Have Your PHP Cake – Core Reasons For Using the CakePHP Framework

By Michael Dorf

For PHP developers, the question of which framework is ideal can pose a variety of opportunities. While many developers have traditionally built PHP apps with only the use of libraries, structuring their applications according to best practices and their own learning, there are distinct advantages to using a framework such as CakePHP. Rather than trying to identify a pattern that works ideally to scale PHP applications, CakePHP provides an integrated model view controller system that can separate the business logic of your app from the database and presentation.

By employing a PHP framework, you can scale development across a team or variety of developers for easier deployment. Chances are you are utilizing an informal Model-View-Controller (MVC) model even if you don’t fully realize you are relying upon MVC as the framework behind your development. There are strong structural advantages for considering CakePHP as your application foundation, since it provides a framework to upgrade, build and extend development in new directions.

One impressive features of CakePHP is its Object Relational Mapping (ORM) framework, which allows you to streamline SQL queries by presenting tables as classes. As a means of truly moving PHP towards a full object-oriented language, these relations can streamline database queries while making the entire development process more efficient. While classes can be challenging to work with in standard PHP, they are much easier to work with in CakePHP since applications have “core” and “app” directories where you can properly configure inheritance for each class. Issues with class inheritance are easy to understand since you can extend classes in a way that fits your development goals.

Core security and CRUD features are integrated within CakePHP from the outset, allowing you to secure the user submission process in less time. By automatically producing a scaffold for your CRUD activities you can begin customizing the forms and options based upon your requirements. Rather than trying to implement ad-hoc systems for updating or securing your application, Cake takes care of the leg work so you can dive right into your core business logic. Developers can further benefit from updates in web security standards which are quickly baked into CakePHP updates so you can keep your app secure from emerging trends on the web in less time.

Streamlining the development process is a core part of why working with CakePHP as your application framework can vastly improve the speed of deployment for your app. Rather than investing considerable time in configuring your Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP (LAMP) setup, CakePHP has an automated configuration process through the “configuration” folder which auto-detects preferred settings. You can immediately jump into building your application and can further accelerate the process with extensive reusable code from plugins and components in the CakePHP library. For example, AJAX classes are fully integrated into the framework out-of-the-box, making the creation of dynamic forms and context-specific content a breeze.

With the impressive array of plugins, additional libraries, and components from the CakeForge open source developer repository, you can find nearly every major common feature available for your CakePHP based web application. By utilizing CakePHP, you automatically benefit from the up-to-date security standards, modular application structure, and scalable foundation that will serve your web site for years to come.

LearnComputer! (http://learncomputer.com) provides instructor-led PHP training courses for individuals, small businesses, and corporations. Please see our PHP training catalog for complete details!

Back to Basic – CSS

By Wan Woo

Cascading Style Sheets-CSS in short-is the most hottest word in web page design world, it basically give you creative control over the layout and design of your web pages, by using CSS, you can dress up your text with eye-catching headings, drop caps, and borders, just like the those you see in magazines or newspapers.

What’s more, you can also create columns and banners, highlight those text links of your choice as well as arrange images with precision.

If you’ve used styles in word processing programs like Microsoft Word or page layout programs like Adobe, CSS is nothing alien to you. A style is simply a set of rules instruct the computer how to format a particular portion of a web page. A style sheet is a set of these styles.

CSS works well with HTML, but you don’t confuse with HTML, CSS is not HTML, it’s a different language altogether. In short, CSS works hand-in-hand with the web browser to make HTML look great.

If you are old enough to surfed the web before 1995, then you will aware those website without CSS, as web designers were limited to the layout and styling options of HTML. HTML still forms the foundation of all pages on the World Wide Web, but it’s simply not a design tool. Sure, HTML provides basic formatting options for text, images, tables, and other web page elements, and patient, meticulous webmasters can make pages look pretty good using only HTML. But the result is often sluggish web pages laden with clunky code.

