Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with web and programming

Learning Php in New York City

chirico — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 09:20:23 -0800

I would like to learn Php & Web Development programming by taking courses in NYC. Any advice, suggestions?

Which HTML/CSS/JS IDE do I want?

drjimmy11 — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:31:52 -0800

Which HTML/CSS/JS IDE do I want? So I've been doing AS3 development for the last few years, using Flex Builder, but am now moving back into HTML/CSS/JS. I've gotten used to having a fairly intelligent IDE and I'd like to not go back to the bad old days of having to type every single param and property from scratch every time. (I'm looking for code help, not just highlighting.)

I have tried a few but none seems to have everything I want:

1. Dreamweaver:
Pluses: When you link to a stylesheet, you can CTRL+space and get a list of styles to choose from.
Minuses: Weak support for JS. (no auto-complete at all)

2. Aptana:
Pluses: Seems to have excellent JS support, including major AJAX libraries.
Minuses: Unless I am missing something, I can't choose Css styles off a list, and that is a major major timesaver for the work I'll be doing.

3. HTMLPad 2010:
Plusses and minuses seem about the same as Aptana, plus it costs money. (DW CS3 is already installed on my work machine so no cost there.)

So, am i doing something wrong with Aptana? Is there another piece of software I'm not aware of? Or should I settle for DW for html/css and Aptana for JS? (The work will probably be 80% or more on the html/css side.)

thanks!

Any good books on web penetration testing?

jacobian — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 08:28:13 -0800

Any good books on web penetration testing? I'm a web developer and consultant, and I often deal with web application security. Everything I know about penetration testing I've learned in a pretty ad hoc manner, and I think it's time to give myself a bit of a more formal background.

I'm familier enough with the concepts (SQL injection, XSS, CSRF, etc.); I even teach classes on those subjects. I've got decent knowledge crypto and digital security in general. I also have a few tools I sorta know how to use (Burp Suite being the main one). But I don't really have any good grasp on the "right" way to actually conduct a formal web penetration test -- I usually just flail around for a while trying different things until I "feel" satisfied. Doesn't really make for a very scientific process, I know.

So: any suggestions for books (or any other sort of learning material) on web penetration testing? I'd prefer something more on the advanced side of the spectrum; I'd rather be overwhelmed than bored.

Where did my Little Java Link Go ?

duckus — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 08:36:21 -0800

I found a great Java programming site awhile back. I was given a programming task and could get immediate feedback on whether or not it was correct. Tasks were things like, test if two integers are equal and 'reverse a string'. It was targeted toward learning .. but I seem to recall the tasks had advancing levels of complexity. This is not Java BlackBelt. I can't believe I didn't bookmark it. Anyone know what I'm talking about?

Am I trying to take down a mammoth or a mouse?

Diablevert — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 15:32:38 -0800

I have an idea for a web project, but barely any knowledge of code. Can I teach myself enough to do this on my own over weeks or months, or is what I want to do so complicated it'd take years to learn everything I'd need to know? I have an idea for a web site/application. I think it's a good idea and I'd like to at least have a go at making it, but I certainly can't afford to hire a professional. I myself am pretty ignorant: I know some HMTL, I've fooled around with CSS but never built anything in it, and once, long ago, I had to work with an SQL database. That's about it, really.

The site/ap I want to build would work along these lines: John would be able to upload a file to the site. The file then goes into a pile with a bunch of others. When Paul comes along to the site, he will get a pop up with a partial excerpt of John's text. If he wants, he'll be able to click in and read the rest of John's file. If he doesn't, he clicks "next" and another excerpt from a different, random file from the database will appear in the window. Paul can just keep clicking through. I would like to be able to very preciely measure at what point in the page Paul decides to read further or not --- some kind of floating cursor arrangement, perhaps, with a button hovering at the end of each line as Paul scolls through the excerpt. Further, I would like to automatically compile a number of statistics related to the excerpts (how many times they've been served up, how many times people wanted to read further and at what point they came to that decision), and possibly to correlate them with other user info stored in some kind of profile. Like, George and Ringo both like Paul's stuff; maybe George would also like John, who Ringo likes.That type of thing. There's more to it than that, but that's kind of the core of it and any of the additional functions I had in mind I don't think would work substantially differently, from a programming perspective. Like, I don't want to add a flash intro or nothin'. Also, I would like to be able to display much of this information to the user, through a web interface.

