Amazing 3D artwork

http://www.radoxist.com/artworks/56

The detail on these images is amazing, check it out

The best blog article I’ve read in a long time (and I found it totally accidentally)

http://retinart.net/graphic-design/secret-law-of-page-harmony

and following on from that:

http://51elliot.blogspot.com/2009/12/canons-of-layout.html

Well worth taking 30 minutes to properly read both of these.

p.s. I’m writing this on a monitor which is 1440 by 900, guess what 1440/900 is

Good resource for MySQL table types…

http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-mysql-storage-engines-1470.html

Pet Peeve…

It’s never, ever, ever “an HTML”. It’s always always always “a HTML”. Read it out loud. “a haych-tee-em-el document” or “a hyper-text markup language document”. The rule is simple. If it sounds like it starts with a vowel, use an, otherwise, it’s a.

If you can’t get your head around this, put an x infront of it “an xHTML document” or “an ex-haych-tee-em-el document”. I’ll stop yelling at you then.

Learn More

Easy Multi Page Forms (or Wizards) with CakePHP

There is a wizard component available for CakePHP that’s been around for a very long time, however it uses a lot of code to something that doesn’t really need it. Today I needed to spread a single form across multiple pages for an app I am writing.

Here is the very simple controller action I used to achieve it:

<?php
	function add($step = 'account') { // $step is your first page

		$order = array(
			'contact_name' => $this->Auth->user('contact_name'),
			'company_name' => $this->Auth->user('company_name'),
			'account_number' => $this->Auth->user('account_number'),
			'delivery_address' => $this->Auth->user('delivery_address'),
			'invoice_address' => $this->Auth->user('invoice_address'),
			'promotional_discount' => $this->Auth->user('promotional_discount'),
			'extra_ordinary_discount' => $this->Auth->user('extra_ordinary_discount')
		); // your defaults

		if($this->Session->check('order')) {
			$order = Set::merge($order, $this->Session->read('order'));
		}

		if(!empty($this->data)) {
			$this->data['Order'] = Set::merge($order, $this->data['Order']);

			if($step == 'thanks') { // $step is your last step
				if(!$this->Order->save($this->data)) {
					$this->Session->setFlash('There was an error trying to save your order,
						please make sure you completed all steps');
					$step = 'confirm'; // $step is your last-but-one step
				}
			}
		} else {
			$this->data['Order'] = $order;
		}

		$this->Session->write('order', $this->data['Order']);

		$this->render('add' . DS . $step); //put your files in a folder and name them after the matching step, no need for validation, cakephp will 404 on any missing steps

	}
?>

Then in your view, post your form to the next page, so the accounts page posts to /orders/add/range, the range form posts to /orders/add/items and so on. You can then provide user navigation between the steps just by linking to that page.

<div id="page" class="accountinfo">
	<?php
		echo $this->Form->create('Order', array('url' => '/orders/add/range'));
		echo $this->Form->input('contact_name');
		echo $this->Form->input('company_name');
		echo $this->Form->input('account_number');
		echo $this->Form->input('order_number');
		echo $this->Form->input('date_required');
	?>
	<div id="paging">
		<?php echo $this->Html->link('Previous', array('controller' => 'orders', 'action' => 'index')); // first step so previous takes you back to the index ?>
		<?php echo $this->Form->submit('Next'); ?>
	</div>
	<?php echo $this->Form->end(); ?>
</div> <!-- page -->

I don’t think I could make this any simpler!