So with CSS, the benefits are obvious:-

1. Style sheets offer far more formatting choices than HTML. With CSS, you can format paragraphs as they appear in a magazine or newspaper (the first line indented and no space between each paragraph, for example) and control the leading (the space between lines of type in a paragraph).
2. When you use CSS to add a background image to a page, you get to decide whether and how it tiles (repeats). HTML can’t even begin to do that.
3. Even better, CSS styles take up much less space than HTML’s formatting options, such as the much-hated tag. You can usually trim a lot of kilobytes from text-heavy web pages using CSS. As a result, your pages look great and load faster.
4. Style sheets also make updating your site easier. You can collect all of your styles into a single external style sheet that’s linked to every page in your site. In short, you can completely change the appearance of a site just by editing a single style sheet.

Software for CSS

To create web pages made up of HTML and CSS, you only require a basic text editor like Notepad for Windows or Text Edit for Mac. But of course, there are other better programs written solely for web pages design. So some of the commonly used free or paid programs are: -

1. jEdit (Windows, Mac, Linux) – This free, Java-based text editor works on almost any computer and includes many features that you’d find in commercial text editors, like syntax highlighting for CSS.
2. HTML-Kit (Windows). This powerful HTML/XHTML editor includes lots of useful features like the ability to preview a web page directly in the program (so you don’t have to switch back and forth between browser and editor), shortcuts for adding HTML tags, and a lot more. By the way, this is also free.
3. skEdit (Mac) – This is the most expensive web page editor I even find. However, this program come with complete FTP/SFTP, code hints, and other useful features.
4. Coda (Mac) – This is a full-featured web development toolkit. It includes a text editor, page preview, FTP/SFTP, and graphic CSS-creating tools for creating CSS.

In Summary, whether you are programmers or internet surfers, CSS is definitely change the ways you design and read any of the web pages now and future. Hence, it is always good for you to know the basic understanding of CSS.

The author is freelance article writer for nearly 3 years. He is not only specialize in man fashion, you can also check out his latest website at http://www.industrialwaterpumps.org/ which provide best deals and full reviews of Industrial Water Pumps for commercial as well as private usage.

Is Instructor Led PHP Training Worth the Buck?

By Michael Dorf

As you step back and evaluate the most effective ways to train your teams in PHP, it is important to consider the potential return on investment from instruction. While traditional seminars, classes or training sessions offer distinct advantages, today instructor led PHP training competes against videos courses, distance education, tutorials and certification tracks that offer their own unique approach. When considering these alternatives, however, it is important to consider the TRUE effectiveness of unfocused training given the strong benefits of instructor led training.

In order to document these advantages let’s review a potential case where a new employee (with a background in.NET) needs to get up-to-speed with PHP. Working with a certified, professional PHP instructor he can ask questions from his own vantage point, linking his existing training to accelerate PHP learning. With a video or distance course he is forced to constantly pause the instruction, desperately looking up terms and trying to relate it to his own knowledge. As a result, the upfront money saved by trying to scale media based training actually holds your firm back in terms of learning potential, slowing your path toward implementation of cutting edge PHP techniques throughout your organization. To fully appreciate the value of professional, instructor PHP training, it is important to fully realize the benefits from in-person education.

Responsive Training

One major advantage of instructor led training is the ability to ask questions in real time and get hands on answers. With recorded videos or tutorials, students are left to understand the answers for themselves, potentially complicating the learning process significantly. By contrast, an instructor led course can take on a path more useful to the audience. If multiple students are being challenged by a particular syntax or class, the instructor can make sure to focus on understanding the concept until he or she moves on. Building on expansive learning with a core set of knowledge if crucial for quality coding standards – meeting and exceeding these requirements should be a core principle of helping you to realize a strong return on your PHP investment.

Timely Insights

Another important advantage of in-person PHP training is timely benefits from the latest technology. While taking a course on PHP 5 is likely to introduce a number of important concepts, only a real time course can focus on the very latest developments in Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP (LAMP), allowing students to learn about emerging frameworks, new developments from Zend, as well as keeping students up-to-date with new trends. In this way, understanding how to optimize your PHP application for cloud hosting can be integrated into a course that may not be offered by an antiquated distance learning curriculum. Professional instructor led training gives personal attention to emerging technology that impacts PHP coding in practice.

