Jaijaz: Blog

Hackathon Part 2 - Symfony2

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 21:40:00 +1300

Over the last month I have be scoping a large web app for a client that has had me looking into different PHP frameworks for the server side and Javascript frameworks for the front end. Following on from New Years Day Zend2 Hackathon I decided to try out Symfony2.

The try out project

I decided that the best way to weigh up between frameworks was to build the same thing I built last time, a basic album listing system that I built last time. It has a bit of everything, database interaction and objects, listing views, forms etc.

So did it go

First thing first, I love the Doctrine integration. The whole point of the last hackathon was to get ZF2 and Doctrine2 working together, something that isn't done be default. Symfony2 however is has Doctrine all but ready to go from first download. The documentation made the little that needed to be done a breeze.

The second thing that made the test project quicker to get running was that the command line and Netbeans integration meant that entity, model and controller creation was just a couple of commands. All I really had to do was code up the controller actions and layout the views. The whole project took a fraction of the time the ZF2 project took.

But then there is the extras

If you download the full version with all the vendor bundles that you get a lot of stuff. While I haven't gone through all of it, one inclusion that was a present surprise was Swiftmailer. This is a great emailing library that I already have plans to use in the near future in another project. It includes a plugin for mail throttling. It is really a great library that I hadn't used before.

So overall?

So the downsides first. It doesn't have a dedicated REST controller like ZF2 has. This potentially doesn't seem like a big thing after finding the FriendsOfSymfony github project. Among other quite useful looking bundles they have two REST API bundles to handle requests and routing.

The biggest thing for me is how quickly I had the app up and running. The fact that it isn't in beta helps. The documentation is awesome, the integration with libraries like Doctrine and Swiftmailer and over project setup makes it at the top of the list for me. I'm actually really looking forward to building this project now.

Source: Hackathon Part 2 - Symfony2

Is Google being hypocritical?

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 12:08:00 +1300

At the end of last week, Google announced that they had made a change to their algorithm that harmed sites that contained too much advertising above the fold (the content visible without scrolling when a webpage first loads) and not content. On the surface this is a great move. While they state it will only effect 1% of the search results, it is another clear move to reduce the efforts of content farms. But that wasn't my first reaction.

Beware of quick reactions

My first reaction to this over the weekend when I read it, was outrage and how hypocritical Google was. Doing a search for insurance here in NZ (a popular term) you can see from the screen capture below that only two organic results are showing while there is 7 paid advertising results showing.

In the US, I understand that this same search wouldn't show any organic results above the fold on my Macbook Air 11 inch. Clearly Google are guilty of the same crime there are now punishing site for, right?

Is it that simple?

As google puts it "... users want to see content right away." In the case of google the organic results have always been deemed the content while the paid search results the ads. Having ads that take up most of the space above the organic results is definitely wrong according to Google now. But getting those ads isn't just a case of paying the highest price for a click (though it helps a lot). Google does put some of the search ranking data into determining whether your ad and site deserve that placing. Could you consider these ads content when it comes to Google? I mean, people click on these ads as a way of finding what they are looking for and therefore have used Google for what it is meant for. So can you argue that Google's ads are content too?

Public opinion

Judging by the rash of initial comments on the blog, many people believe this is another example of "Google is evil". But on reflection, I'm not convinced. Yes Google are doing a lot of evil-ish things right now but in this case, I think that they're ads are content, as quite often they do a better job of giving you good information than the organic spam that seems to happen quite often. Don't get me wrong though, I'm not defending Google here. I firmly believe that the ads above the organic results is deceptive and misleading. Very keen to hear what others think on this one so please leave a comment below.

Source: Is Google being hypocritical?

Hackathon - Zend Framework 2 with Doctrine 2

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 21:12:00 +1300

It has been sometime since I got the chance to just get into some new code and try out some new tools. New year's day (and part of then next) was spent trying out Zend Framework 2 beta 2 and Doctrine 2 in a little play project.
The project was pretty simple, take a basic ZF2 application (based on Rob Allen's ZF2 tutorial) and use Doctrine2 for the database calls instead of Zend's native database tools. I've put the finished project up on Github here (my first gihub repo).

Thoughts on Zend Framework 2

For the last few months I have been doing a lot of reading and watching of Zend Casts tutorial videos in an effort to learn and research the ins and outs of the Zend Framework. So far I've focused on version 1.x of the framework but in my travels during the xmas holidays I was introduced to some of the new features version 2 will have while listening to a podcast. The differences seemed huge. In particular Version 2 introduces a whole new MVC layer that makes modules a lot more user friendly. In fact, now modules are easily copied between different applications in the same way plugins are in JojoCMS, while still keeping their own MVC structure.

And Doctrine 2

As part of research for a project starting soon, I spent quite of time researching database alternatives and found that using Doctrine on top of MySQL would give me the object orientated approach I was looking for while using a database technology I knew well. In ZF1 integrating Doctrine2 could be a little tricky but with the new module approach of ZF2 and the fact that some people had already built some great Doctrine modules it looked like a great option.

