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Webmasters by Design

Christian Webmaster Resources

CSS Menus Just Got A Lot EasierDecember 31 2008

My CSS Menu is one of the coolest websites I've been to in a while. If you are in need of a nice looking CSS menu but don't know where or how to get started, or maybe just don't want to start from scratch then you are in luck; My CSS Menu is your answer.

You can currently choose from 22 different already designed for you CSS menus (I'm sure there are more on the way). They have very basic menus and very advanced menus and everything in between to meet all your needs. While all of these options are great to have it is not by far the best part of the site though. Once you decide on a menu type you have the ability to customize it to meet your exact needs including size, colors, animation effects, and more. This customization turns 22 options into an almost endless amount of different menus.

The CSS editor (see screenshot above) is very fast and easy to use. The GUI is well designed and intuitive. You can preview your changes, save changes, and import saved menus. You can use a designer mode, CSS mode, and HTML mode which feel and look a lot like Adobe Dreamweaver for those of you that are familiar with the product.

Free Interactive Graphs With Open Flash ChartDecember 18 2008

Open Flash Chart is a free project that allows you to integrate flash graphs in you website. There is support for all of the commonly used graphs like bar charts, line charts, area charts, and scatter plots. The flash component allows the user to hover over points of the graph and view labels explaining the point (see screenshot above). This feature is what sets Open Flash Chart apart from other chart/graph apps. Check out the website for tutorials and examples. There are other static graphing libraries like Google Charts that are clean and useful but static.

You can download Open Flash Chart and use it under the GNU General Public License. If you need help with implementin

MySQL Field Types CheatsheetDecember 6 2008

If you have been using MySQL for your database choice, you'll probably find this cheatsheet to be pretty useful. Whether you are new to MySQL or advanced, this is pretty handy to have around. A help page on help.scibit.com offers a great breakdown of the different datatypes that are available for use in MySQL. They cheatsheet lists the data type, the reasons for use, and the size of the data type. This is a quick and easy reference that will hopefully help out.

MySQL Field Types [via dzone]

PHP Date Tips & TricksDecember 4 2008

For those of you using PHP to develop your web pages, I'm sure that you have used the date function at some point. There are so many cases that I have used this to show a date on a page, like using date("Y") in the copyright section of the footer to always reflect the current year. Here are a few tips & tricks to help you save some time.

Formatting

Predefined Constants

This is a trick that I really wish I had known about earlier. PHP 5.1.1 and forward offers date formatting constants. So when I was looking for examples on how to get the date in the correct format when creating my RSS feed, I could have simply used the DATE_RSS constant.

Example

Use:

<? echo date(DATE_RSS); ?> Output: Thu, 24 Nov 2008 12:29:09 -0500

Instead of:

<? echo date('D, d M Y G:i:s O'); ?> Output: Thu, 24 Nov 2008 12:29:09 -0500

There are eleven total predefined constan

phpMyAdmin 3.1.0 RelesasedDecember 2 2008

For those of you that are as hooked on phpMyAdmin as I am, you will be happy to know that there is a new version available. phpMyAdmin 3.1.0 includes a number of improvements and fixes.

The list of improvements includes security updates, language updates, export fixes, and general patches. The release notes highlight a few specific improvements: "this version has a new setup mechanism and supports BLOBstreaming and the Swekey hardware authentication" (release notes).

You can view the release notes for full details concerning the new release and download the new version from sourceforge.