So, what types of things would I need to know to make something like that? And would trying to teach myself starting from almost pure ignorance be like trying to build a table from scratch (which, with the help of God* and Black and Decker I think I could do) or more like that guy who's trying to build a toaster from scratch?

*Norm Abrahms.

Can you turn a website into a program?

Nonce — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 19:06:59 -0800

Is there a way to embed a rendering engine (like webkit), mysql, and php into a program that talks to itself, not the internet? I'm almost certainly using the wrong terms. But imagine a php script that reads the text "hello world" from a mysql database.

How do I turn that into an executable that launches an embedded rendering engine, runs the embedded php script, queries the embedded database, and opens a window to display it, all without ever trying to leave its sandbox/communicate with the OS via a port?

Is it possible? If so, is it possible with more complex pieces of work like a CMS or a gallery script (waving away any other dependencies) or an etc.?

Help in rendering Gmail 'Last Accounty Activity' useless.

passtehbrainz — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 21:19:08 -0800

Automatically login / logout of Gmail at a specified interval As you know, gmail lists the latest activity at the bottom of the page, and shows the last few ip's and the times they logged in by clicking details.

I need to 'fool' this log, by automating logging in, and logging out at a specified interval. Some ideas would be through a firefox extension, applescript, a mouse clicking recording program, etc, but I haven't found any such solution.

Without going into details, I need to render the gmail activity log useless.

Which forums do the best web programmers hang out at?

jackson5 — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 16:15:45 -0800

Which forums do the best web programmers hang out at? Long story short: I've got a web site that already does over 1 million pageviews per month. I've got a great idea to take it to the next level, but I'm looking for someone who can handle the coding and technical aspects in exchange for an equity stake.

I'm wanting to bring aboard a great programmer who doesn't necessarily need the work but will be motivated by the equity.

Which forums would you recommend I post on to find this person?

Also, if there's anyone interested here, let me know.

What programming language should I use for a Digg-like web site?

jackson5 — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 11:37:41 -0800

What programming language should I use for a Digg-like web site? I'm no web developer, but I already have a high traffic picture gallery which I want to turn into a digg-like picture voting site.

I'm going to hire a developer and would like your recommendations on which programming language I should target for the site?

My site currently does about 2 million pageviews per month already, so I expect the traffic to go up. The programming language should easily handle a lot of traffic on 1 dedicated server.

I keep hearing a lot about Ruby on Rails. I'm familiar with PHP/MySQL, but not sure if that is the best programming language for this project.

I also keep hearing a lot about cloud hosting. This sounds like a good option as well.

Basically, to sum up my question: I want to post a "programmer wanted" ad for this project. What should I be looking for from a developer?

Pimp my CSS please. Before I kill myself.

miss lynnster — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 11:34:41 -0800

I'm a designer and usually people do programming for me. I'm trying to teach myself how to customize Word Press themes all by myself though... and I thought I was doing pretty well. But then I had people look at it in other browsers. Yuck. Apparently it loads slowly for other people at times, the slideshow doesn't go all the way across, just all sorts of crap. I tried to do verification and there are a bunch of errors. I need to figure this out and move on!

I just really don't know how to fix any of these things. I was already proud of myself just for figuring out how to do the new stuff I've already done. My head hurts.

Can you help?

Oh, and the theme I customized for this was "Modularity" by Graph Paper Press.

Help me be awesome in PHP/MySQL and make some user groups

isnotchicago — Fri, 01 May 2009 14:17:42 -0800

Building a comment system, and looking for good introduction to managing groups and users with PHP/MySQL, or a prerolled "user management system". Ultimately, I need to setup a system for people to register as users, join (or be assigned to) groups, make comments (that are linked to their accounts), and filter comments by criteria (e.g., only show comments by other people in the same group). But, presumably, the "user" stuff would be separate from the "comment" stuff? So...broadly speaking, I need to create users and groups, and then track what every user does.

