I don't have to tell you what PHP is obviously, many of you could run circles around me. I don't have to tell you how widely used, versatile, or powerful it is either. All I need to tell you is that 5.2 is out. This release is mostly bug fixes, some new enhancements, just in case you were wondering or hadn't heard yet. PHP is my favorite web scripting language, and I jump all over it when new versions of my favorite software comes out. Via the PHP.net website, these are the new features of PHP 5.2.0:
New memory manager for the Zend Engine with improved performance and a more accurate memory usage tracking.
Input filtering extension was added and enabled by default.
JSON extension was added and enabled by default.
ZIP extension for creating and editing zip files was introduced.
Hooks for tracking file upload progress were introduced.
Introduced E_RECOVERABLE_ERROR error mode.
Introduced DateTime and DateTimeZone objects with methods to manipulate date/time information.
Upgraded bundled SQLite, PCRE libraries.
Upgraded OpenSSL, MySQL and PostgreSQL client libraries for Windows installations.
Many performance improvements.
Over 200 bug fixes.
And this is the list of security features:
Made PostgreSQL escaping functions in PostgreSQL and PDO extension keep track of character set encoding whenever possible.
Added allow_url_include, set to Off by default to disallow use of URLs for include and require.
Disable realpath cache when open_basedir and safe_mode are being used.
Improved safe_mode enforcement for error_log() function.
Fixed a possible buffer overflow in the underlying code responsible for htmlspecialchars() and htmlentities() functions.
Added missing safe_mode and open_basedir checks for the cURL extension.
Fixed overflow is str_repeat() & wordwrap() functions on 64bit machines.
Fixed handling of long paths inside the tempnam() function.
Fixed safe_mode/open_basedir checks for session.save_path, allowing them to account for extra parameters.
Fixed ini setting overload in the ini_restore() function.
So, apparently the PHP guys have been busy bees, and they are doing it all for the good of the common developer like you and me. It brings a tear to my eye...okay not really.
Most days I'm totally happy with my Windows PC, but some days I want a Mac.* I've got a thing for scripting of all kinds, and the days I most want a Mac, it seems, are when I see someone doing something really cool with AppleScript, like RubyOSA. To quote its web site, "RubyOSA is a bridge that connects Ruby to the Apple Event Manager infrastructure. In big words, it allows you to do in Ruby what you could do in AppleScript." It fetches information from OS X apps about their components and then maps them directly to Ruby classes and methods. While AppleScript isn't exactly fugly, I'm a big Ruby fan and seeing it do stuff like this really gets my vitals up. I would love to say "I wish someone would do this kind of thing for Windows apps," but the tragedy is that Windows has no standard scripting interface like AppleScript, and certainly none that is widely implemented.
*For the record, some days I want to ditch everything for Ubuntu instead. And now, back to your regularly scheduled not-quite-so-uber-geeky programming.
Anyone who has hand-coded HTML (I know, oldskool) has wished for a tool like this real-time HTML editor, though regrettably the days of hardcore hand-coding HTML are pretty much over. I still code HTML in my free time just for the tactile feel of simple code beneath my fingers and remembering the old day before things got easy. Real-time HTML Editor puts your code into practice as soon as (and somewhat before) you type it. Through the power of AJAX, HTML is now more fun. This tool is obviously not for serious coding, but it can help a noob learn the basics or help you text a small script, such as a MySpace layout or something nonsensical like that. I checked it out for the nostalgic value more than anything, so if that is your brand of suck tape, give it a whirl.
The latest version of the Python programming language, version 2.5 final, is ready for download. The Python website states that Python 2.5 is ready for production use and should work great. Python 2.5 has had many changes to make it better, faster, and make programming easier for you. Some of the new things in Python are: It now uses the Buildbot tool; conditional expressions have been updated; absolute and relative package imports are now possible; generators got push, throw, and close methods; min and max now have a keyword parameter; and new modules added to the standard library are ctypes, ElementTree, hashlib, sqlite3 and wsgiref. There are many more new things about Python 2.5, so if you use the language, or have wondered about it, it is all about you right now.
Remember Monad, the next-generation command shell that was supposed to be
part of Windows Vista? It's still not going to be part of Vista, but development continues and yesterday saw the
arrival of the first release candidate. Microsoft has given it a new name, Windows PowerShell (I gotta say I liked
Monad and MSH better), and given it its own web
site where you can learn how to use it and even its own team blog. You
can download
PowerShell RC1 from the Microsoft Download Center, but you'll need to get a Passport account if you don't already
have one.
Last week Microsoft released IronPython,
a version of of the Python open source scripting language designed to interoperate with its .NET libraries on Windows or
Mono, an open source .NET implementation for Linux. CNet News.com speculates that Microsoft will soon support IronPython
in its Visual Studio development environment. IronPython's source code is available from Microsoft's under their shared
source license.
It has been said that the "tag cloud is the mullet of the internet," and who doesn't want to be the height of current fashion? Dan Steingart has written a PHP script that will pull your tags from Flickr and arrange them in a tag cloud for inclusion on your site. There are a number of parameters you can tweak including min and max font sizes, sort order, color, and username by applying arguments to the URL. If you set this up, post up a link in the comments and, um, show us your mullet.
I don't have to tell you what PHP is obviously, many of you could run circles around me. I don't have to tell you how widely used, versatile, or powerful it is either. All I need to tell you is that 5.2 is out. This release is mostly bug fixes, some new enhancements, just in case you were wondering or hadn't heard yet. PHP is my favorite web scripting language, and I jump all over it when new versions of my favorite software comes out. Via the PHP.net website, these are the new features of PHP 5.2.0:
