PHPterm

"Mac OS X users should have "Terminal" available for launching".
Does anybody known what is the "Terminal" for???

PHP

"…Think of using HTML like owning a car with no engine – the car might look great, but it will never actually do very much. If you will excuse the extension to the metaphor, PHP can take your sites into the fast lane, by allowing you to turn your static pages into exciting, ever-changing pages with only a little thinking. In essence, it is like putting a V6 engine into your car shell.." (Paul Hudson).

PHP 3 and before used an "execute while interpreting" paradigm which meant that PHP read a line of source code, interpreted it, executed it, read another, interpreted it, executed it, read another, etc. This meant that code was often re-read and re-interpreted twice or more, entirely unnecessarily (Paul Hudson).

PHP 4, with its new "compile first, execute later" paradigm read your entire script in and compiled it to byte code before execution, which produced a large speed increase – the average speed increase was about 100%, with some benchmarks showing up to a fifty-fold increase in speed when PHP 4 was pushed to its limits (Paul Hudson).

**"Byte code" is the name for the internal representation of your script that PHP can understand easily – it is usually a lot longer than your script as a result of each PHP statement being broken down into many simple byte code statements (Paul Hudson).

(source: PHP in a Nutshell (In a Nutshell) by Paul Hudson)

Some tips from programmers

"…the verb to debug is to remove errors, but the meaning that really matters is to see into the execution of a program by examining it. A programmer that cannot debug effectively is blind". (Robert L Read 2003).

Debugging is about the running of programs, not programs themselves (Robert L Read 2003).

Debugging requires creativity and ingenuity. If there is a single key to debugging is to use the divide and conquer technique on the mystery (Robert L Read 2003).

The key to divide and conquer as a debugging technique is the same as it is for algorithm design: as long as you do a good job splitting the mystery in the middle, you won't have to split it too many times, and you will be debugging quickly (Robert L Read 2003).

Some beginners fear debugging when it requires modifying code. This is understandable—it is a little like exploratory surgery. But you have to learn to poke at the code and make it jump; you have to learn to experiment on it, and understand that nothing that you temporarily do to it will make it worse. If you feel this fear, seek out a mentor—we lose a lot of good programmers at the delicate onset of their learning to this fear (Robert L Read 2003).

In fixing a bug, you want to make the smallest change that fixes the bug. You may see other things that need improvement; but don't fix those at the same time……..Of course, sometimes more than one line must be changed, but you should still conceptually apply a single atomic change to fix the bug. (Robert L Read 2003).

Learning to understand the performance of a running system is unavoidable for the same reason that learning debugging is. Even if the code you understand perfectly precisely the cost of the code you write, your code will make calls into other software systems that you have little control over or visibility into. However, in practice performance problems are a little different and a little easier than debugging in general (Robert L Read 2003).

Good estimation provides predictability. Managers love it, as well they should. The fact that it is impossible, both theoretically and practically, to predict accurately how long it will take to develop software is often lost on manager (Robert L Read 2003).

Estimation takes practice. It also takes labor. It takes so much labor it may be a good idea to estimate the time it will take to make the estimate, especially if you are asked to estimate something big (Robert L Read 2003).

PHP

I start to learn PHP. I need more good open source php websites…
any ideas??

Citro’s Launching Day – 19 April 2006.

Woooow…yes…yipes…

Click here to celebrate…. http://www.citroadvertising.com/

User Testing Questionnaire

Here is the user testing questionnaire of Citro Advertising company. Each question requires a simple answer only. I have sent to few people for testing through email and blog. So far, I got one feedback from my client. He is very happy with the web site and he wanted me to launch it tomorrow. However, I will do another few user testing through email and face to face to make sure all are fine before I upload it.

If you have time, you are welcome to test on this website. It only takes you few minutes to answer the questions after browsing the web site. I would appreciate a lot for your help.

Please, go to http://www.citroadvertising.com/mockup2/ and browse the web site before starting to answer the simple questions. Thank you very much.

1. Are you a PC or MAC user?
2. Which browser are you using:  Safari, Internet Explorer (IE), Camino, Netscape, Flock, FireFox, etc?

Please rate each of the following on a scale of 1-4:
    [1: not at all 2: some but insufficient 3: satisfactory 4: excellent]

3.Overall feel and look (design) of Citro Advertising company?
4.Screen layouts design were helpful?
5.The organization of results on the screen is…?
6.Overall navigation design of Citro Advertising company?
7.The number of steps to get to the information you need is just right?
8.Identifying your current location in the information structure is easy?
9.The loading speed of the web site is fast and quick?
10. If you want to say anything else about the web site, please add below. 

Enquiry Form

Just would like to remind you about Citro's enquiry form. In order to validate with your enquiry, you need to fill in all the details. Once you have done that, the SEND button will activate and able to send to the Citro account.

I appreciate your help.

Thank you very much to Eason (My client) and Hon Tat (My media specialist). I am so happy to inform you that the web site is done. You guys have been great in contribution to my IMP project. Thank you once again for your role in our success! You guys are brilliant!!

The next step is to upload the web site and then do my "user testing" among different group of people.

Letter from my media specialist – Hon Tat

Citro’s Enquiry Form

CITRO's enquiry form only deal with legitimate services and businesses. You can use CITRO's enquiry form to send your enquiry. In order to validate with your enquiry we request full information such as name, email addresses, contact phone and enquiry.