I found PHP User Class (http://phpuserclass.com/), PHP Users (http://www.majordojo.com/php-users/), and a short Sitepoint article (http://www.sitepoint.com/article/users-php-sessions-mysql/) after some quick Google searching. Anyone have any experience with either of those scripts, or know of any others? Or, know good resources to help me brew my own?

(As for why I am not just using Wordpress or Drupal or etc.,etc.etc.:)
I am working on a site involving a huge repository of text files and the ability to comment on those files. (1) the text files already exist as individual files (versus existing in a database somewhere), and (2) comments need to be on a per-line basis (versus the file as a whole, which is how CMS's usually work). Of course, if, with this vague description, you know of something that might be useful, let me know.

Mission: From pretty pictures to useful pictures

ttyn — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 08:58:23 -0800

What are the best resources for me to look into if I want to create websites that support user-created information? Here's what I want: users to be able to login, upload data, be able to see newly-updated data in a chart.

Here's what I know: I know xhtml and css. I know absolutely nothing about programming, have pretty minimal knowledge of APIs.

What programming languages will serve me best for web-specific development? Where should I start (books, websites, etc)?

Wikipedia Reliability Meter

mzurer — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 08:59:49 -0800

I'd like to put together a Wikipedia Accuracy Meter - Perhaps a browser plug-in or a web page that attempts to give an estimate of the reliability of any given article at any given moment. Please come in for discussion of algorithm and technical hoo-ha to help me assess if this is a weekend project or a master's thesis.... The kinds of things to be taken into account would be age of entry, number of changes, number of reversions, locked status. Most of these would have some sort of bell curve for influence on the rank. An article near the 0% reliability mark would be a new entry with few authors. A higher ranked article would be older with many revisions and a decreasing frequency of revision. I am not sure how to treat a locked entry - Same rank as before it was locked, minus something that takes into account the fact that someone out there strongly feel the existing status is incorrect? Contributions from "trusted authors" might help as well, though that could catapult this into a more substantial AI problem. I am kind of hoping to get a moderately useful number with little work by taking the Wikipedia methodology on its own terms, though I can see the possibility of using what I perceive as deeper weaknesses (and strengths) in the method to inform the algorithm.

Technically, I think the actual programming could be easy, though tuning should be pretty hard. I know I could stumble through a web page in php that takes a URL and figures out how to access the history of the page - Is there any back end API for that kind of stuff on the Wikipedia? My poking around made me think it's the kind of stuff they are happy to expose on the web page, though maybe not to developers.

Elsewhere on the net someone pointed me to the WikiTrust project but I am not sure if I can use that effectively without mirroring the entire Wikipedia. I do like the idea of being able to do contextual highlighting to note the more or less reliable parts of an article.

Thoughts, advice, recriminations encouraged!

Machine, point me to food

klangklangston — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 17:45:20 -0800

Where's my food? How to make a web ap that tells me how to find vegetarian food easily? Ok, so, first off—I'm not tremendously programming savvy, so don't be afraid to talk down to me in simple terms (seriously, don't assume I know anything).

Here is what I want: I want to be able to go to a page (either on a computer or a phone) and see where the nearest vegetarian food is (vegetarian restaurant or just a place that has veggie food). I would like to make this open, so that I don't have to find every vegetarian dish everywhere (crowdsource).

I assume that what I need will be some sort of database that accepts submissions easily, and that will work with google maps; and some server space to run it from.

Given that—if I want to build something that does this, what do I need and what do I need to know? Is this something that can be built by a programming novice (I haven't done any programming since high school and that was still mostly basic. I have a moderate grasp of HTML, but little CSS)? How hard will this be? What should I know when I start to build it?

