Programmers love its flexibility and speed; designers love its accessibility and convenience. When it comes to creating web sites, the PHP scripting language is truly a red-hot property. In fact, PHP is currently used on more than 19 million web sites, surpassing Microsoft's ASP .NET technology in popularity. Not surprisingly, this surge in usage has resulted in a number of PHP books hitting the market. Only one, though, takes the language beyond traditional Web programming and into mapping, graphing, multimedia, and beyond:
PHP Hacks.
In PHP Hacks, author Jack Herrington wrings out his 20 years of code generation experience to deliver hands-on tools ranging from basic PHP and PEAR installation and scripting to advanced multimedia and database optimizing tricks.
On the practical side of things, PHP Hacks helps you develop more robust PHP applications by explaining how to improve your database design, automate application testing, and employ design patterns in your PHP scripts and classes. In the category of "cool," Herrington explains how to upgrade your Web interface through the creation of tabs, stickies, popups, and calendars. He even examines how to leverage maps and graphics in PHP. There's also a bounty of image and application hacks, including those that show you how to:
- Integrate web sites with Google maps and satellite imaging
- Dynamically display iPhoto libraries online
- Add IRC, SMS, and Instant Messaging capabilities to your Web applications
- Drop the latest Wikipedia dictionary onto your Sony PSP
- Render graphics and user interfaces with SVG, DHTML, and Ajax
Whether you're a newcomer or an expert, you'll find great value in PHP Hacks, the only PHP guide that offers something useful and fun for everyone.
Jack Herrington is an engineer who writes in his little spare time. He's written a bunch of articles on a wide range of technical topics from XML to dynamic languages, digital photography to podcasting. He's also written three books: Code Generation in Action, Podcasting Hacks, and the forthcoming PHP Hacks. Why the diverse topics? Because he really doesn't stay on any particular topic for too long, though code generation does seem to be a theme and that's why he still runs the Code Generation Network. Jack currently works at a company called Leverage Software that does social networking software. Before that, he worked at Macromedia on Dreamweaver. And before that, at a startup named Certive and a biotech company called Axon Instruments. Jack never went to college, but he worked at the University of Miami for a while and is a diehard 'Canes football fan. Jack lives in the Bay Area in northern California with his wife Lori, his daughter Megan, and their two dogs, Sadie and Oso. He writes more personal stuff in his Driving Sideways blog. Jack warns that he's a hardcore liberal, so you may not like his views there; he's fairly active politically. You can also visit his family wiki. For fun, he bikes, hikes, bakes, makes origami, and now plays golf.
