Tag Archives: sanjay

Jun 26

Differences in joomla 1.5 and joomla 1.6

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Joomla 1.6 shows quite a lot of prominent changes as compared to its previous version 1.5. And even with the advance of the 1.6th version of joomla, the joomla developers are still continuously working quickly to release joomla version 1.7, probably on 19 July 2011. Joomla version 1.7 alpha release is available for download and meant for only testing purpose.

Personally I found a few of the changes quite interesting and good while few of them annoying and maybe even unnecessary. Below I have mentioned some of its changes according to my experience and perspective.

I would surely like your feedbacks and views. And please don’t forget to add something regarding any points I have mentioned here or if you would like your’s as well.joomla 1.6

 

1] In joomla 1.6 codes are nearly less than 35% from that in joomla 1.5. The codes written in joomla 1.6 are more efficient and handle more features also commented in better way.

2] The PHP version supported in joomla 1.6 is greater than PHP 5.2 which make it more reliable and faster.

3] In joomla 1.5 to show module position by adding ?tp=1 at the end of the URL is on by default but in joomla 1.6 this feature is off by default. You can enable it by going to template manager >> Options>>Templates.

4] Section manager has been removed from back-end. Now there is only Category Manager which has much better flexibility. Now you can manage category inside another category up to 10 levels deep.  Off course this ended the need of Section manager which is present in joomla 1.5.

5] Joomla 1.5 has a section which deals with front page in FrontPage manager. This option in joomla 1.6 has come with the name of Featured articles.

6] In joomla 1.6 we have plenty of options to set user access levels. We can set access levels for each individual user as well as whole group.

7] The template assignment can be done through menu items also.

8] In Joomla 1.5 there is no language file for the templates but in joomla 1.6 templates support language files.

9] Templates style and layout override is supported in joomla 1.6 while it is not possible in its previous version.

 

There are many others changes and difference in joomla 1.6. I would like to hear from you if you can suggest.Any comments or suggestions are most welcome.

 

May 10

Changes in HTML 5.0

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HTML is the most powerful content presenting language of the WWW, an old but crucial technology of the Internet. HTML 5 is the latest version of HTML standard and it added a lot of new features compared to the previous HTML 4 for better experience on web page layouts and designs. With new HTML 5 get ready to experience a new web browsing in multimedia and graphics related content. Almost all major browsers have already started supporting most of its elements and attributes.

I have mentioned below a few new changes and additions of elements and attributes in HTML 5.

 

Doctype and Charest

In new HTML 5 you can write <! doctype html> instead of long doctype declaration in HTML 4, it’s because HTML 5 is now separated from SGML.

HTML 5 uses UTF-8 as character set which again can be defined in meta tag as <meta charset=”UTF-8″>

 

New structure defining Tags

With HTML 5 web pages can now be easily structured.

<section> This new tag defines a section in web pages. this can be considered as the any chapter of the book. Section may be footer, header any part of the document.
<nav> Defines navigation from current pages, easy to handle other links on pages.
<header> Not same as <head>, It defines the heading of documents or sections.
<footer> You can easily guess as the name suggest, it defines the footer of the document or sections and generally contains the copyright or author name like information.
<article> The main text content of the page, also the external text content from blogs and forums can be linked.
<aside> To define some extra content apart from the main. It may represent content related to the main content in form of note, tip, pull quote, sidebar or remark.
<figure> It can represent a block of images or video. This related to the document or the section.


Inline elements

<mark> This is for highlighted text. Think of a highlighted text of a book. It is just like emphasized text but not exactly the same.
<time> To define the content of the HTML as time or date. It defines a specific moments.
<meter> Used to show a part of a numeric value, you can say a fraction of a value.
<progress> To define the state of any outgoing process. It defines the progress of work.

 

Media elements in HTML 5

<video> Allow adding video on your web page directly and in very simple way.
<audio> Simply add audio stream on your web page.
<embed> To embed plug-in like content.

 

The exciting new <canvas> element

Now on your web pages you can directly add images or graphs in <canvas> tag using JavaScript.
It basically provides drawing space on your web pages using JavaScript

 

The New form elements in HTML 5

<datalist> Provide a list of option for input values.
<output> This defines the output obtained from some different script.
<keygen> To authenticate users directly from HTML code.