Practical, Professional Advice

The difference between PHP theory and coding practice can be large. An instructor led PHP training course can focus on how to implement PHP in a working environment, independent of the actual syntax.

With insights into agile development, group dynamics, unit testing and project updates, instructor training can provide a road-map to deliver a solid return on investment over the life of your PHP development team.

LearnComputer! (learncomputer.com) provides instructor led PHP training courses for individuals, small businesses, and corporations. Please see our computer training catalog for complete details!

Basics of the Internet

By Pocholo Peralta

The Internet in its earlier decades was simple and easy to use. But as years go by, it becomes more complex and very fast. After using the Net for more than four years, I got inspired to review its basics because I seem to have forgotten it! Let’s get back to Internet basics and basic components.

The most prominent component of the Internet model is the Internet Protocol (IP) which provides addressing systems (IP addresses) for computers on the Internet. It enables internetworking and essentially establishes the Internet itself. But one of the cause of Internet connection problems is the exhaustion of IPv4 (IP version 4) because of the explosive growth of the Internet. Now we wouldn’t be in the basics anymore if we continue so…

Connecting to the Internet

Broadband – Most users prefer this connection because it’s the fastest and most stable. But you can only use this on a fixed location.

WiFi or Wireless – As opposed to broadband, you can use this connection where ever you are, ergo wireless.

Programs and Applications

Before you can do something with your computer, you must have programs and applications. When you buy a new computer, there are already installed programs that would let you add more.

Browsers

Browsers are the doors to the Net. Our connection to the Internet is useless without them. In order for us to browse or ’surf’ the Internet and connect to other websites, we need to use browsers. Examples of Browsers:

Google Chrome

Ubuntu

Firefox

Opera

Safari

Explorer

Networking

The main reason for connecting to the Net is networking which is sharing of resources and information among computers and devices connected to the network. By networking, users can communicate efficiently and easily via e-mail, instant messaging, chat rooms, telephony, video telephone calls, and videoconferencing.

Social Networking is mainly done for leisure. By using programs and applications, people can join a social network and exchange messages and pictures. The most popular social network sites are Facebook and Twitter. Serious working people see social networks as time wasters.

Internet Safety and Security

Many new computer users don’t realize that maintaining their gadgets isn’t a simple task and fail to maintain the safety and security of their computers, either unintentionally or by recklessness, until one day, their computer ‘crashes’ and find out that their gadget wouldn’t work anymore.

Tasks for maintenance and safety:

Updating Operating System

Updating Browsers

Updating Antivirus, Antimalware, Antispyware

Using link scanners that check if the site we plan to visit is safe

Deleting suspicious ‘flash cookies’

Doing all these tasks regularly

(And I’m not sure yet if these tasks are complete!)

We can update any of these automatically but sometimes for some reason, it stops working. So another task is checking for updates.

Things that could happen if we ignore safety:

Malfunction of your computer

Malware, spyware, or virus infection which could stop or ruin our computers

Identity theft which could lead to stolen bank accounts -This is the most dangerous and most popular among computer criminals

Hijacking of your personal weblogs, email account, or sites

I hope I have convinced us all that Internet security is a must. Some techies believe that we have to be paranoid about our internet safety to be really safe.

See more of Poch Peralta’s posts and pages on Plato on-line at www.pochp.wordpress.com

Finding the Right PHP Developer

By Josek Morin

Web development is an important part of business marketing today. Not only do you need efficient programs and applications to take care of your business operations and management, but there are a huge number of other factors that make developing the right web application an important factor to consider for almost any business.

There are a good number of programming platforms and languages that developers use today to provide businesses and consumers the right web applications to help them with their requirements. PHP is one such programming language that has gained a huge popularity over time, and that too quite rightfully.

Apart from offering a completely free platform for web development (with Linux and MySQL), the work of a PHP developer is much simpler than most others, and hence offers your business an inexpensive, yet effective solution.

However there are a number of factors that you must consider while looking to hire PHP programmers for your web development requirements.

Some Useful Tips to Hire PHP Developers

1. Make sure you work with an individual PHP developer or business that has the right skills and experience, and are in constant touch with PHP development projects.

