IBM developerWorks: Discover PHP's new features and syntax improvements and see how they will take this already-popular scripting language to the next level. Learn how Unicode support, Web 2.0 features, and other changes make PHP V6 more robust, as well as more international.

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The PHP development team started the month of May with the release of PHP 5.2.6. With over 120 bug fixes, this release is mainly focused on stability. There are however several security enhancements in PHP 5.2.6:

• Fixed possible stack buffer overflow in the FastCGI SAPI identified by Andrei Nigmatulin.
• Fixed integer overflow in printf() identified by Maksymilian Aciemowicz.
• Fixed security issue detailed in CVE-2008-0599 identified by Ryan Permeh.
• Fixed a safe_mode bypass in cURL identified by Maksymilian Arciemowicz.
• Properly address incomplete multibyte chars inside escapeshellcmd() identified by Stefan Esser.
• Upgraded bundled PCRE to version 7.6

References: Release Announcement, PHP 5.2.6 ChangeLog, PHP.net Download page

ComputerWorld: Industry analysts and a professional developer examine the state of Microsoft's 'Flash killer' multimedia development technology as it enters its second year and discuss what it will take for it to succeed.

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Telerik, a leading vendor of developer tools and components for .NET, is happy to present Sitefinity CMS v3.2 – a flexible, hassle-free development platform for the construction and management of websites, intranets, and community portals. Sitefinity v3.2 is the succeeding milestone in Telerik’s quest for a feature-rich web development tool with unrivaled usability and compatibility.

“There are many CMS platforms on the market that offer rich functionality for both end user and developers. The comprehensive web development tools, however, always come at the expense of usability. When selecting a CMS, customers usually are up against the trade off “complete vs. user-friendly” platform. We spotted that business opportunity and have been continuously working on providing a comprehensive development platform that does not sacrifice the freedom of both web developers and end-users, yet offers simplicity and ease-of-use” says Vassil Terziev, Telerik CEO. “Sitefinity v3.2 represents a final touch to offering complete content publishing functionality that comes with intuitive user experience”.

"I was looking at some library Web sites recently when I spied one with a badge stating that the page was created for viewing in Netscape. Once a geeky emblem of honor, the badge today is simply a relic of days gone by."

Complete Story at School Library Journal

"Most of the engineers and developers I know are fond of using web frameworks and would switch to using one when they have the option. But, for many developers it's not as simple as just choosing one and developing with it. They have to get leadership to buy into a different system from the one they are already using. So, let's look at web frameworks from 4 of the big decision points for managers. "

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Last October, Packt Publishing sent me one of their latest books on the Plone CMS, Professional Plone Development. This is a book I had been saving for review until I had a chance to install and use Plone myself. Plone is one of those CMS that I've really wanted to learn more about by installing it on the server myself. Unfortunately, too many things on my "I want" list have had to compete with my "I need" list and I never got around to installing Plone. With no Plone on the server, I unfortunately never got around to reviewing the Plone book written by Martin Aspeli either.

This book is aimed at "developers who want to build content-centric web applications leveraging Plone’s proven user interface and flexible infrastructure". Given the fact that I haven't installed Plone myself, I can't honestly give a thumbs-up or thumbs-down on the book. However, what I can do is talk a little about the book and let you decide for yourself if this book is worthy of your hard earned money.

"Frameworks are all the rage these days. If someone says lets build a web application there is usually a developer nearby saying let's use a framework to build that. Sure, there are times when using a framework isn't the way to go. But, for 99% of the new web applications that need to be built there are great benefits from using a framework. Let's take a look at 7 of them."

Complete Story (Corrected the bad link...sorry about that!)

Gadgetopia pointed their readers to a site with a number of screen captures for how the Internet looked like in 1996. Almost a year ago, I posted a screen capture of the first site I did in that era. I'm somewhat pleased that the appearance of my site was no worse than the sites of well known companies. The author brings up the point that you have to consider the technology back then to why sites looked the way they did.

In their defense, the technology was different in 1996. Although Internet Explorer 3.0 could run Java applets and inline media, Netscape Navigator could not, and in any case nobody felt comfortable doing anything more complicated than making a few animated GIFs.

Most people who were quite active on the Internet in the 1990's shouldn't be surprised with the way the Internet looked back then. I can easily recall the controversy of whether to design sites for 640x480 or 800x600 screens. We were simply limited in how we designed our sites by the technology we were using. However, what was our excuse for not providing better content than what we did?

This is so cool. I'm not talking about using Drupal to build a podcast site (though that is cool too). I think what is even more cool is cool whenever someone gives you a nice what-to-use list if you would like to build something similar to what they have already built. Given the numerous contributed modules that you can select for Drupal, tips such as these are very helpful. Thanks Matt.

Innovating Tomorrow: Building a Podcast Site in 20 Hours -

Drupal makes building websites easy. I was reminded just how much this is true when Bob and I recently built the website for the Super Average Podcast. From the start of the design to the finished product being ready to launch we spent about a total of 20 man hours. And, while we sometimes complain about some of the ways we have to bend over backwards when theming a drupal site (this is greatly improved in the next drupal release), spending only 20 hours to create this site definitely says something. Let's take a look at some of the modules we used that made this so easy.

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