Marcofolio.net - Marco's online portfolio and digital playground on the net http://www.marcofolio.net 2010-03-16T23:21:21+01:00 http://www.marcofolio.net http://www.marcofolio.net/images/M_images/marcofolio.png text/html 2010-03-15T17:56:52+01:00 http://www.marcofolio.net http://www.marcofolio.net/features/how_you_can_prevent_an_sql_injection.html About the author:The write up has been done by Joanna who works with WebHostingSearch (http://www.webhostingsearch.com/) and has been been part of web industry from quite some time now. An SQL Injection (also known as Failure to Preserve SQL Query Structure ) is one of the most common and most dangerous security issues. SQL injections are dangerous because they are a door wide open to hackers to enter your system through your Web interface and to do whatever they please - i.e. delete tables, modify databases, even get hold of your corporate network. SQL injections are a programming error and they have nothing to do with your web site hosting provider. So, if you have been searching for a secure JSP hosting, PHP hosting or any other type of web hosting packages, you need to know that prevention of an SQL injection is not a responsibility of your web site hosting provider but of your web developers. text/html 2010-03-08T19:57:22+01:00 http://www.marcofolio.net http://www.marcofolio.net/reviews/zend_framework_1.8_book_review_and_giveaway.html A while ago, I reviewed the jQuery 1.3 and PHP (http://www.marcofolio.net/reviews/jquery_1.3_and_php_book_review_and_giveaway.html) book. This book is published by Pack Publishing and they asked me to review another book for them. This book, written by Keith Pope, is called Zend Framework 1.8 Web Application Development (http://www.packtpub.com/zend-framework-1-8-web-application-development/book?utm_source=marcofolio.net&utm_medium=bookrev&utm_content=blog&utm_campaign=mdb_002677). As you could have guessed by the title of the book, it shares great information about the Zend PHP Framework (http://framework.zend.com/). This book was an eye opener for myself too, since I'm a regular user of the CakePHP framework (http://cakephp.org/). I've read the book and wrote a review about it that you can read below. Now, you have a chance to win this 350+ pages thick book and read it yourself! MVC pattern (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model%E2%80%93view%E2%80%93controller) and how The Zend Framework implements it Building a fully functional website using the framework How to correctly test your application and much more! (http://www.packtpub.com/zend-framework-1-8-web-application-development/book?utm_source=marcofolio.net&utm_medium=bookrev&utm_content=blog&utm_campaign=mdb_002677) Read the review below and make sure to check out how you can win a hardcopy version of this book. Also, make sure you subscribe to the RSS feed (http://feeds2.feedburner.com/marcofolio) or follow me on Twitter (http://twitter.com/marcofolio) to get updates on more future giveaways. text/html 2010-03-02T16:53:47+01:00 http://www.marcofolio.net http://www.marcofolio.net/tips/offline_ways_to_keep_your_creative_fluids_going.html Inspiration (http://www.marcofolio.net/inspiration/) can be found everywhere . But what if you're simply empty and have no fuel in your creativity tank left? You can always get stuck at a creativity block, which could have a very big impact. To prevent this phenomenon from happening to you, I compled a list with 10+ offline ways to keep your creative fluids going to prevent a creativity block. As you can see by the title of this article, this list aims at the offline ways (by not using your computer) in order to turn your creativity spark into a bursting creative flame. Feel free to share your number one way to keep on being creative! Where do you find your inspiration? text/html 2010-02-16T19:22:46+01:00 http://www.marcofolio.net http://www.marcofolio.net/webdesign/pure_css3_bokeh_effect_with_some_jquery_help.html Bokeh - In photography, bokeh is the blur, or the aesthetic quality of the blur, in out-of-focus areas of an image, or the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light. (from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokeh)). I'm pretty sure you've seen this effect before, since there are loads of wallpaper roundups (http://www.inspiks.com/brilliant-bokeh-wallpapers/) and tutorials (http://abduzeedo.com/awesome-digital-bokeh-effect-photoshop) using this technique. Currently, one of