scriptygoddess

1 | Jennifer

May 15th, 2002 at 1:31 pm

Coool… they have quizes too… just took the javascript quiz. Got an 85% DOH! Thought I'd do better than that! LOL! Guess I'll have to study more. 😉

2 | kristine

May 15th, 2002 at 1:37 pm

They have SUCH wonderful reference info over there – even on CSS!!

That's where I got my info for the base href post below. It seems that this site is always in the top of my search results when looking for HTML reference, and I KNOW its bookmarked, but I still use google and get to it that way. :giggle:

Maybe this would be a good addition to the resource page, now that its got its own page?

3 | Jennifer

May 15th, 2002 at 1:48 pm

Already done. (I just need to do a rebuild)

4 | Lynda

May 15th, 2002 at 4:06 pm

Awesome!! Thanks for posting this Jenn. Maybe now I can finally dig into XML, etc.

5 | Donna

May 16th, 2002 at 8:11 am

Okay, but the question still remains: What's the best online tutorial/intro to PHP? I've found descriptions, but other than stuff at Zend, which was over my head (I'm short, lots of things are over my head ), I'm coming up dry.

6 | Donna

May 16th, 2002 at 8:11 am

Okay, but the question still remains: What's the best online tutorial/intro to PHP? I've found descriptions, but other than stuff at Zend, which was over my head (I'm short, lots of things are over my head ), I'm coming up dry.

7 | Jennifer

May 16th, 2002 at 8:32 am

Donna – yeah, much of the stuff online is on the advanced side. When I started getting interested in PHP, I began with this book:

PHP for the world wide web: Visual QuickStart Guide. (by Larry Ullman)
(barnes and noble link – sorry, Amazon was down)

It's simple, starts you off with the basics… Personally, I think it's a great VERY Beginners book.

8 | Lynda

May 16th, 2002 at 8:38 am

LOL. I started with that book too and found it mostly useless. Actually, it's not a bad starter book at all to familiarize yourself with how the language works, etc, but it's not a keeper book that you'll go back to for reference.

If you can, perhaps see if a library or friend has that book to look through. Or just go to a Barnes and Noble for a few hours and sort through it.

For a good beginner book that also serves as a good reference book, I recommend Beginning PHP4. It's a bit thick, but it's easy-to-read and serves great JUST as a reference.

9 | Jennifer

May 16th, 2002 at 8:42 am

No. The Visual Quick Start guide is definitely NOT useful as a reference. (Just take one look at how thick it is and it'll be pretty obvious). (Hence my explanation of it being a good "VERY beginners book"

When I knew NOTHING about PHP and just wanted to get started, I couldn't find anything else that made it easier to understand. Yeah, if they actually have that in a library, that is the best place…

I haven't been to a library in ages!! Do they even stock things as recent as stuff like that?

10 | kristine

May 16th, 2002 at 8:49 am

It really seems like there should be some site out there that I'm not finding that has a beginner level language for those web designer/developers who are pretty comfortable with html, and want to add in a few php things. What I've found goes from hello world to crazy wacky manuals with TONS of stuff. Both are good, but not very great for introducing people to PHP.

I'm gonna be writing an article for graphicgoo.net, similiar in format to my css one from last month, and so any good links you guys can post that would be good for sharing with people who are using JavaScript to include files (really really a giant PITA, from the tutorial I saw) or people who have no idea what it even is.

11 | Lynda

May 16th, 2002 at 8:53 am

I'm not sure – I haven't been to a library in ages either. They have a catalogue online and don't seem to have any techie books listed though.

Since I have to buy all my techie books and have never been sucessful in selling them afterwards, I try not to buy books I will outgrow. I thought the visual quickstart book WAS great, but it wasn't the wisest investment as it serves absolutely no purpose to me now

And who knows, the Beginning PHP book will likely one day outgrow its usefulness, but the Visual Quickstart was poorly indexed and outgrew its usefulness too quickly for me.

Donna – if you want the Visual Quickstart book, let me know and I'll send it to you for the cost of shipping.

12 | Lynda

May 16th, 2002 at 8:56 am

Kristine – I found this site to be a pretty good beginning tutorial on PHP.

13 | Lynda

May 16th, 2002 at 8:58 am

Also, once you get a feel for the language, the manual is GREAT because you just think of what you want to do, type in a keyword and up pops a function explaining how to use it. I've learned the most from the manual.

14 | Amy

May 16th, 2002 at 11:01 am

My problem, initially, was that I knew what I wanted to do, but I didn't know enough about the language to come up with the commands to make it all work. The manual at php.net is great once you know what questions you need to ask, and what commands you need to look up.

Until that time, I took the more direct route and bugged my coder friends. That, or bribed them.

15 | kristine

May 16th, 2002 at 11:58 am

What Amy said is *exactly* what I was trying to say (headache, ouchie!). Even when I did figure out how to do my random background with php (the buffy skin with random div images), I didn't really know the syntax to write it up in after finding the command in the manual.

What I really want is something like the MaKo's CSS Guide that is for PHP. Something that explains the basics of how to put it all together, and gives a few good examples.

Lynda, thanks for the link

Jenn, yes, there are really libraries. But ya know what is more helpful? Spend an afternoon in Barnes and Nobles. Sit at one of their couches and pull like 15 books off the shelf and read the interesting parts. Not only are they the most recent books, they haven't been checked out and crinkled and mangled already. This is how I planned my wedding and got ideas, as well as learned Dreamweaver. I should do it again with PHP, but the books are a lot bigger in the languages section of the computer area.

16 | Jennifer

May 16th, 2002 at 12:02 pm

I'm adding those basic tutorials to the resouces page

17 | Lynda

May 16th, 2002 at 3:18 pm

I also found THIS SITE while searching for simple password encryption methods. Looks promising.

18 | Atul Mehta

February 7th, 2003 at 4:37 am

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