Re: about php

At 05:18 AM 1/22/2000 , David Poehlman wrote:
>I understand there is a development tool or environment called php. 
>Can someone provide me with pointers to or info on this?

Hi, David.  PHP is a form of server-side scripting that is used
on Apache web servers.  (Apache is the #1 most popular web server
in the world, according to the surveys done by www.netcraft.co.uk)

PHP lets you include directives in your source code that consist
of embedded scripts which are executed before being sent to the
user's browser.  It's a bit like Server Side Includes, but allows
for more than just including files or variables.  You can also use
PHP as the action for FORM elements.

The syntax of the PHP language is pretty similar to Perl, with the
advantage that it's optimized for doing web things.  Instead of
using a library or a subroutine, there's built-in functions for
all the common tasks that are necessary for web programming.
(It doesn't have the power or flexibility of Perl or C++, but it
is faster and easier to write.)

If you combine PHP with a good database, like mySQL or PostgreSQL,
you can make some pretty effective applications.  My wife has put
together several "shopping carts" using PHP, and our new design
for the Virtual Dog Show is based on a PHP front-end interface to a 
PostgreSQL database backend.  So far it's worked great, and it 
only took us about 5 days to get the whole thing set up.

As far as accessibility goes, PHP writes whatever you tell it
to write, so the only issue is "are you producing appropriate
HTML?"  Other than that, I don't -believe- there are any web
accessibility problems associated with PHP.

Hope this helps!  You can read more at http://www.php.net/


-- 
Kynn Bartlett                                    mailto:kynn@hwg.org
President, HTML Writers Guild                    http://www.hwg.org/
AWARE Center Director                          http://aware.hwg.org/

Received on Saturday, 22 January 2000 14:45:32 UTC