Apparently there are benefits. In Safari’s case – bigger battery life.

ht: S. Sullivan

Great resource for OSX tricks and nuances.

Create /etc/php.ini and make it writable

cd /etc  sudo cp php.ini.default php.ini  sudo chmod 777 php.ini  

In php.ini, find this line:

;date.timezone =  

Uncomment it and insert your time zone (http://php.net/manual/en/timezones.php)

date.timezone =America/Vancouver  

Restore php.ini permissions

sudo chmod 444 php.ini  

Restart Apache

sudo apachectl restart  

As promised. Hot tip – you should probably avoid Entropy just for now (certainly – they will update it).

For whatever reason – I had a myriad of problems attempting to get it to work with Apache on my new 64 bit machine. Once we switched back to the original Apache PHP5 module, it seemed to work properly.

Working in Web Development means you have to have a development environment installed on your local machine, in order to test and develop dynamic pages, using a web server (Apache,), a database (MySQL) and a scripting language (PHP). There are ways of getting those components installed in a bundle, like WAMP, LAMP or MAMP. But as a developer, you are more the manual type, right? So as I had to go through that installation process recently, this article documents the steps I went through.

Apache

OSX already comes with Apache installed, it is just a matter of starting the server. You can do this if you go to System Preferences > Sharing and check “Web Sharing”. The Apache default page should now be displayed at

http://localhost

Later on, you can use the following commands to start, stop or restart Apache:

$ sudo apachectl start
$ sudo apachectl stop
$ sudo apachectl restart

If you would like to change the DocumentRoot of the server, you need to edit the httpd.conf file:

$ sudo vi /etc/apache2/httpd.conf

In here, you need to change the DocumentRoot setting:

DocumentRoot "/Users/myUser/myNewWebroot/"  <Directory "/Users/myUser/myNewWebroot/">  ...  </Directory>

PHP

PHP comes bundled up with Leopard as well. The important things to know here are where it got installed and where to find the configuration file.

Most likely, it got installed to:

/usr/local/php5

The configuration file should be located at:

/private/etc/php.ini

You only need to make sure that Apache knows that PHP is available, so edit httpd.conf:
$ sudo vi /etc/apache2/httpd.conf

And add the following lines (in the appropriate sections, to keep things tidy):

AddType application/x-httpd-php .php
AddType application/x-httpd-php-source .phps
…
LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.so

Finished with that, restart Apache, empty the browser cache and then load a php file for testing if it is correctly interpreted.

MySQL

Download the most recent dmg image from the MySQL site.

Before actually installing MySQL, I found it helps to restart the computer before proceeding with the installation. When running through the installation wizard, MySQL will get installed to:

/usr/local/mysql-VERSION

So, for example:

/usr/local/mysql-5.0.51b-osx10.5-x86/

Also, a symlink should have been created:

/usr/local/mysql -> mysql-5.0.51b-osx10.5-x86

You should also install the Preference Pane, which comes with the installation package as MySQL.prefPane

To start MySQL manually, run the following command:
$ sudo /Library/StartupItems/MySQLCOM/MySQLCOM start

You should also add MySQL to $PATH:
$ vi ~/.profile
$ export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/mysql/bin
$ source ~/.profile

To check whether that was successful, run:
$ echo $PATH

The default settings for the root user are:

• Username: root
• Password: [leave blank]

Add-on: PHPmyAdmin

To get PHPmyAdmin installed, which comes in handy for managing your database(s), download the latest package from their download page. Extract that package to a directory somewhere in your DocumentRoot.

Open config.sample.inc.php with an editor of your choice and add the following details for your MySQL installation:

/*  * This is needed for cookie based authentication to encrypt password in  * cookie  */  $cfg['blowfish_secret'] = 'whatever'; /* YOU MUST FILL IN THIS FOR COOKIE AUTH! */    $cfg['Servers'][$i]['user']          = 'root';  $cfg['Servers'][$i]['password']      = ''; // use here your password

After you made those changes, save the file as config.inc.php.

PEAR

PEAR should also already be available on your Mac. The location is probably:

/usr/local/php5/bin/pear

It is a good idea to add the path to PEAR to $PATH, similar to setting the path for MySQL (see above). In addition, upgrade PEAR to the latest version like so:

$ sudo pear channel-update pear.php.net
$ sudo pear upgrade PEAR

Resources

• Installing MySQL on Mac OS X (MySQL Reference Manual)
• Installing MySQL 5.0 on Max OS X 10.5 client
• Installing MySQL on Mac OS X

Nice clean “how to” article. I’m looking for a really comprehensive one on Snow Leopard (I’ll post it if I find it)- cause getting all this to run yesterday was kind of a pain.

This is really pretty amazing when you think about it – especially for 1970.

Multitouch tech really will require a totally new approach to computer operating systems interfaces. While this approach is probably a good intermediary stage – it still relies on many conventions that will probably need be totally re-thought. But that’s a good thing.

Beauty

Sass does away with the unnecessary brackets and semicolons of CSS. Properties are nested beneath selectors, and each property gets its own line.

// Sass    h1  height: 118px  margin-top: 1em    .tagline  font-size: 26px  text-align: right  

/* CSS */    h1 {  height: 118px;  margin-top: 1em;  }    .tagline {  font-size: 26px;  text-align: right;  }  

This seems like an interesting idea. As a language, CSS certainly lacks many useful functions that are common to other coding languages. My only concern with Sass is that it adds an additional layer of complexity to the styling process – a process that has become second nature for me. If I can figure out a way to streamline Sass into the normal CSS workflow (code, browser refresh test, iterate) then I can see it becoming quite useful.

If I get some time to experiment with this – I will certainly post a review as well as a tutorial to help any developer get started.

HT: Nathan