2. Look for professionals who have had adequate PHP training and recognized certification

3. Ensure the delivery time is something that will suit your requirements

4. Communication is of the utmost importance. You should be able to deal with the PHP developers efficiently using a project management tool and contact them easily as and when required

5. Look through the portfolio and contact some of the ex-clients to get a clear idea as to how efficient their services have been before you deicide to hire PHP programmers

Moreover, ensure the business or the PHP professional you have decided to deal with are capable of:

1. Offering you the right services related to web integration and maintenance, as well as further development

2. Demonstrating clear concepts regarding the right design etiquette

3. Planning towards efficient resource management

4. Possessing knowledge on associated software (like CMS) and multimedia

5. Offering you the most competitive price plans with the maximum reliability

There are a number of points where PHP excels over the other available programming platforms, apart from the most obvious price factor. For example, a Linux server is very stable and offers a much faster system than a Windows server would.

At the same time, mySQL databases are much lighter than the most popular RDBMS software, and yet offer almost all the features necessary for a web application to perform in the best possible way. MySQL too is freely available for you to use towards your web development needs.

In order to lay your hands on all these benefits associated with a PHP development environment, it is very important that you only hire PHP developers who can show you the right level of expertise and results for the money you spend on them.

Bear these above mentioned points on your mind when you decide to look for PHP developers for your business web application development requirements if you want the best results at the end of the day!

Cygwin on Windows – The Best of Both Worlds

By John Paige

Running Cygwin under Windows XP

Among that small but vocal minority that really care about such things, the argument goes on. Which is better, linux or windows? They both have advantages and strengths so why not use both of them? One suggestion is to shrink the windows partition and create a new linux partition. Then a linux operating system, maybe Ubuntu or Debian, is installed in the new partition. You then have what is referred to as a dual boot system. Either windows or linux is selected at startup. The idea of messing with the main drive can be a little bit scary. There is an easier and less radical solution. Let me introduce Cygwin.

Q. What is Cygwin?

A. Cygwin is a linux like environment that runs on windows.

Q. Why would I want to use Cygwin?

A. There are many applications available in linux that are not available in windows. Also, many of the commercial windows applications have corresponding linux versions that are free.

Q. Is it difficult to install Cygwin?

A. No. Go to the Cygwin site, download the setup program, and with a few clicks it is ready to go.

Q. Why would I want to use something that looks like windows command line dos?

A. Many users feel that linux is cleaner, more powerful, and faster. Also, if you are building your own site, you will probably be on a linux server. Cygwin is a good place to get used to the features and commands.

Q. I have installed Cygwin but can’t find the feature I want to use. Where is it?

A. The initial setup of Cygwin installs a base system. Any time you want to add a new feature, just run setup again, use the search box to find the feature you want, select it, and install with a few mouse clicks.

Q. Is Cygwin linux?

A. No. To quote from the Cygwin site:

Cygwin is a Linux-like environment for Windows. It consists of two parts:

A DLL (cygwin1.dll) which acts as a Linux API emulation layer providing substantial Linux API functionality.

A collection of tools which provide Linux look and feel.

This is only a small overview of Cygwin. I hope that I have encouraged you to try it. I have used it for many things such as manipulation of PDF files, to telnet into my online sites’ files, and to try out things I found in my searches but couldn’t find a way to do it in windows or if the programs were available, they were too expensive. In some cases, just being made aware of the terminology led me to free windows applications.

John Paige is a writer, researcher, and student of how technology can be used to enhance the quality of life

Linux For Space Constrained Small Embedded Devices

By Raghu Bharadwaj

PC Engines' ALIX.1C Mini-ITX embedded board

A considerable segment of embedded systems are often found in mass-market products and are therefore subjected to hard economic constraints. The basic nature of these systems mandates further constraints on physical size and power consumption. These in turn give rise to resource constraints on the computing platform level, e.g., constraints on computing speed, memory size, and communication bandwidth etc. In spite of the rapid development of computer hardware these constraints are true due to the economic overheads. In most cases it is not economically justified to use a processor with more capacity due to the overall product’s cost limits.

