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Oh yea, how would guys say the over traffic on the forums has been? Is it less or more or less the same?
Stefan
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Interesting ...
I wonder if it just has to do with the forum itself?
:/
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I hear story after story about how you Canadians are crossing over to America for by-pass surgery, etc..
That frankly sounds like total BS .. it's too expensive in the US!!
For things like by-pass, you get good care. It's when you get to not so life threatening things, that is where you can deal with the problems of the system. Again, no one goes broke because of health care. Canadians decided long before I was born that health care was a right. Certain things in life should not be commercially driven:
- police
- fire prevention
- health care
Doctors make about $150k a year in Quebec .. with experience AFAIK. It may not seem like much, but the cost of living up here overall is far less.
As far as taxes go, I couldn't say what percentage goes to health care. But I do know that individuals pay more taxes in Canada. For example, if you make over 60K you loose 1/2. But, you don't pay health care and you don't have high crime in most of our cities. In Montreal, a city of 3.5 million, I can walk around in the 'dangerous' parts of town at 2 am with new worries.
On the other hand, our corporate tax rate is far lower: 22%. Funny, we are far more left than the US, but we have the healthiest banks in the world (they weren't so greedy) and we have far less debt. Up until just this year in fact, we had surpluses for about 15-20 years.
Stefan
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Hi,
I'm at it again - I released a new video discussing some of the options you have when it comes to embedding video into web pages.
I am looking for feedback on the following:
1. Speed that the video comes down to you.
2. Clarity of the sounds and video.
3. The quality of the presentation? Did I bore you to tears? Was it useful at all to you - did you learn anything?
As some of you know, I am now experimenting with this new video format and style and so all your feedback is appreciated.
Thanks,
Stefan
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That's it!
Remember this: at the end of the day, all this Web programming stuff is just pushing text around - 98% of the time. Yes, plain old text.
Hope that helps,
Stefan
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Welcome to the forum.
Stefan
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However, from what I hear in the Canadian health care system, one encounters ridiculously long waiting times to just get in and see a doctor or have a procedure done.
The Canadian system is far from perfect, but the US media throws out a bunch of BS regarding it so as to dumb down people. They don't want Americans to realize how much they are being shafted.
For some non-critical procedures, you can wait. But for anything painful, serious etc ... you get in right away. One thing that should be noted is that in Canada, everyone goes to the hospital putting more pressure on the system. Whereas in the US, 45 milion don't go at all - less pressure.
If any politician tried to move Canada to a US type system; they would be strung up and there would be riots in the streets. That should tell you about how Canadians feel about our 'terrible' health care system.
PS: no one ever went BK because of medical bills in Canada.
Stefan
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I don't typically go off web design and programming, but this is simply criminal:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Medical bills are involved in more than 60 percent of U.S. personal bankruptcies, an increase of 50 percent in just six years, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday.More than 75 percent of these bankrupt families had health insurance but still were overwhelmed by their medical debts, the team at Harvard Law School, Harvard Medical School and Ohio University reported in the American Journal of Medicine.
As a Canadian, I have to say that I don't understand why Americans put up with this? Amazing.
:|
Stefan
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Here is my favourite IE-only CSS file:
body { display:none; }
Funny stuff.
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I think the best solution for now is to use the meta tag you suggest.
... Frankly, I am getting tired of continually having to create new style sheets for IE.
Stef
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Hi,
I finally decided to take a look at my web pages in IE8 since it was out of beta. Overall it seems to be OK ... but, I did find some elements in my pages that were not rendering well.
So what to take away from this, is that Microsoft hasn't been able to keep the browser experience consistent between versions of their own browsers.
PS: the part of my page that does not work in IE8, works fine in:
- IE6
- IE7
- Firefox
- Safari.
... Man!
Stefan
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Hi,
I appreciate the kind words.
With regards to learning PHP, they key is to write code .. don't try to memorize things. Trust me, after a few real-life cracks at writing even simple PHP scripts, this stuff will begin to commit to memory on its own!
Final point, with the power of Google behind us, we don't have to worry about forgetting things ... just Google it when something slips your mind. At this point in my career, I've certainly forgotten more than I currently know!
... No matter, as long as the basic concepts are firmly understood, all that you've forgotten can be relearned in a heartbeat.
