fplanque: glob

It's been 3 years since PHP 5 has been released. Yet PHP 4 still rules on the vast majority of web hosting platforms.

This is annoying for PHP open source developers who cannot leverage the potential of PHP 5 as long as they need to support PHP 4. This is also annoying for the PHP development group since they still need to support PHP 4 instead of focusing on PHP 6.

In a way it is also annoying for the web hosts themselves, since they too need to deal with clients who want PHP4 compatibility and others who want PHP5 features.

What strikes me is that the solution seems obvious, and yet the PHP team fails to recognize it.

The only reason webhosting providers haven't massively upgraded to PHP 5 yet is because it would break applications running on their current client's site. It may also prevent new clients from installing well known applications (phpBB...) which may fail on PHP5.

Of course, that would not have been such an issue if PHP5 was indeed upward compatible with PHP4. But it isn't! (object references, clone keyword, etc.) So what do we do now?

Web hosts install PHP5 next to PHP4, but you need to rename your scripts to script.php5 instead of script.php ... which breaks existing URLs... so no-one uses that either.

The real simple solution would be for the PHP team to release some PHP 5.x version which would actually behave like PHP 4 (completely!) with a simple config switch. It could then be installed in place of PHP 4 without breaking anything.

Once that is done, any PHP application that is PHP5 aware would just include something like this:

PHP

Maybe PHP5 should have 2 separate php.ini files. Maybe that ini_set() call should be required to come at the very top of the script. Maybe it should be a different function. But all in all, the solution seems so simple you have to wonder why anyone would want to support the older version for 3 years instead...

This video shows the power of subliminal advertising...

Nope, this is not the usual funny YouTube video stuff.

Here you see how advertising professionals are themselves subject to subliminal advertising.

I just bought this cool gadget app for $19.95: EarthDesk.

I may have bought it only because it looks cool, or only because it gives you a sense of global awareness. But the real reason is, I guess, because it's 100 times more effective than having a series of clocks on your wall or on your desktop! ;)

I'm in contact with quite a few development and business partners around the globe (+ special thought for the evoTeam members! ;) ) and I'm constantly looking at clocks to know what time of day it is in their region.

Now I'm just gonna look at my desktop and get a sense of global time much quicker! It really makes a difference!

Besides showing day & night (with city lights), EarthDesk also does "real time" updating of clouds as well as real moonlight rendering. And you can choose from a dozen different map projections, set your viewpoint where you want... The only thing missing is being able to drag your desktop earth around as if it was Google Earth ;)

Note: rectangular maps look best on widescreen monitors (Even with a multiscreen span, you won't match it). Also I very much prefer the "feel" of the Mac version... and it's really hard to tell why, since the look is pretty much the same. I bought a license for the Mac... I'm still unsure as to whether I should buy one for Windows or not...

Besides the basics, there's three simple things I'd expect from an FTP client:

1. Symetrically navigate in subfolders locally and remotely with single clicks;
2. Upload files and overwrite the server side only if the local file is newer;
3. Search the server for old files that no longer exist locally (with an option to ignore folders that contain user uploaded content).

I have never ever found a Windows tool doing all 3 ! :'(

• CuteFTP 8 Pro does #1 and that's about it (Its folder sync tools are basically a joke : it compares dates without comparing times!)
• FileZilla 2.32 does #2 but that's about it.
• My old DreamWeaver MX does #3 but is so painfully slow that it's barely bearable!

I'm so impatient to see FileZilla 3 as well as the new DreamWeaver CS3... but I fear I'm gonna be disappointed again... :-/

Maybe I should start to figure out how to run rsync on Windows right now... |-|

“People don’t recognize how important URIs are. The notion that you have a huge, world-scale, information space, and that everything in it has an name and they’re all just short strings that you can paint on the side of a bus; that’s a new thing and a good thing.”
– Tim Bray