The trailing slash

crapmatic — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 08:29:06 -0800

What is the significance of the trailing slash in <foo/> as used for minor web programming? I'm guessing it's some sort of escape sequence, but what confounds me is that in the code where I often see it, <foo> often seems to work equally well. So what's the point? I see this dilemma frequently all kinds of Web stuff: PHP, Wikipedia templates, embedded code in VBulletin, etc, etc.

Hiring a PHP programmer for a startup web design company, how much should I pay them?

dcams — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 16:30:42 -0800

Hiring a PHP programmer for a startup web design company, how much should I pay them? I'm looking to bring on one or more part-time PHP programmers who will also be doing some work with Flash and video encoding. My applicant pool is primarily college students with 2-4 years experience. As I budget for expenses and look to set prices, I have been unable to find solid numbers on the Internet for what type of wage this work merits.

Community Blogging Platforms: What can I use to build a community blogging site

MMALR — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 11:54:38 -0800

Community Blogging Platforms: What can I use to build a website allowing users to create content that can then be voted upon or pushed by the administrator to the main page? Any language... Right now, I run a sports blog that has about a fanbase of 200 users. Many maintain contact with the site through the RSS feed, emails, etc. but I'm looking for a community solution to bring everyone together.

In a nutshell, I want more than just myself blogging. My blog would be the main page, homepage, whatever you want to call it, but I want to enable users to register, create their own pieces of content if they so choose, and it would be listed on some type of feed on the sidebar or something to that extent as additional content.

If I want, I can add it to the main site's Blog feed on the main page. Basically, I want a community blogging software that will work in this manner.

I looked at Drupal, but I need someone's expert advice on if Drupal can do something like this as I'm an ASP.net Developer and haven't dabbled in PHP and Drupal in a long time. I'd need to integrate my CSS layouts to Drupal of my current site as well, which doesn't look enticing to me as I'm not a fan of PHP syntax.

Any suggestions on open source or any type of software that does this?

Live AIS data is a web browser

kaozity — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 10:55:58 -0800

Hi, Another oddball question... I have a live data stream of AIS data and I would like to take the data and ultimately display it on a world map through a web browser. The problem is that I have no clue as to how I would display live updated information on a map. I would like the map to update as the stream of data is coming in. This might be an ambitious project for someone who is weak on web programming, but i figured it would be worth looking into.

CodeFilter:

kjl291 — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 15:09:41 -0800

CodeFilter: I am looking for online classes mainly in the area of web programming (PHP, MySQL, AJAX, etc.). I need to brush up on my self taught skills. I am looking for something on the level of an actual coures, with assignments, deadlines, etc. (I don't necessarily like those things, but find I learn much better that way than self-paced from a book). Free or paid service is fine - I am mainly concerned with quality. I sort of like the courses and organization offered by eclasses.org, but I have no idea if they are good and credible? Any recommendations would be very much appreciated

What do I need to know to my high end retail sales site off the ground?

JJ Jenkins — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 12:46:32 -0800

What are the best books/sites for learning the necessary web design and dev tools for an e-commerce site? I have a decent graphic and web design background, but I haven't used it in nine years or so, which means I never quite grasped CSS.

What books/sites/languages can you recommend so that I can design and build a website for direct sales? I will be selling very few (3-5) products that come in several colors. I want to be able to add to them, but I will hire a firm once the number gets too high, so right now it doesn't need to have a complicated database to accommodate high volume of inventory. This is a fashion product so I want the design to be cute and stylish, but easy for customers to navigate and buy products.

My thoughts are to use something like Dreamweaver for design and then program in the e-commerce parts myself. (Do people still even use the term e-commerce?)

I basically need it to look very high end and have a shopping cart with multiple payment and shipping options. I'm confident I can do this myself and have been thoroughly unimpressed with the web pros I've tried to work with. I think I can figure it out on my own for less money and time. However, I don't want to pore through textbooks and do tutorials on things that are unnecessary to get this site off the ground.

Also, I'd like to design and program regular emailings to alert my customer base of new products and availability.

I hope this is specific enough to make sense. Thanks!

