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New version of PHPfr in the works
March 30, 2008, 12:34 pm · 3 comments · Filed under: Apple, PHP, Widgets
There’ve been a couple of false starts over the 2 years that I’ve been developing this Dashboard widget, so excuse me if I didn’t want to say anything until I knew a release was close, but PHP Function Reference 1.0 is nearly done. w00+!
It’s hard to believe it’s been over 2 years since I first released PHPfr to the public. I didn’t even realize it had been that long until I was looking at the version history recently. To say it has been difficult to maintain momentum on this project is an understatement.
About a year ago, I open sourced it, hoping that would spark some progress. Three talented people joined the project at that time, but we got busy at work and I wasn’t able to do much with it.
Honestly, I don’t know what’s come over me in the last week. I really am too busy to be spending this kind of time on a free widget. I guess this truly is a labour of love.
PHPfr 0.9.6.2b (yes, the version number is a joke)
PHPfr 1.0
In human development circles, they talk about things happening spontaneously when there is a “readiness” for them. I think that’s a part of why this is coming together now. I’m twice the programmer I was a year ago, having worked on more complex projects over that time than I ever had before. Features that would have been a hard slog a year ago have come together in a matter of hours this time around.
Whatever the reason, PHPfr 1.0 is finally closing in on release candidate status. To their credit, Kelly Patrick Robinson and Barbara Napholtz, 2 of the 3 people who came on board a year ago, are back on the bandwagon (a big help, thanks, you two!). Also, we have our fist localization (German) thanks to Tice Klussmeier. Good stuff!
So, watch this space in the next couple of weeks for the all new, completely redesigned, better than ever, PHP Function Reference widget!
Features in the next release:
- Offline access to full PHP.net documentation
- Extensive cheat sheet
- Interactive date formatter
- Live filtering of function list
- Selection of functions by topic – new!
- Favourites list
- Resizable display size – new!
- Big/small font size toggle – new!
- 1-click documentation installs – new!
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3 comments
Miguel,
Unfortunately, you didn’t leave your email address, so I’ll just have to hope you check back here in the comments.
I’m guessing you’re using Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger). The widget has known issues with Tiger, so I recommend users of that OS to use the older version of PHPfr.
Apologies for any inconvenience this has caused you and thanks for using PHPfr!
-Andrew
Hi Andrew. Thanks for your reply. Actually I’m using Leopard, but I found a solution. Reading the comments in the Macupdate page, you recommended somebody else to manually pick English as default language. That did the trick. Even when I have set the OS language as english, some websites detect my default lang as spanish (this may be due to my location, I guess), so this may be the source of the problem.
Best regards and again, thanks a lot for your great work!
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Hi, I’ve been a fan of PHPfr for a long time, saved me lots of headaches since at home I don’t have access to the internet 100% of the time, so the widget was perfect for me. However I just updated a few days ago to the latest version available at Apple’s widgets page, and I’ve been unable to get it running. As soon as I drop it over the Dashboard, it says “Uncompressing PHP manual, please be patient. This may take a while”, but the thing is that it never ends. It has been running for hours, and I’ve tried dumping and re-adding the widget a few times with the same result. I’d like to roll back to the previous version, but unfortunately I trashed it. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks a lot for your time!
★ Posted by: Miguel · April 1, 2009, 1:13 am