Now coming to the software that goes into these space crunched hardware?

A recent survey conducted on small embedded device manufacturers revealed the following facts.

Most of these vendors avoided using embedded operating systems and the response was a straightforward, “we don’t need one.” More than half of these vendors mentioned a simple lack of need as the sole reason for skipping the operating-system. It’s easy to think of many products that might not need an OS so this response isn’t surprising. Out of those about 30% said an OS will strain their system’s processor and/or memory. Some said an OS was too expensive and the remaining felt that operating systems are too complicated. However the need for an embedded OS was felt considering the fast changing demands of the consumers, who are looking for multi-purpose small embedded devices, which mandates the use of an OS

Now the question, what is the most economical and easy OS solution?

This brings up Linux as a viable option. Let’s explore the reasons behind this choice and most importantly understand how it can be used on these space constrained devices?

•Linux is open source kernel backed by a strong community of developers; members of the community provide bug fixes, enhancements, and even support old devices long after the manufacture has ceased support.

•Linux offers a large library of functionality that can be leveraged to accelerate development. Linux is easy to customize and port even on to MMU less processors. With Linux community’s commitment to support embedded systems and various embedded hardware vendors contributing development tools and support.Linux is the best bet to migrate from hardware specific code to richer software.

Linux kernel is massive collection of sources targeting various architectures and platforms. Linux kernel currently contains around 9.2 million lines of code with a 10% increase every year. With the current version, pattern new stable kernel is available every 3 to 4 months. Linux Currently supports 25 different architectures, 60 Filesystems, 20 net protocols(L2), 50+ ATA Drivers, 300+ pci Drivers, 200+ Ethernet Drivers

“Linux supports more individual types of devices overall than any other kernel” -Greg KH

Default vanilla kernel configuration includes full network support, support for wide variety of input devices, and does not offer fixed boot time (can afford the time delays related to device discovery).

So with all these code buried within Linux, how can we fit it into these small devices?

•Disabling unrequired Device drivers and file systems like Ext2, Ext3 (not required on mass storage less embedded devices)

•Disabling unrequired network protocols and other network services like Net filters, packet forwarding etc…

•Disable SMP Support

•Disabling symmetric multi-processor support when not running on dual CPU boards. This reduces the kernel image size and also results in better performance on uniprocessor machines

•Disabling support for other CPU variants for the same architecture

•Removing support for other CPU variants for the architecture we have selected would help us reduce kernel image size by stripping out unrequired start up code.

•Disable support for Dynamic configuration of kernel parameters through sysctl’s.

•Reduce the kernel log buffer to 4k (default 16k).

•Support for hotplug events / user space notifications are often not required in Embedded systems kernel so choosing to disable them would help reduce kernel image size

•Enable CONFIG_EMBEDDED which enables a group option to further trim down the kernel. Notable options enabled are the ability to select a different allocator and a selection to optimize for size (CONFIG_CC_OPTIMIZE_FOR_SIZE).

•Enable SLOB Allocator

Current kernels are by default set to SLAB allocator which is more efficient on the large memory desktop machines. So enable SLOB allocator which perfectly suits smaller, resource limited devices.

•Disable Module Support

Modules under Linux allow kernel code to be dynamically installed or removed. However, to accomplish this, each module is loaded onto a fresh page. This has two consequences. On architectures that support large memory pages, modules do not share the large page typically used by the primary kernel code. Consequences of this is another page table entry is needed and page table caches may get thrashed more which may be a potential performance impact. A second consequence is if a module is the page size plus one byte, the total memory consumed is 2 entire pages. This is almost 50% waste. Or in another case if the module is small, a full page has to be allocated. If the page size is 4K and the module is only 1K, this is a 300% waste. If many such modules are loaded, there can be considerable waste of memory.

•Consider UClinux when there are no stringent MMU requirements

•Other issues apart from normal selections include appropriate tagging of disposable code. Custom drivers or even existing drivers should have the initialization code tagged appropriately so memory occupied by them can be freed. This can be done by the use of the GCC __init attribute.

