The second annual PHP TestFest is currently underway and this weekend the PHP NorthWest user group met to make their contribution with Ben, Rowan and myself representing Plusnet.  The aim is to improve the amount of PHP source code that is covered by tests thereby giving developers increased confidence that unintentional behavior changes are not made.  These tests are run frequency and the results are published on gcov.php.net.

Having used PHP for a number of years to build a career and pay the bills, it feels particularly satisfying to contribute something back to the project. Also, those people making significant contribution may apply for a $username@php.net email address which looks cool on a business card!

With the recent release of PHP5.3RC2, the main focus is on improving code coverage for the 5.3 branch.  PHP core developer Scott MacVicar started the day with an introduction on how-to compile from source as well as run the existing tests. After pizza, we got down to the business of writing tests, starting with a simple example which I’ll run through… More…

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I’ve never really been one for keeping a personal blog. I don’t like the thought that literally anyone could be reading what would essentially be a run down of how I’m feeling, what I’m thinking about and so on. If I wanted someone to know – I could just tell them.

Sure – I’ve made a few blog posts on this very website, about speeds on IPStream Max, the way our IVR works, and so on, but I’ve never really been inclined to keep my own one until now.
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We get quite a few comments on these blogs each week and I can’t actually remember a single comment that we haven’t approved for display. (with the exception of duplicates!)

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I’ve been using Google Chrome as my primary browser for several months now and the one feature that has really impressed me is the omnibox. It’s essentially the browser address bar and default search box combined but it’s more powerful than either on its own.
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Preface: This is a geeky post about web development markup languages. If you don’t understand HTML and CSS you can probably switch off now.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) have been with us for 12 years which, in internet time, makes the technology nearly as old as the Earth itself, and yet so many people still seem to struggle with the most basic concepts. In this post I will give several examples of bad CSS along with an explanation of what is wrong in each case. More…

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