• trim()

Source codes

I also learned some really good tips from it! Thanks to the author!

PHP Security Tips

At the devzone, Cal Evans has written 21 php security tips. I have only read #17 where you can download a 37 page guide (in pdf) that explains the terms and concepts involved in securing your PHP application.

Application security should not be a “when all else fails” situation. It’s not something you can “put in later”. As we’ve mentioned before, there is no single silver bullet to solve your application security issues. Security is something that should be rolling around in the back of your dead in the design phase, the coding phase, the testing phase, even after you’ve rolled your code into production.

Source

Women in IT

Why should someone care if there are less women in IT? Why should I care?

Fortunately and unfortunately, I was questioned by a man (in a good way) something like this. I said it is still fortunate because I was challenged to think. Unfortunate because I didn’t know what to answer. That surprised me really. Looking back in college I was told by my professor that I was a feminist. I didn’t believe her because I can’t just feel that I am. Maybe now that is one reason why I act like so. Then, I asked also another woman in IT why she’s doing what she is currently doing (she is an active member of Ubuntu-women) and that hardened some of my beliefs and answered some of my questions. I wouldn’t tackle much about her answer but basically one point on my end is to feel comfortable working in your flock. Men and women are still different the way they think and act and being on your own group sometimes brings out your true self. I do not like the idea of doing this because I just want to show men that as women I can also do what they can because we have our own talents and weaknesses. These things and our childhood experiences are ingredients that tells us what path we will take later on. I want women and other minorities to know that there is another option in choosing a work, not just the usual stuff like nursing, management, tourism, etc. This is millennium anyway, we are advancing in technology. Back in my highschool years, there was no option like that. I should thank my brother for showing this path because I am loving it! In my country, I think this is not only a concern about women, basically it is a concern for everyone, men, women, young and old but that is another issue. Some other “convincing” reasons will be tackled in a series of articles in oreilly.com written by Tatiana Apandi. There is already one that is out. Check it and see more.

Troubleshooting your cakePhp installation

If your a first timer installing cakePhp, it's quite annoying if your not getting it to work. Really, I've seen people take up to 3 days just installing it because they don't know what the problem is. The common problem I've seen is usually a mod_rewrite issue. If your installing an application made in cakePhp and can't make it work, I suggest the ffg:
1. Get the most recent stable version from cakephp.org and follow the instructions from the Manual Section 3. Install it in a subfolder. You can always move it somewhere else after the installation. Let's say the subfolder name is /mycake. Also make sure to change the permission to /app/tmp
2. After running it, see if the page is a bit colorful. If yes, then go to the next step. If not, check the src of the <link> tag. The link tag should most likely look like this
<link src="/mycake/css/style.css">
If the src is only "/css/style.css", then I bet you have a mod_rewrite problem. Check your apache configuration. For windows, I believe it is named httpd.conf and most likely it was just commented out in the list of modules so look for the word mod_rewrite. In ubuntu, most likely it is in the /ect/apache2/, I don't know in other distros. I can't give much info in troubleshooting it in ubuntu or linux, there could be a couple of ways. After successfully doing so, remember to restart your apache and check again. Don't stop until you see those colors. Go to the next step afterwards.
3. You can stop right here. The ffg step is just for me to verify that no doubt the installation works. Proceed if you like.
Create a simple controller with the ffg content:

Then create your view named index.thtml (im using the 1.1 version). If that successfully loaded, congratulations! You have verified your installation successful. If not, then tell me about it.

Another problem I experienced before when installing this in a server is the "new installation of cake: open_basedir restriction error". Basically, here are the solutions:
1. Hack the core. Change the fileExistsInPath (located in /cake/basics.php) function to:

2. .htaccess config. Add the ffg lines to your .htaccess so that the php include_path doesn’t have all the extra stuff you don’t need:

Read more info here.
For IIS installation, I just found this help . If you have other experience, write about it or add a comment and let us all know.