Dig my PHP applications! :D

[Davidc316]

They haven't really seen the light of day yet and I was wondering if any of you good folk would like to check them out and give me your expert opinions.

One of the applications is an online shop demo that you can find at www.parkerandhobbes.co.uk/shopfront.php and the other is an online database demo at www.parkerandhobbes.co.uk .

The shop thing took me about 4 or 5 weeks to write from scratch and the database took me about 3 weeks (but overall I think it's probably better than the shop).

Anyway, I'm sorry if this all seems like a cheap plug, but I've been coming to this forum for ages and this is the first time that I've ever really shown anyone my PHP scripts in action. I hope you don't mind.

[dalecosp]

Great looking site.

Looks as if "navigation" is misspelled on the index, and "criterion" in the "sorry we can't find any cars of type X" language.

And, just out of curiousity, do you have *nothing* from 1995-present capable of 100-150mph top speed?

:)

[Davidc316]

Hi, thanks for that.

I'll be sure to fix those spelling mistakes straight away (I haven't spell checked the site yet and I dread to think what other typos there are!).

By the way, I just ran a search and there are 28 vehicles from 95 to present that can do 100-150 mph (eg Merc Benz E Class, Land Rover, Nissan Pathfinder... etc. Are you sure you got that right? It seems to work ok from where I am.

Thanks again!

[dalecosp]

Hmm, dunno what was up. I got 28 just now, but I'm in the house IE/Win XP.

Out in the barn, I'd played around a bit (FBSD/Mozilla 1.5) previous to that query; maybe one of the fields from a previous search was still "selected" when I punched that one up...

[Davidc316]

I hope so. You certainly gave me a bit of a fright there when you said nothing came up.

Anyway, thanks... and let me just say, I'm mega impressed with your eagle eyed spelling observations. Even after you told me about the mistakes, I was certain that critereon was the correct way to spell it. But I looked it up and it seems I was wrong!

cheers

[jebster]

Here are some useful spellchecker tools:
http://www.bcentral.com/products/spell_checker.asp
http://www.spellcheck.net/
http://www.iespell.com/

:)

[Merve]

Awesome, David! Really cool site...


Uh, Jeb, the dictionary (http://dictionary.ioncart.com/images/dictionary.gif) is your best friend...:D

[LordShryku]

Well, I'll get a couple digs in beore the XHTML zealots come at you in full force :p

Some of your tags are overly outdated (see <font>). And the fact that there's no Doctype says that your not validating your code. You may want to plop a HTML 4.01 Transitional Doctype up there and run it through the validator. That shouldn't give you very much to have to fix.

Other than that, very nicely done. Aesthetically pleasing to say the least :)

[jebster]

Originally posted by Merve
Awesome, David! Really cool site...


Uh, Jeb, the dictionary (http://dictionary.ioncart.com/images/dictionary.gif) is your best friend...:D

Well sometimes when you already have a site up it is easier to check it with one of those rather than reading it over and over to make sure there are no spelling errors ;)

[Weedpacket]

Originally posted by jebster
Well sometimes when you already have a site up it is easier to check it with one of those rather than reading it over and over to make sure there are no spelling errors ;) But will they tell you when you're using "principal" when you should be using "principle"?

[jebster]

Apparently not.. :confused:

[Davidc316]

Well thanks,

but can I just ask Lord Shy... what do you mean when you talk about tags being overly outdated??? And also, what do you mean when you say "the fact that there is no doctype proves I'm not validating my code"?

I genuinely don't know what you're talking about. I'd be very grateful if you could explain what you mean.

[jebster]

Links:
W3C(World Wide Web Consortium) - http://www.w3.org/
HTML Validator - http://validator.w3.org/
CSS Validator - http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

;)

[Shrike]

Couple of usability things...if I pick 10 of 1 item, then the basket only lets me remove all 10, perhaps I should be able to alter the quantity if I want to. Also if I pick another 10 of the same item, a new row gets inserted into the basket. Should the existing row be updated to 20 items?

Couldn't find any coding bugs, I noticed that the SQL search is properly escaped Didn't try high ascii chars though ;)

By the way, in answer to all those screaming 'Validation'...show me a commonly used browser that properly implements the HTML 4.01 DTD :) The only good reason right now to validate your documents is in case you need to protect yourself from specification hijacking :p

[LordShryku]

Originally posted by Davidc316
Well thanks,

but can I just ask Lord Shy... what do you mean when you talk about tags being overly outdated??? And also, what do you mean when you say "the fact that there is no doctype proves I'm not validating my code"?

I genuinely don't know what you're talking about. I'd be very grateful if you could explain what you mean.
jebster helped me out there with those links. The outdated part: some of the HTML tags you use, like font, are depreciated and near extinction. Something like that should be controlled in CSS. And the Doctype tells what kind of HTML is being used. It's usually the first line in the source. Right click - View Source here and you'll see the very first line is a HTML 4.01 Transitional DocType

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">

Those are just the HTML standards. There's really no one telling you that you have to use them, but it does show that you take a little bit more pride in your work.

[Weedpacket]

Originally posted by LordShryku
Those are just the HTML standards. There's really no one telling you that you have to use them, but it does show that you take a little bit more pride in your work. But since those are standards, it behooves software vendors to support them in their products or face castigation (which is why Netscape 4 is dead and buried and IE (any version) is now regarded as the worst of the major browsers - though IE5Mac is regarded as the least worst which might be one reason why Microsoft has walked away from it).

Contrariwise, if you don't follow the standards and something doesn't work as a result, there's no point complaining :)

[silent]

I must say, that is a very nice piece of work! Hehe.. your site reminds me that I seriously need to practice at the aesthetic portions of web development... my scripts seem to work great, but they tend to look *REALLY* plain and weak.

All in all, I am envious :D

[Davidc316]

Thank you very much.

I really am grateful for you folks taking to time to have a look.

One thing I've learned recently is that building a website is kind of like writing a book... just about anyone can do it, the hard part is getting other people to look at the thing!

[Norman Graham]

Hi David

Very nice job indeed. I like both sites very much. The car photos are excellent. Lemme at that Maclaren F1 - I want a shot.

One thing I'd say about the car site: the navigation is excellent and easy to follow. Seeing as the cars are mostly upmarket types - not your Nissan Micras - I'd expect some of the artwork in the navigation to reflect that - perhaps more rounded edges, perhaps more colour fades. However, nothing beats a fast-loading site, no matter what you're selling.

As for web standards, I'm a fan of correct HTML/XHTML. I recommend it with a view to the future. However, it's up to you.

Well played that man

Norm