I’m a frequent user of Windows’ remote desktop feature. It’s a stellar remote control solution: It’s incredibly fast, almost like sitting on the remote PC, and has features like bringing over the clipboard and even sounds from the controlled computer. Much better than VNC, really. VNC is painfully slow compared to it, even over multi-megabit internet connections. There is one …
Sharing authentication over multiple sites / Single sign-on
At The Group, we’re developing some web applications that needed to use the same user database. The applications were originally being developed with separate login for each, but I decided it would be better to share the login code across them. I investigated some ways to achieve sharing a single login page over all these applications: A shared login library …
You should know at least three languages
I think a good programmer should know at least three languages: English C or C++ A scripting language with dynamic typing Why?
Generic collections in PHP
Today while reading PHP::Impact’s refactoring guideline post I was reminded about collections. As you probably know, arrays are very flexible in PHP and probably a good choice for many data storing tasks. Strictly typed languages usually use “generic” collection classes instead of arrays. They are kind of like PHP arrays which the programmer can tell which type of items to …
Note: comments
I’ve noticed that the increase in spammy comments to this blog has made the comment spam protection sometimes a bit too moderate-happy, and it has marked some legitimate comments as spam. If you write a legitimate comment to one of my posts, and your comment doesn’t immediately show up after submitting, you can drop me a mail. The chances are …
Never trust the user-agent header
Something I just have to share: an entertaining and informative read on the history of the browser user-agent string. I always did wonder why all browsers claim to be Mozilla when they are not… And clearly, the advice given by many JavaScript gurus to never use user-agent sniffing to determine browser capabilities is very good – just look what kind …
Theory vs. Practice in coding
When working on a project, I sometimes find myself stuck – thinking about some implementation detail, such as how to tell my admin-module which other modules are installed in my CMS (but that’s another story) – and being stuck, unable to get anything done, just thinking of the problem at hand, because I want to find the best possible way …
On HTC Touch Diamond
I received my HTC Touch Diamond from Opera earlier this week. It’s an interesting phone – and despite what people seem to say about Windows Mobile, it doesn’t seem to have any problems. I’m sure you can find lots of proper reviews of the device, so I’ll just mention a few things I found nice and things that haven’t been …
More on extensible authentication/access control
Two weeks ago, I mentioned an easy way to create easily changeable ways for authenticating users. Continuing on that, I’ve been implementing ways to control user roles and user access for specific pages and modules in my CMS. Naturally, those features too are designed to be easily modifiable. An ACL factory A RoleProvider singleton You might not know what those …