•Developers also need to be aware of performance constraints with XIP(Execute in place) NOR flashes on some custom hardware. XIP allows the kernel to run form the same place that it is stored. This requires the flash to appear as linear memory. On custom hardware (such as certain ARM based systems) the bus for interfacing to NOR flash may be smaller than the native size of the processors for ex: 16bit NOR memory interface requiring two access cycles to load a native size piece of data, 32bits wide. This would result in massive performance bottleneck. In addition, XIP prevents the use of compressed kernel images.

These are some of the performance and space tuning options available on Linux. In the next part we will discuss about the application tuning options.

Raghu Bharadwaj is a lead trainer in the area of Linux System Programming, including Linux Device Drivers, Kernel Programming, Embedded Linux, RTOS and Network Programming etc. To know more about his online and campus based training programs visit http://www.techveda.org and reach him at info@techveda.org

How to Start Your Career in System Programming

By Raghu Bharadwaj

If you are a fresher and are really looking for a personally and professionally satisfying career in embedded systems or system level programming then these are the exact skills that you need to get hold of

Skill guide for System/Embedded/Real Time Programmers

•Effectively programming using Data Structures

•Application of C for System programming purposes

•Complete understanding of any Operating System (Linux, most widely used here)

•OS customization skills, Device Drivers, Embedded Drivers

•OS building for target hardware

•Network programming

•C++ for Embedded and Real Time programming

•Understanding finer aspects of Real Time OS designs

•Programming for Multicore architectures

•Above all true passion for hard core programming

The above guide is purely indicative and is based on the current and expected future skill requirements. However these are the skills which are going to stay for a very long time. I call them “skills forever”. Most of these skills are age old and are proven effective time and again with minor modifications to meet moving requirements.

How to master these skills

Here I recommend three proven ways to master these skills

1. Self Learning

Go out and do it on your own, this is the mantra of self-learning, definitely, the most satisfying path of all the. With so much open information available self-learning is definitely recommended. A decade back may be it would have been ill advised, due to lack of information available through Internet, books and so on, but the current situation only augments the use of it.

Pros & Cons

This is indeed the most satisfying of all paths. Information is readily available and it is only left to you to explore and deduce the right information. Now students willing to walk this path should be very selective in choosing information as there are every possibility that he/she may end up with heavy unwanted or even misleading information and most importantly taking much of his time. To sum it up I would say that in this path the learning curve i.e. the time taken to learn is more compared to all other kinds of learning.

Sources for this style of learning are: internet, books, practical experimentation, technical forums, seminars and so on.

2. Mentoring/Professional Training Course

To put it in a single sentence, “Look for a mentor/trainer who can extend his expertise and help you build your skills in the smartest and shortest way”. Definitely the most widely preferred channel of learning and also the most confusing, thanks to the ever growing number of training organizations offering a wide variety of courses. I certainly am not against this trend but I would only like to caution students on being very selective while choosing these organizations for building their skills.

Let us look at some of the common training programs available for Embedded/System software development

There are a growing number of institutions offering specialized training courses on this domain. Most of these institutions offer a similar line of course contents with minor deviations. However most of them do talk about:

•Programming with C and Data Structures

•Programming with C++

•Linux/Unix Essentials

•Some part of Linux Drivers

•Micro-controllers and Programming them

•Embedded Systems Concepts

•RTOS

Now if you compare this with the above mentioned Skill guide, surely most of the training organizations need to drastically improve their contents to cater the exact skill requirements of the students and mind you most of these institutions are delivering these courses just at the knowledge gaining level. So be extremely selective in choosing your training courses. This is a highly recommended source of learning as there are plenty of options to choose from, obviously with a bit of scrutiny.

3. On Job Training

Definitely the most preferred method of learning. This gives the student a great opportunity to be in the company of experts and also in the most conducive learning environment. The student who enters this course would develop his/her skills in a way which is most desired by his/her employer. This could help in building both generic as well as specific skills. However there is a good chance of being very specific in the skills gained and this may hamper his overall generic outlook.

Now it’s your turn to choose

So the choices are open, rate your skills and choose any path or even try to come up with something of your own. Just remember that, our expertise can always be availed and we will be more than happy to help you.