The results

The best part about this hackathon was the fact that when it came to using the doctrine modules, I decided on the using the SpiffyDoctrine and SpiffyDoctrineORM, there was next to no documentation so putting everything together really relied on applying information from related sources and applying it to this. As a result I learnt a heap about ZF2, a heap about Doctrine2 and a heap about PHP 5.3, in particular the new namespaces stuff. The added bonus is that I have another set of tools for the toolbox for building killer web apps.

Source: Hackathon - Zend Framework 2 with Doctrine 2

IE6 Countdown to 1% usage

Fri, 18 Mar 2011 20:51:00 +1300

A campaign has been recently launched by Microsoft to encourage the reduction in use of Internet Explorer 6. The objective is to the usage of IE6 to only 1% by the end of 2011.

To track the reduction in use the ie6countdown.com website has been launched.

In the year to February 2011 worldwide usage dropped 9% to just 12% . In New Zealand the current usage is just 3.1%.

Internet Explorer 6 was launched 10 years ago and at the time set the standard for browsing the internet. As you can imagine the capabilities of IE6 are considerably less than IE7 (launched October 2006 with Vista), IE8 (launched March 2009 with Vista) and IE9 which has launched this week.

To understand the differences between the versions think of PlayStation. The quality and types of games you could play 10 years a go on the PS1 is remarkably different to the graphics and capabilities of the PS2, which was again taken to another level with PS3. PS3 games are so much more of an experience! It is the same for the browser you use for viewing websites.

Because IE6 has been around so long this has impacted the way websites have been built. Although web developers have been able to design to the capabilities of the modern Internet Browsers such as IE8, Chrome, Safari and Firefox we still had to make sure the website worked in IE6. Can you imagine coming up with a really great design and having to scale it back because it just wouldn’t work in IE6 - very depressing! In most cases the designs can be adapted, but they just don’t look as good and the user experience is so much worse that what was designed. I can tell you from personal experience watching developers try to do this results in much stress and frustration! Because of this many websites with high level designs are not adapted for IE6 and the user is encouraged to upgrade to view the website.

In the past few years web developers have just had to accept this was the situation, but now with Microsoft leading the way, the countdown to reduce the worldwide usage to 1% has begun. New Zealand is well on the way at only 3.1%, considerably ahead of China with a whopping 34.5% in Chinese users, making up around half of the worldwide IE6 use. You can see how it is going and what the stats are for different countries at ie6countdown.com

So why don’t people upgrade? For many it’s just because they don’t know they can! There is no reason why people who are on XP can’t upgrade to IE8. If you are on Windows 7 you upgrade to IE9. There are many benefits of upgrading to a newer version of Internet Explorer – improved speed, tabbed browsing, and better privacy settings to name a few.

So here’s what you can do to help Microsoft reach their target:

Educate your friends, family and colleagues. If you come across anyone using IE6 help them download IE8 on their computer.

Decide that for your website you will only support IE7 and above. For people who try to view in IE6 we’ll create a banner directing them on how to upgrade.

Source: IE6 Countdown to 1% usage

Engage with your website

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 20:46:00 +1300

A website is an interactive online marketing tool that also has the major advantage in being dynamic and easy to update. It is living tool to market your business and engage with your audience.

This is the opposite of a print brochure which is a snap shot in time, that is signed off, printed and is a constant fixed resource which can easily become our of date.

The difference between a website and a print brochure reflects a modern businesses which is constantly evolving and adapting. There is always something new happening and new opportunities to promote and communicate. A website as part of your online marketing strategy helps you achieve this.

There is nothing worse than visiting a website which is out of date either with its content or its design. Modern websites allow you to update both of these so there is no reason for this to be the case.

One of the most powerful aspects of a website is its ability for you to engage with your clients and potential clients. There are numerous tools which you can incorporate into a website to help you with this engagement. The ‘Engaged Web in New Zealand Report’ released in March 2011 analysed 50 popular NZ websites to see how they took advantage of interactive tools such as blogs, social media and online communities. This is a great snapshot of what is best practice for New Zealand websites.

This is what these popular websites are doing...

73% had a Facebook or Twitter presence and 60% promoted their Facebook page on their Home page.
46% had a Blog, News or Articles section on their website which they updated regularly.

Interestingly only 27% did not feature any form of online community (no blog, social media, forum or chat room) on their website.

Of the websites that had an online community...

72% asked questions or ran surveys
80% participated in discussions by answering questions
83% regularly update information and news to share with the community

42% of websites allowed the visitors to share content either by emailing or posting on Social Media such as Facebook.

80% included some form of engaging Multimedia either through animated text, animated graphics or video.

The success of your marketing is dependent on your ability to engage with your audience. As outlined above there are a number of tools you can use to achieve this engagement. They can all be easily incorporated into your website.

Jaijaz can help you create a website that is effective at engaging your audience. Contact us today to make the most of your online marketing.

Source: Engage with your website