murfitt.net my window on the web

I was recently sent a copy of a book from Packt Publishing to read and review called CodeIgniter 1.7 by Jose Argudo Blanco and David Upton. I'll be interested to see how the book compares to what I've learnt so far about CodeIgniter (>1 years experience CodeIgniter and >4 years php) and see what else it can offer, especially in terms of planning and managing application projects. The description on the Packt Publishing website says:

"This book explains how to work with CodeIgniter in a clear logical way. It is not a detailed guide to the syntax of CodeIgniter, but makes an ideal complement to the existing online CodeIgniter user guide, helping you grasp the bigger picture and bringing together many ideas to get your application development started as smoothly as possible.

This book will start you from the basics, installing CodeIgniter, understanding its structure and the MVC pattern. You will also learn how to use some of the most important CodeIgniter libraries and helpers, upload it to a shared server, and take care of the most common problems. If you are new to CodeIgniter, this book will guide you from bottom to top. If you are an experienced developer or already know about CodeIgniter, here you will find ideas and code examples to compare to your own."

I'll be posting a review of the book on my blog shortly. This review is now online.

Links

• Full table of contents
• Sample: Chapter 3 – "Navigating Your Site"
• CodeIgniter 1.7 on Packt Publishing website

Although the spam seems to be dying down a little on Twitter since they introduced their 'report as spam' option I'm still a little cautious about clicking some shortened URLs - SO many of the links seem to lead to spam (spam and more spam). The whole concept seems to have gone full circle as well with people using extensions like Long URL Please to make the short URL long again. Although I think this is a good a useful add-on, the whole process seems a little excessive. I can see benefit in using shortened URLs in printed media but, when it comes to the web, why are we making links short just to make them long again? I guess Twitter has a big part to play in this by restricting messages to only 140 characters, but surely there's got to be a better way?! With this in mind, I've been trying to get some perspective on the issues. Shortened URLs:

• You can't see where the link is going to take you (without a plugin)
• Because most are obscure, they are difficult to remember
• Multiple links may be created to the same resource
• Added overheads in the redirection process
• People can track who has visited the link
• Spam links look the same as legitimate links

With this in mind

Maybe Twitter could implement a better way for sharing links without using shortened URLs. If links could be 'attached' to tweets and replaced with a token in your message then it would be like wrapping an HTML 'a' tag around some text. You would be able to see where the link is taking you and the message is still short (or even shorter, as there is no more http://).

Firefox has a handy feature which can check your spelling as you type in forms. To enable this go to Tools > Options > Advanced > Browsing and check 'Check spelling as I type'. If this still isn't working you may need to install your dictionary (even if your dictionary is listed under Tools > Options > Content > Languages). To do this, go to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/browse/type:3 and download your language, install and restart Firefox. You should now have many squiggly red lines in your forms as you type (ok, maybe that's just me :o) ).