Our time to review information is shrinking while the available information to review is growing, which leads us to the need for methods that help us understand information faster. Data visualization will play a key role in helping us convey and interact with information in more interesting ways. Adobe Flash Builder is a tool that will help.
Adobe has released a beta version of Adobe Flash Builder, the next generation of the popular Flex Builder tool. Zend Framework is now included within Flash Builder, allowing developers to introspect PHP classes and then to use a drag and drop approach to bind specific methods to UI components in applications, such as interactive charts, graphs, datagrids, and more. These new features provide a simplified development approach for adding rich UI to PHP applications using the Flex Framework and Zend Framework. Download Flash Builder 4 Beta 1 today from http://labs.adobe.com/?sdid=ERZSR.
I’m excited to see the Zend Framework is included in the new Adobe Flash Builder. I have been closely following this project. I believe the Zend Framework plays a key role in Enterprise Level application development. This framework is
Well Documented
Simple
Safe for the Enterprise
Supported by Industry
Supported by Development Community
Supports Rapid Development
Flexible Architecture
Extensible
Tested Code Base
Professional Training Available
Certification Possible
Some people may argue that PHP Zend Framework is just an abstraction layer of unwanted, bloated code. I disagree. I believe the Zend Framework, with it’s Object Oriented approach is the foundation of Enterprise 2.0 level code. I recommend at least taking a look http://framework.zend.com .
Adobe Dreamweaver makes coding easier with it’s color coding and auto-complete features. I use the Zend Framework on many of my projects and I wanted to take advantage of features in Dreamweaver for my template files that have an extension of .tpl that are basically PHP files. Here’s how I added the file type to Dreamweaver.
Open Dreamweaver
Open Edit>Preferences
Select “File Types / Editor”
Add .tpl to items in “Open in Code View”
Click “OK”
Updating your Dreamweaver Extension File
Open Extensions.txt in the Configuration directory where you installed Dreamweaver. Adobe Dreamweaver default install directory is “/Program Files/Adobe/Adobe Dreamweaver{version}/Configuration”.
Open Extensions.txt with your text editor (notepad). You should see a line towards the top of the files that ends in “:All Documents”. Update this to “,TPL:All Documents”. Note the extension is added in uppercase without a period. Now look for a line that ends with “:PHP Files”. Update this to “,TPL:PHP Files”. Save this file.
Updating your Dreamweaver Document Types
Open “Configuration\DocumentTypes\MMDocumentTypes.xml” in your text editor. Update the documenttype section with the id of “PHP_MySQL”. Add “tpl” to the winfileextension list. Add “tpl” to the macfileextension list. Save this file.
Zend Template files treated as PHP files in Dreamweaver
Open your template files (.tpl) in Adobe Dreamweaver. Now Dreamweaver will treat these files as PHP files and give you the proper color-coding & PHP auto-complete features.
Using this technique with Smarty, Drupal, Zend, & other file types
You can use these same steps to help Dreamweaver understand your other file types. I have other file type associated with PHP in Dreamweaver. I use .phtml files for a template engine and other special extensions for a wide variety of Content Management Systems.
Associating these file types with the right tools has improved my work flow and I hope it helps you. Please feel free to share your tips here.
Happy Friday! I have been helping people with web-based solutions for years. Some of my projects have included simple brochure type of web sites, others have been dynamic, database driven web sites with a huge number of people rapidly accessing components while expecting instant responses from the application. Most of this code has been written in PHP with tools like Adobe Dreamweaver. A while back I posted an article about installing the Zend Framework and a quick article about “New Zend Demo – Developing Rich Internet Applications (RIAs)“. Zend has an endless amount of tools, training, education, & resources to help you with your social media platform development, which should be part of your Enterprise 2.0 strategy.
Using Zend Studio to develop your Social Media Platform for your Enterprise 2.0 Solution
When developing PHP Solutions for Social Media Platforms, I prefer a robust toolset to help create exciting user interfaces, especially in the Enterprise.
I found these videos very helpful and I just wanted to share them with you to hopefully help you in your quest for developing rich internet applications for your social media platforms.
Extending the art & spirit of PHP, Zend Framework is based on simplicity, object-oriented best practices, corporate friendly licensing, and a rigorously tested agile codebase. Zend Framework is focused on building more secure, reliable, and modern Web 2.0 applications & web services, and consuming widely available APIs from leading vendors like Google, Amazon, Yahoo!, Flickr, as well as API providers and cataloguers like StrikeIron and ProgrammableWeb. http://framework.zend.com/about/overview
Installing Zend Framework from the command line
Connect to your server with a command line tool like PuTTY
PuTTY is a free implementation of Telnet and SSH for Win32 and Unix platforms, along with an xterm terminal emulator. It is written and maintained primarily by Simon Tatham.
Here are the command line steps
These steps are executed by super user (su) in your site’s root directory
Decompress the file. tar -xzvf ZendFramework-1.7.0.tar.gz
Delete the compressed file. rm ZendFramework-1.7.0.tar.gz
Move the library files to your standard location. Note: This is usually something like “/usr/local/lib/php”, but you may need to check your PHP Include Path to validate your standard location. mv ZendFramework-1.7.0/library/Zend /usr/local/lib/php
Delete the decompressed directory and all it’s contents. rm -rf ZendFramework-1.7.0
Setup Zend Framework Directories
Move just outside of site root directory to create your Applications directory.
mkdir applications
mkdir applications/data
mkdir applications/data/logs
mkdir applications/data/tmp
mkdir applications/data/tmp/templates_c
mkdir applications/controllers
mkdir applications/views
mkdir applications/templates
The Zend Framework site offers offers Zend Framework installation steps that are a little different than the steps explained here.
Adobe Dreamweaver makes coding easier with it’s color coding and auto-complete features. I use the Zend Framework on many of my projects and I wanted to take advantage of features in Dreamweaver for my template files that have an extension of .tpl that are basically PHP files. Here’s how I added the file type to Dreamweaver.