Monday, 28th July 2003
Ludicrously simple templates with Python
A long, long time ago I wrote my first ever PHP templating system. It was pretty simple; it consisted of a function that took two arguments: the name of a template file, and an associative array of replacements to make on that file.
[... 251 words]Better web forms
Adam Kalsey has kicked off Simplified, a new series on web usability, with some thoughts on creating usable web forms. The conversation continues on Paul Scrivens’ blog, and covers a lot of interesting ground. D. Keith Robinson also has some tips on better form design in his latest Gorilla Web Tip.
Let’s go ::outside
Tom Gilder has started a series of posts looking ahead to CSS3. In his first installment, he describes the awesomely powerful ::outside pseudo-element. Using this, CSS3 authors can apply multiple backgrounds and borders to single elements (at the moment doing so requires fussing around with nested divs). If you don’t instantly see the importance of this, take a look at some of the attempts to render rounded box corners using CSS. All of them require the addition of extra presentational elements, none of which would be needed if we could use the ::outside selector instead.
PHP XPath Implementation
This looks like it could be really useful: an XPath implementation in pure PHP (no extra modules required), via More Like This.