Raghu Bharadwaj is a lead trainer in the area of Linux System Programming, including Linux Device Drivers, Kernel Programming, Embedded Linux, RTOS and Network Programming etc. To know more about his online and campus based training programs visit http://www.techveda.org.

Which Low Resource Linux Distribution Should You Use For Your Old Computer?

By Herb Leibacher

If you have an old machine that no longer has an operating system, you don’t have to throw that machine away. You can put it to good use with an operating system that doesn’t require a fast processor or big disk drive. Fortunately there are plenty of Linux distributions that will work on your old hardware and run at fairly moderate speeds even if your machine is really old. There are quite a few Linux distributions that don’t demand too much resources so that your computer will run relatively fast.

First of all, you need to stay away from distributions that use Gnome and KDE. These tend to use too many resources for old hardware and will cause the machine to lag way too much for basic applications. Look for these distributions that don’t use these graphical interfaces.

These low resource distributions are all based on Ubuntu meaning that you have access to all the debian packages that Canonical supports giving you access to tons of software.

Xubuntu is a quality distribution that doesn’t use too much power. It’s uses XFCE which will help with slower computers. This one does work well but might not be best for very, very old machines as XFCE is a bit more demanding than some other low power interfaces. This will be a bit easier because it’s basic interface works a lot like Windows which most people will be used to.

Linux Mint 6 Fluxbox Community Edition is a very high quality low resource distribution. This uses Fluxbox which will work better with computers that can’t run Xubuntu too well. This distribution has all your basic essentials. It’s layout will take a little while to get used to. Instead of a start button, you have to right click on the desktop to open your applications.

MoonOS LXDE is another good one to try. This uses LXDE which hardly uses any ram to actively run. Typically you can download LXDE but MoonOS has it all set up for you already after installing so that nothing has to be set up.

By following these tips you may be able to put an old machine to good use.

Herb likes to get the most possible use out of the technology he has on hand. Please check out his website with information on kids toy storage and details on childrens toy boxes.

The Uses of Cron Tabs

By Hans Christian Tesch

Those who are familiar with Greek methodology will no doubt know Cronus who was the father of the Olympian gods. Kronus in Greek and roman times means time and thus here we get the words chronometer and chronology. Therefore cron tabs in programmer lingo means something tat deals with time.

Cron tabs are mostly seen in server side applications particularly in open source systems such as Red Hat and Linux systems. The subroutine command of the cron tab is set and used for timed routines or tasks that the server does on a regular basis. That is it acts like a timer for a certain procedure to be done at a set time during the day.

Thus this tab can have several subroutines within it. Cron tab is basically a short cut for Cron Table wherein certain tasks are assigned. Many benefits of these tabs are seen when used in terms of scheduling certain tasks at inopportune times of the day, which can be on holidays and ungodly hours of the night.

The Benefits

The benefits of this type of server side programming are numerous. For example, part of your services entails that you send an email to your subscribers updating them on certain information for the day and reminders and such every 3 am in the morning. Thus you can do two things.

First you can set your alarm clock at 3 am in the morning and manually send these emails one by one to your subscribers. Definitely this is not a very attractive proposition. The other thing you can do is to set a cron tab in your server to do this for you while you sleep at that time.

The tab in this case will set into a gear a process that will automatically send emails to everyone in your client list for as many times as you want for the next day, next month or even the next few years! The cron tab will do the most necessary routine things for you just in case you forget to do them.

You can also use the command in conjunction with other disk operating commands such as erase and delete. For example you may want to delete members from your site or forum that have lapsed a minimum on-line period, that is they have become inactive and thus you can purge them. So say that forum members will be expelled if they have a lapse of 1 week of posting or logging in, this command can do it for you automatically without you having to do it manually.

How to activate

The cron tab can be activated in your server just by looking for a cron tab icon in the control panel. It is just a matter of clicking on it and adding the timed commands that you need. You can do this for the most routine of tasks whether deleting or sending mail and others. You can also set a frequency for this to do daily, weekly, monthly or even annually. The choice is entirely up to you.