my favourite wallpapers has to be this bokeh effect from -kol (http://-kol.deviantart.com/art/Bokeh-116165739). Today, I want to add another addition to the bokeh hype , by creating a pure CSS3 bokeh effect. With some help from jQuery (http://jquery.com/), we can add some randomness in colour, size and position for the effect. Still don't know what we'll be creating? Make sure to check out the demo and view the source code to learn some more. Safari (http://www.apple.com/safari/) and Google Chrome (http://www.google.com/chrome/) and the latest version of Firefox (http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/). So, for now, this is just for fun - until Microsoft comes with a CSS3 supporting Internet Explorer. The effect looks pretty neat, doesn't it? Check out this tutorial on how you can create it yourself! For those people who use IE, I've added a little video showing the full effect. text/html 2010-02-08T19:34:22+01:00 http://www.marcofolio.net http://www.marcofolio.net/inspiration/alice_in_wonderland_fan_art.html Although the success of 3d movie Avatar (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499549/) seems unstoppable, another movie in 3d is coming to the cinemas soon. With the tagline You've got a very important date, the latest version of Alice in Wonderland (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1014759/) will be released in theaters in one of the upcoming weeks. Since the story about Alice is one most people will know from their childhood, loads of fan art is created around it. Because of the upcoming movie, this post is a inspirational roundup with Fan Art about Alice in Wonderland. Main source for this inspirational was DeviantART (http://www.deviantart.com/), a great resource to look for inspiration. Now let's get ready to get your design fluids going by checking out Alice Kingsley, The Mad Hatter, The Red Queen, The White Rabbit, The Caterpillar and more. text/html 2010-02-01T05:12:47+01:00 http://www.marcofolio.net http://www.marcofolio.net/webdesign/nostalgia_dragging_the_windows_xp_error_dialog.html Remember the good old days when you were still using Windows XP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP)? If so, I'm pretty sure you remember the loads of error dialogs that would pop up at a totally random time. Although these dialogs always show up at a bad time, you could do something pretty neat with them. Drag the window around and it would duplicate itself over and over! Sadly, I haven't seen this effect alive in Windows 7 (http://www.marcofolio.net/reviews/complete_list_with_sweet_ui_improvements_on_windows_7.html), so to keep those memories alive for XP, I re-created the effect using HTML/CSS with jQuery (http://jquery.com/) and jQuery UI (http://jqueryui.com/). Simply check out the demo to see if you can remember how it would look like. Be creative and fill up the screen with some beautiful error dialogs. I hope you understand that I'm pretty sarcastic; I don't like these kind of error messages that would make your PC crash. Yet, I wanted to give it a try to bring this effect to your browser. Now let's see on how you can create this fantastic effect yourself! text/html 2010-01-25T06:27:55+01:00 http://www.marcofolio.net http://www.marcofolio.net/css/new_css3_properties_added_to_firefox_3.6.html A couple of days ago, Mozilla (http://www.mozilla.org/) released their newest version of their ever popular browser: Firefox. It was in beta before, but now version 3.6 can be officially downloaded (http://www.firefox.com/). This version of the browser brings us a couple of improvements (http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/3.6/releasenotes/) on several aspects, like using Personas (http://www.getpersonas.com/) (themes), improved (JavaScript) performance and an extended version of the CSS engine compared to the 3.5 release. Today, we're going to look at a couple of the new CSS3 properties that are added to Firefox 3.6. In this article, we'll be looking at the following properties that are now supported by Firefox 3.6: pointer-events (https://developer.mozilla.org/en/CSS/pointer-events), Using gradients (https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Using_gradients) and Multiple backgrounds (https://developer.mozilla.org/en/CSS/Multiple_backgrounds). Please note that this article only aims at Firefox 3.6, using the -moz CSS prefix. Therefore, not all techniques will be visible when using any other browser (or older versions of Firefox). So let's see what the latest version of this browser has added to his CSS arsenal. text/html 2010-01-18T06:13:08+01:00 http://www.marcofolio.net http://www.marcofolio.net/reviews/jquery_1.3_and_php_book_review_and_giveaway.html Combining both jQuery (http://jquery.com/) and PHP (http://php.net/) can be very powerful. One of my very popular articles called A fancy Apple.com-style search suggestion (http://www.marcofolio.net/webdesign/a_fancy_apple.com-style_search_suggestion.html) is combining these two techniques too, to achieve the desired effect. There are loads of tutorials on the net that also use both techniques, but Kae Verens wrote a complete book about it. The book is called jQuery 1.3 with PHP (http://www.packtpub.com/jquery-1-3-with-php?utm_source=marcofolio.net&utm_medium=bookrev&utm_content=blog&utm_campaign=mdb_001997) (by Packt Publishing) and shares great information on how you can combine jQuery and PHP for use on your own website. I've read the book and wrote a review about it. Now, you have a chance to win this book and read it yourself! What you'll learn from this book: Integrate jQuery into your PHP applications Manipulate images non-destructively Create your own jQuery plugins Use a drag/drop mechanism to sort lists and create hierarchical menus and much more! (http://www.packtpub.com/jquery-1-3-with-php?utm_source=marcofolio.net&utm_medium=bookrev&utm_content=blog&utm_campaign=mdb_001997). Read the review below and make sure to check out how you can win a hardcopy version of this book. Also, make sure you subscribe to the RSS feed (http://feeds2.feedburner.com/marcofolio) or follow me on Twitter (http://twitter.com/marcofolio) to get updates on more future giveaways. text/html 2009-12-18T12:54:02+01:00 http://www.marcofolio.net http://www.marcofolio.net/features/best_of_the_best_2009.html A little bit of sad news; This will be the last post on Marcofolio on 2009. I'm going to Austria (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austria) for two weeks and enjoy a winter sport vacation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_sport). But don't worry, I'm planning on finishing this year with another great article. Just like last year (http://www.marcofolio.net/features/best_of_the_best_2008.html), I contacted several (web)design bloggers and asked them the following question: Could you provide me with the URL of what you think is the best article that you wrote in the past year (2009)? If you do, please add a short description why you found that article the best one. As you can imagine, this post is a round up with the actual best posts from the past year from several great blogs. I have nothing left to say except to wish you a safe and joyful new year's eve and I hope to see you back (with all your fingers) in 2010! Check out Smashing Magazine (http://www.smashingmagazine.com/) has two entries, but I allowed them since they're from different authors. text/html 2009-12-14T19:42:12+01:00 http://www.marcofolio.net http://www.marcofolio.net/css/css3_animations_and_their_jquery_equivalents.html As you might know already, I'm not a big fan of animations (http://www.marcofolio.net/reviews/your_two_cents_css3_animation_and_lazy_loading.html) that are added in CSS3 (http://www.marcofolio.net/css/sweet_tabbed_navigation_using_css3.html). Yet, several people on Twitter (http://twitter.com/marcofolio) told me why they really like the feature. At that point, I wanted to play around with it too. At the same time, I wanted to see if those animations with CSS3 could be created with jQuery (http://jquery.com/) too (especially for those browser that don't support CSS3 animations yet). So today, I present you Five examples of CSS3 animations and their jQuery equivalents. This tutorial/these examples will show the use of the same HTML, with different classes for CSS3 and jQuery. You can compare both the codes and see which one you like more. Don't forget to check the demo/download the source code to view how everything is working under the hood. Safari (http://www.apple.com/safari/) and Google Chrome (http://www.google.com/chrome/) as they are the only browsers supporting the CSS3 animations via the -webkit- prefix. So, for now, this is just for fun and learning more about CSS3 and jQuery. The jQuery effects will work on other browsers though. With that said, check out how you can re-create these and learn some more about CSS3 animations and jQuery.