 

Input type attribute’s values in HTML 5

<input type=”tel”> The ‘tel’ value of type attribute is for telephone number.
<input type=”search”> This value defines input field as search field.
<input type=”url”> This attribute value tells input value is an URL.
<input type=”email”> The input value is an email.
<input type=”datetime”> This attribute value defines input value is date or time.
<input type=”date”> This value defines input value is a date.
<input type=”month”> Input value is a month.
<input type=”week”> Input value is a week.
<input type=”time”> Input value is a time.
<input type=”number”> Input value is of type number.
<input type=”range”> Input value is a number in a defined range.
<input type=”color”> Input value is color in hexadecimal notation
<input type=”datetime-local”> Input value is local date or time.

 

Some other new elements in HTML 5

<command> Defines a button, radio button or checkbox,used with <menu> tag
<details> Defines the details of a document or a part of the document. We can use < legend> tag to summarize it further inside it if needed.
<wbr> Word break.

Note: [ There are many other new HTML5 elements which are introduced but not mentioned here. ]

 

Now I would like to tell about some HTML elements which have been removed in HTML 5 recently

<center>
<acronym>
<noframes>
<applet>
<big>
<dir>
<basefont>
<font>
<frame>
<frameset>
<s>
<strike>
<u>
<tt>
<xmp>


Get ready for new web experience

In near future all the major browser like Firefox, IE, Chrome, Safari, Opera will support these tags and we will get more interactive web pages over Internet which will change our web experience forever. Though some of the tags might be removed due to not being able to fulfill   the actual purpose they were meant for, but these changes will give a new turn to the era of web page development and design. I would request the readers to write any of their feedbacks or comments on this topic.

Apr 25

Expected changes in PHP version 6

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Right now the most stable version of PHP is v5.3.6 released on march 17, 2011. PHP is powerful web language which has a big community support. The most beautiful part of PHP is that it costs you nothing to download and you will get millions of tutorials and books to learn PHP. It first appeared in 1995 and since then it has gone through a long journey with many changes. Recently I found out that PHP is releasing its version 6 in the near future, as expected it will have many changes as compared to its previous version. The most expected changes are listed below.

Remember whatever you read here is only a prediction and not 100 % proven. We can only be sure when the actual end result , that is the final version 6 of PHP is released.

 

Register Globals most likely to be removed

This setting in file PHP.ini is a major security problem with PHP if turned on. This setting when turned ‘On’ tells to register the contents of the GET, POST, COOKIE, SERVER and Environment variables as global variables.

For example, http://www.xyz.com?name=joe will set $name as a global variable without any coding. That’s a really huge security risk and if removed in v6 will be highly praised.

 

Magic Quotes will also be removed

The three major function magic_quotes, magic_quotes_sybase and magic_quotes_gpc  are introduced for newbies to write SQL commands without the requirement of manual escaping. This was a mistake done by inexperienced developers  more frequently and caused a lot of security issues.

 

String Indexes  { } and [ ]

It is expected in version 6 the value of string’s character at a specified position cannot be referred by using { }. In PHP 5 it generated warning messages. The only usage will be the standard array position syntax,  [ ].

 

Unicode Support in PHP

Presently in PHP, Unicode is accessed on per request basis. It cannot be used globally  and hence it uses more resources.  It is expected that this issue would get fixed in the much awaited PHP version 6.

 

var same as public

In PHP v6 ‘var’ will be an alias of ‘public’ and will not show any warning.

 

Any return by reference will generate warning

For example function &xyz will generate warning.
Similarly $ab = & new Exclass() will generate a warning as well.

 

Other possible changes

- There will be no safe mode
- E_STRICT will be merged into E_ALL
- Ternary operator ‘?’ will work as below
$x = $_POST[‘name’] ?: ‘joe’ i.e if $x is true, $x will be equal to joe.

- Type hinted return value
- foreach multidimensional array

example-  foreach($a1 as $a2 => list($a3,$a4))

I hope PHP developing experience will certainly grow more interesting as soon as this version is out in the world.
Well I am one of those people who are eagerly waiting for the new release of PHP v6.