I hope that helps,
Stefan
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Hi,
Interfaces will not help you with code repetition, they are there to create a consistent structure in your classes. So for example, in your project you can say that all data access classes have to implement the 'data access interface' where in that interface, you create the shells for the various methods you want in every data access class.
This way, anyone using you classes will know that they can always expect certain methods. For example, you might define a method called: connect_to_database() in your interface. And any classes that use that interface will have to create/define (fill in the guts) of the method.
Interfaces become more important for larger projects, where you have multiple programmers working. Interfaces are a tool to keep the code structure consistent.
Bottom line: Base classes and inheritance are more or less useful for infrastructure code only - think frameworks. If you are creating business logic, I would not be looking to create a deep class hierarchy - that is to say, use inheritance.
Stefan
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Yes, the HD will cause problems for people who don't have a fast connection. One option is to just let it download for a while and come back to it in a few minutes.
Thanks for the feedback.
Stefan
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Glad you liked it.
Stefan
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Code snippets are usually helpful.
That said, I would be comparing my code with the sample code provided in the shopping cart tutorial.
Hope that helps,
Stefan
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Hi,
I just released a new video podcast where I answer a few questions put to me about php. In this php video I answer these questions:
1. Do you need to learn the Zend Framework?
2. Do you need a PHP certificate?
3. How does PHP fit into Web 2.0.
I am using a totally new video format for this video and would appreciate your comments, good and bad about it.
Thanks,
Stefan
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Hi Sib,
It is usually a good idea to keep the code segmented by their function and what you suggest does that. How refined you make this depends on how big the project is and the relative skills of the programmers.
So, could there be a better way of handling your project? Possibly. But it is really hard to tell without getting into at least a basic analysis.
I like the idea of using a wrapper around your DB classes, that way you can swap in another database if need be.
... Not that I've ever seen this done in real life!
That said, I would suggest leaning much more toward encapsulation rather than inheritance. When extending classes, you run the risk of creating dependencies down the road that could lead to major headaches. So to sum it up:
Use encapsulation and php interfaces rather than inheritance.
Stefan
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I do indeed plan on continuing the series, in fact, I already have a couple more ready to put out.
Happy to hear the videos were useful.
In terms of users having Javascript turned on, these days most do. All the Ajax that you see and a whole slew of other functionality, depends on Javascript .. so you should be OK.
Stefan
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The Thai people are great, super friendly with a generally easy going demeanor.
... Besides that, the food is great and cheap too!
Stef
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Hi,
I was in Phuket last year and there are Internet cafee's everywhere.
Have a good trip.
Stefan
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Hi,
I was just wondering if any of you have had a chance (and the interest) to check out my new beginners videos on Javascript? I have about 10 up there now, with more to come.
Also, any comments both positive and negative are welcome:
- are they too slow in terms of the material?
- how is the sound, loud enough?
Anything else?
Thanks,
Stefan
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Hi,
This is a new feature in the latest release of Expression. I have not used it yet so I cannot comment. That said, it might prove to be a very valuable tool for web designers.
... Not everyone uses virtual machines like I do.
Stefan
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Apparently Web Expression now has an ability to view your pages in multiple versions of IE. They call it 'Expression Web SuperPreview'. This is from an email I got from a Microsoft Expression Web team member:
Our application is called Expression Web SuperPreview. It shows you how a web page looks in Firefox 3.5, Safari 3, Safari 4 (Windows and Mac) Internet Explorer 6, and whatever version of Internet Explorer is installed on your system. It actually does all of the rendering locally (except for Mac platform, which is handled by a remote service) for these browsers using the browser engine directly. We took on some big engineering challenges to make this happen - including getting the rendering engine for IE6 run side by side with the Internet Explorer on your system. Right now, Internet Explorer does not run side by side with older versions, and this is a big pain because you must use a virtual machine or another computer to test pages for IE6 compatibility.I plan on testing this sometime in the near future. But to be honest, since I use wmware virtual machines, I haven't been too motivated to try this since my virtual machines handle this for me.
Stefan
Safari 4 gets 11 million downloads in a few days.
in Web Design News
Posted
Hi,
I thought it might be interesting to learn that Safari seems to be making inroads with regards to the browser wars - 11 million downloads in three days is not bad!
For me though, what is really interesting is that more than half of the downloads were from Windows users. So what do you guys think of Safari's importance going forward? I am thinking that it is now part of the big three:
Stefan