Where can I find a car database?

pb — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 11:15:40 -0800

Where can I find a database of American cars? I need a database of American cars that includes make, model, and year for a web application. I want to build drop down menus that let people choose their car like you see on Kelly Blue Book, Consumer Reports, and dozens of other sites. Is there a standard database that powers these menus?

Make Apache recognize Perl!

kaozity — Wed, 28 May 2008 05:49:15 -0800

How can I get my web server to interpret perl I am playing around with perl for the first time in my life. I am using a fedora core 8 machine. It seems to ave all the essentials installed already (apache, php, mySQL, and perl). However, I make a file called perl.pl and it does not seem to translate correctly. Here is what is in the file:

#!/usr/bin/perl

print "Content-type: text/html \n\n"; #HTTP HEADER

# DEFINE SOME SCALAR VARIABLES
$number = "5";
$exponent = "2 ** 8";
$string = "Hello, PERL!";
$stringpart_1 = "Hello, ";
$stringpart_2 = "PERL!";
$linebreak = "
"; #HTML LINEBREAK TAG

# PRINT THEM TO THE BROWSER
print $number;
print $linebreak;
print $exponent;
print $linebreak;
print $string.$linebreak;
print $stringpart_1.$stringpart_2;

When you go the the browser, you see the following
http://[ip address]/perl/perl.pl

As you can see, you prints out exactly what I type. Am I doing anything wrong? Am I suppose to enable a perl service or change a configuration file?

Inserting XML into an HTML document

five fresh fish — Thu, 15 May 2008 17:44:25 -0800

I wish to insert a namespaced XML document into an (X)HTML web page. The "XML Data Island" trick is verboten. There appears to be two ways of accomplishing this. Both continue to elude me. The first method is to use JS to fetch the XML document and then run a traversal on the document, re-creating its nodes as nodes appended to the insertion holder element. The second method is to use XSLT to not-transform it, but merely replicate it directly into the holder element.

The source XML document is Docbook with namespaces, so the TITLE element doesn't collide with XHTML's self-same element (otherwise I get a validation error). This XML will then be styled using CSS.

I've been exhaustively researching and toying with this for the past week. It seems to me to be a perfectly natural thing to want to do, yet for the life of me I have not found a pre-made solution.

I spent most of today working on the JS solution, and I think I've nearly grokked it, save a few stumbling details. But as I was driving home it struck me that (a) this is going to be unbearably slow for any large document; and (b) a simple not-really-transforming XSLT might do the trick.

Anyhoo, I'd like to hear some ideas for ways of solving all this. I'm a rank newbie at the whole JS/DOM thing, but familiar enough that I'm more or less successfully muddling through it through judicious use of the internets. Feel free to post code, etc; at this point any info I can get that'll help me struggle through this is welcome¹⁰⁰.

What's the hot Java web framework?

Plutor — Mon, 05 May 2008 05:18:46 -0800

I'm starting a new project at work rewriting a web application from scratch. We want to rewrite it in Java for a number of reasons that aren't really important. I've spent the last few months off and on researching web frameworks, but I haven't got a really good handle on how the web-development community feels about them. Help me choose! Some of our priorities, more or less in order:

1) Something that's relatively mature, and also will likely be around for a while.
2) Web 2.0y. I don't mean glossy and missing e's, but easy integration with JavaScript (especially jQuery). It'd be nice if it understood AJAX-type interactions out of the box.
3) Something that'll look good on a job description, to help attract creative applicants with interesting experience.
4) Overall ease of development.

I've looked at Tapestry, JSF, Struts, and glanced at things like Trails and Sails and RIFE. Am I missing any? Any opinions on the frameworks I've mentioned?

How to render image like in google picasaweb?

tvjoshi — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 14:08:03 -0800

How to render image like in google picasaweb?: I'm developing a web page. If I use img tag to put image in the web page, while loading the page, image loads very slowly (especially large images). Also the upper part of image is loaded first and then the lower part, as page is downloaded from server. But in applications like google picasa, a very low quality version is rendered first, so that you see the whole image at once (even though its blurred), slowly as the page is downloaded, image becomes sharper. How can I implement this functionality in my web page? Can someone please point me to helpful resources regarding this?