Posts Tagged ‘Fast 15’

Fast 15 Gone, Serves as an usher for a regular schedule.

January 16th, 2010

Well, it’s the seventh post in my fast 15 category… but during the day, I was thinking about something: Did the concept of the new “fast 15″ section only forced me to do what most bloggers actually do and make time to make a post regularly? I mean, it’s been fun so far – but really do we need this “fast 15″ category?

Maybe it’s just a routine. So from this point forward, I guess I’m going to retire the “fast 15″ concept and actually just post one post per day and try to fit it inside 15 minutes – I think this is makes sense. It makes the blog’s structure a little less complicated and less gimmicky.

» Read more: Fast 15 Gone, Serves as an usher for a regular schedule.

Zend_Navigation makes writing Navigation for ZF Sites Very Easy

January 15th, 2010

Today, has been a very productive day for me. Part of it was spent on picking up Zend_Navigation which, thanks to Jon Lebensold’s Zend Cast on the subject of using Zend_Navigation to create menus, sitemaps and breadcrumbs, was easier than I had expected.

Zend_Navigation makes the management of a web site’s navigation very easy as it allows you to programmatically create the navigation bar by specifying either the URI or Controller, Action and Module properties of a Zend Navigation Page.

To use Zend Navigation, all I had to do was the following:

  • Add configuration entries for navigation in the application.ini file.
  • Initialise and attach an instance of the Zend_Navigation container class to the navigation helper via the view in the bootstrap.
  • Display the navigation bar with Zend_View_Helper_Navigation::menu() or the BreadCrumbs with Zend_View_Helper_Navigation::breadcrumbs() in your layout.phtml file.

» Read more: Zend_Navigation makes writing Navigation for ZF Sites Very Easy

Started Draft Post on Zend Framework, Doctrine & PHPUnit Setup

January 13th, 2010

Today as I unit tested my view scripts using asertXpath() via Zend_Test, I was thinking how far along I’ve come from writing notes whilst reading books on what the difference between Aggregation and Composition is, then posting confused questions on the Advanced PHP forum at SitePoint. People are very generous with information and happily help out – they just give and give.

» Read more: Started Draft Post on Zend Framework, Doctrine & PHPUnit Setup

Find Skill or Potential, Attitude and Interest in Juniors

January 13th, 2010

An interesting highlight of my day today was that I was approached by one of the other directors at DevProducts and he reminded me that I have to meet with a Design Junior who is interested in showing me her design skills to see if we can make use of, or mould, her skillset so that she could be added to our team. I always love meeting new talent. I know what I’m looking for, but am realistic enough to know that a design junior is… well, a design junior. That pretty much says it all.

I’m ready to be pleasantly surprised, but not listening to the hype of the others who says she’s got some “mad dezign skillzzzzz”. If she has an iota of the design skills that I have been told, that’s part of the way there. » Read more: Find Skill or Potential, Attitude and Interest in Juniors

Unit Testing & TDD Keeps you focussed and gives you Peace of mind

January 12th, 2010

Most of my day was spent on developing the User Model Layer for an application that my team and I are currently developing at DevProducts HQ. I’d like to briefly talk about how we are using TDD and discuss one major benefit that this method of development provides for my team and I during development.

While TDD has many benefits, my favourite is that it helps to keep me and the other developers on my team focussed on the components we have chosen to work on. Not only that, but it helps us focus on the task at hand as it forces us to think about each unit of the component and write it so that it _can_ be tested – as much as I’d like to expand on TDD itself, for this post, I’m just going to explain how it could help you keep focussed.

How does it keep you focussed?

» Read more: Unit Testing & TDD Keeps you focussed and gives you Peace of mind