When I made the decision to develop my own arcade script I also had to decide how I wanted to go about building it. Since a lot of the basic functionality comes pre – baked into your friendly neighborhood framework, it was easy for me to decide to make use of one. However, I then had to decide which framework I would choose. Keep reading to see which one I chose.

Created by the folks over at Zend, the Zend framework is generally accepted as the professional PHP developer’s framework. This is primarily due to the fact that Zend offers certification courses on their framework. So if you were looking to beef up your resume with some PHP street cred Zend has just what the doctor ordered. To have a list of PHP frameworks and not include Zend is like gathering the ingredients for a great cake and forgetting to include the flour. Zend is a formidable php framework that is extremely modular. In fact, it is so modular that you can make use of it’s various components within other projects if you wanted to. On the other hand, that modularity can make it very difficult for a novice developer to pick up the framework with any amount of ease. In other words, the learning curve on this one is a little steep.

Symfony is another robust php framework that you could not leave off of a good list of frameworks. Though not as well known as the Zend framework you could still rely on this one to guide you through your more rough coding times. Of course, with a learning curve almost as steep as Zend’s you may not be up and running in any short amount of time. However, once you get going, you’ll never look back.

Yii touts itself as one of the best performing component based PHP frameworks on the market. Although a properly built application can make use of several methods to make it feel and act less bulky, caching for instance, one that is built from the ground up for performance is a definite plus. However, Yii is not as well known as many of the other frameworks on this list and thus it does not yet have the established community/user base that the other frameworks have. This is all well and good with proper documentation, but there is no substitute for having avid fans of a framework come to your aid when there’s a problem that you just can’t get your head around.

CakePHP is an extremely popular framework currently in use by some big name players like Mozilla’s Firefox Add Ons and the Onion Store. Cake takes much of the difficulty out of the developers path and puts in under the hood of it’s powerful framework. Thereby leaving you, the developer, to tackle the more substantial tasks at hand. However, the inquiring mind may wonder, or even insist, on knowing just what is happening behind Cake’s closed doors and for some this in fact a deal breaker. If one was looking for a php framework that feels and acts like Rails for Ruby, then Cake may be a close cousin in the PHP world.

Codeigniter is the only PHP framework on the list to receive recognition from Rasmus Lerdorf, the man behind PHP, for being a light weight framework that feels the least like a framework. It loosely follows the MVC design pattern and leaves little to the imagination the way that CakePHP does. On the other hand, Codeigniter has been criticized for purposely making use of more bulky, and old school, coding methods to allow for support in the old PHP 4 development environment. This has been a mixed blessing for the folks at Ellis Labs, creators of the framework, who have gained praise for not forgetting about the developers who are running in hosting environments that are not yet running PHP 5, but also receiving a fair share of criticism as well. I believe the criticism began to outweigh the praise, because as of CI 2.0 they have decided to drop PHP 4 support altogether. Codeigniter comes with a great bit of documentation. Also worth mentioning is their vibrant user base and very active forum. I think it fair to say that Codeigniter could very well be one of the most popular frameworks on this list.

So which one did I ultimately decide on, well for me, the choice was easy. I chose Codeigniter for it’s ease of use, excellent forum and user base, and it’s incredibly small learning curve.

A Drobo is a robot-like hard drive enclosure made by Data Robotics. It’s robot-like because once it’s connected to your pc, you can add hard drives, of any size and make, and it will magically recognize the additional space almost on the fly.

Since reading up on the clever little device I have officially added it to my list of things to buy when I build out my dream MAC.

For a nice intro to drobo, check out Cali Lewis’ video on the drobo website.

Ok ok, I know it’s only two days into the week, but the news must go on.

Google Chrome
It’s been about a week since google unveiled it’s new browser geared towards web applications. Among other things, it promises to be faster, more crash resistant, and user friendly than the suite of browsers it will compete with. If you haven’t checked it out, get some chrome over here

For a few quick updates and browser tricks check out lifehacker

More updates to come…

After waiting for just over two weeks from the July 11 release date, I finally managed to get my mitts on the iPhone 3g. I must say, it was certainly worth the wait but of course there is no such thing as a path that is paved in gold and the iPhone 3g is by no means the end all to Mobile Phones/Smartphones. Follow me now for my first impressions and a few tips that may help out fellow iPhone/3g users.

The original iPhone was a device that was far ahead of it’s time. Apple set out to achieve the impossible with that device. They were in essence reinventing the wheel and the way that we looked at smartphones from here on it. Apple quickly snapped up market share in the crowded smart phone market, and in almost no time at all they were sitting pretty with the 2nd best smartphone on the market, next to RIM’s Blackberry. Since that initial release we have seen countless competitors step up in an attempt to dethrone the new heavyweight champion, not to mention the direct knock offs and clones of the iphone. Even still, none of this seems to waiver the champ. The iphone is still the hot device to have and hold. Now with the advent of the iPhone 3g, the world stood on it’s heels once again.

The Good

3g speed is everything that you may have heard about. It is fast, and cruising around on the internet is definitely fun when combined with both Safari, and the iphone’s accelerometer. The phone now sports a smooth, more rounded corner, look than the original iphone. The added GPS functionality is also a plus as I was moving from a blackberry 8800, which already had GPS functionality built in, and did not want to take steps back in this department. The App store provides many new downloadable applications that add even further to the iphone’s already full repertoire. Email has been stepped up in this model of the iphone adding the ability to sync with Microsoft Exchange servers and offering full push email support.

The Bad

Although the 3g speed is fun and blazingly fast, it is not found everywhere. Even though I live in the heart of San Francisco, I have found that I lose 3g and downgrade to Edge at almost regular intervals. Also, that 3g speed comes at the price of a severely depleted battery life. Speaking of battery life, the iphone 3g suffers all around from a less than adequate battery life. I say this as a former blackberry user who could go with out a phone charge for 2 – 3 days at a time. I now find that I must charge my iphone after an 8 hour long work day, and I haven’t even begun to make use of it’s ipod functionality yet!

The Ugly

The phone may only be synced with one exchange account. For some this may be a non – issue, for others it may be a deal breaker altogether, only you can judge. For me, it’s not so bad as I mainly make use of imap accounts. This brings me to another issue that some users have encountered, you can only sync your calendar and contacts with either Exchange or your personal accounts, not both. Again, for some this may be huge, for me, not so much. There is, of course, the lack of cut/paste support which many iphone users have been begging for since the first coming of the device. Apple has had leaks and rumors of this support coming in a firmware soon, but nothing solid. Lastly, there is still the lack of MMS support, so if you have to send pics taken with your camera via a text message, you might as well fugedaboutit.

Final Words

I must say that overall I am in love with this new device. Apple has seriously out done themselves with these smartphones, and although the naysayers may line up for years to come, I for one will be there to salute good craftmanship and the perfect blend of form and functionality. The UI is extremely user friendly and fun to use.

If you find that you are running into issues with the battery life then you can try a few different tips and tricks to increase your battery life. If that is not enough, then I highly reccommend picking up an external backup battery. They can be found both on ebay, or direct from a few promising manufacturers.

ebay: iphone backup batteries

Richard Solo Backup Battery

IphoneCK backup Battery

Kensington backup battery

or you can wait for the: Mophie backup battery for iphone 3g

If you’re looking for a good case to protect your new toy iphone, then I highly reccommend checking out casemate – They make quality cases that still have a clean look.

Codeigniter is great framework in and of itself, but it does not come with a built in auth library. Therefore there are many parties who have stepped in to fill this void. I won’t go into details about these libraries, but know that they are all a great choice when it comes time to secure your application. However, the authentication library that I have chosen to use is called CL Auth.

CL Auth is a great authentication library that comes with some pretty useful functions. It was written by Jason Ashdown (Flash UK over at the CI Forums) and inspired by the FreakAuth Light Authentication Library.

Here is a quick feature list:

* Remember Me (inspired by phpBB3)
* Forgotten Password
* DB Sessions
* Better Captcha
* URI Auth management (see below)
* Email Verification
* Login using Username OR Email address
* Password encryption with MD5 MCrypt
* Extendable user profile
* Optimised for performance

CL Auth does not come with an Admin Panel

CL Auth is compatible with CodeIgniter 1.6.3 (verified)

The system takes a new spin on authentication by using a uri management system for handling users and groups.

I decided to drum up an integration of this authentication library with the Vanilla Forum Engine. Vanilla is another, clean, modular, and state of the art forum engine that takes a different approach to managing a forum.

Check out the integration wiki here.

Now it’s back to coding.