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…
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!)
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…
The end of last November saw a very successful first conference for PHPNW08 with a little bit of sponsorship and attendance from Plusnet. PHPNW (there’s a clue in the name) is a group for PHP professionals in the North-West, normally they have monthly meet-ups much like GeekUp but this was a bit more ambitious. So, given that PHP powers the majority of our platform it made sense to check it out, even though it meant getting up at 6:30 on a Saturday morning (which is practically a holy day for me).
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Hi, In the last week we have been trying a pair programming concept with our Polish Software Development Team. Let me present some feedback from this experiment. More…
Myself, Sam & Matt went out to Sheffield city centre yesterday afternoon for a spot of user testing. It’s the first user test I’ve run in the wild, previous times have been with friends & family or work colleagues. It was an interesting afternoon and we certainly learned a lot. More…
Much has been made lately of information security breaches… TJX, HMRC, HSBC to name a few have all come under the media spotlight – and they’re just the ones we get to hear about. Behind every high-profile data loss there are a hundred or more that slip by under the radar, and most of them are people at home, blissfully unaware that their computer has been compromised and their identity stolen. Blissful, that is, until their next credit card or bank statement comes through. By then, it’s too late.
So how do we protect ourselves in the Digital Age? Well, there are a few things we can all do – both to protect our identities on-line, and the more sensitive data we own. First, though, it’s worth a quick review of what your identity is. More…
As a techie, one of the things that is most important to me Getting Stuff Done is to manage my time properly. There’s always more work coming in than I’m able to do in a day, so it’s valuable to have a system that you can use to manage your workload.
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Here at Plusnet we're always trying to use clever open source things to make our lives easier. Sometimes we write our own and make other people's lives easier too!
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