Note: If you happen to be a customer, relative, etc and are reading this, don’t take offense. Trust me, if you were trying to walk me through stuff you do at work every day, you’d be saying “WTF, this guy is an idiot” too.

It usually turns out that they know more about the web than that first response reveals. Their intelligence isn’t the problem. There is a deeper cause. And a lot of times I can rephrase and say “open Internet Explorer”. Or amazingly, if they don’t know what IE is either, I can almost always get away with telling them to “get on the internet” or “go to Google” (or Yahoo, etc).

The problem I think is that the web browser is such an integral part of a web users every day experience. It’s like a part of the operating system to them. It’s just there. And that creates another problem. Since many users don’t even know what a web browser is, how can they be expected to know “which” web browser to use. Or to keep it updated.

I guess as web developers, IT consultants, or whatever you call yourself, it is our job to educate the masses. We have to show them that there are choices, and make them aware enough to hopefully keep it up to date.

Below I describe three ways that can help web users understand web browsers and the choices they have.

So what is a web browser, really?

Sometimes you just need to explain to the user what a web browser is. Fortunately for us, Google has an excellent video that does just that.

Which web browser should they use?

Frequently when we interact with users, we like to give them a choice of which browser to use. Sure we have our preferences, but we shouldn’t force it on them. And most current browsers are great compared to the demon of yesterday. We typically provide the user with the following choices:

Mozilla Firefox

Google Chrome

Internet Explorer 8

Can you guide the user to a better web browser?

Yes, you can. If you develop sites that are dependent on having current web browser technology, consider prompting the user if you detect an older or unsupported browser. Let them know that the site may not operate correctly, or block them completely if needed. Some modern AJAX interfaces can really screw up in unsupported browsers. So, it is better to be safe; know which browser is being used.

Here are some related resources that can help you detect and mitigate cross browser issues.

Browser Detection and Cross Browser Support – in depth technical details of various detection methods

BrowserCam – test your website in multiple browsers

DualTech has a page devoted to helping users understand what a web browser is in the hopes that they will use a current one.

http://book.cakephp.org/view/97/Elements

Sometimes though you want to reuse a regular controller view without moving the code to an element. In fact, if the view code is specific to the controller, it is good practice to keep it in the controller view.

Fortunately this is fairly simple. Just create the view and then reference it like this:

<?php echo $this->element('../projects/menu'); ?>

In the example above, I’m accessing the following file: /views/projects/menu.ctp

As always, the element will have access to all existing view variables (the ones typically passed using $this->set()).

The basics

1. Download and install the latest version of CakePHP in a good location.
   Examples:
   • Linux: /usr/lib/cakephp/cake_1.2.2.8120
   • Windows: C:\lib\cakephp\cake_1.2.2.8120
2. Copy the contents of the app folder to your project root. This is typically your webserver root or a folder within.
3. Edit the following constants in webroot/index.php:
   1. ROOT
      You’ll want to change it so the root is one level back (your project root)

      	if (!defined('ROOT')) {
      		define('ROOT', dirname(dirname(__FILE__)));
      	}
      

   2. APP_DIR
      This one just gets set to blank since your root is also your app folder

      	if (!defined('APP_DIR')) {
      		define('APP_DIR', '');
      	}
      

   3. CAKE_CORE_INCLUDE_PATH
      Set the path to your cake core files. This can either be relative (../../core) or absolute (/path/to/core)

      	if (!defined('CAKE_CORE_INCLUDE_PATH')) {
      		define('CAKE_CORE_INCLUDE_PATH', '..'.DS.'..'.DS.'..'.DS.'lib'.DS.'cakephp'.DS.'cake_1.2.2.8120');
      	}
      

      or

      	if (!defined('CAKE_CORE_INCLUDE_PATH')) {
      		define('CAKE_CORE_INCLUDE_PATH', DS.'usr'.DS.'lib'.DS.'cakephp'.DS.'cake_1.2.2.8120');
      	}
      

It may take a little work to get the paths right, but it is well worth it. If you try to access your project and you get PHP errors, it probably means something is wrong with the core path above. The next project you start, just copy the app folder again as above, and copy the same index.php into any new projects you start.

Different paths for dev and live
The above example only covers one server configuration. Some developers may be developing in Windows while their production server runs Linux. In that case you will need to account for each server. A simple if/else statement will take care of this. In my case, I have “localdev” as the hostname for my local development server. Here is what my CAKE_CORE_INCLUDE_PATH configuration looks like:

	if (!defined('CAKE_CORE_INCLUDE_PATH')) {
		if ($_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'] == 'localdev') {
			define('CAKE_CORE_INCLUDE_PATH', '..'.DS.'..'.DS.'..'.DS.'lib'.DS.'cakephp'.DS.'cake_1.2.2.8120');
		} else {
			define('CAKE_CORE_INCLUDE_PATH', DS.'usr'.DS.'lib'.DS.'cakephp'.DS.'cake_1.2.2.8120');
		}
	}

Upgrading CakePHP
Upgrading CakePHP is pretty easy. Just install the latest version of CakePHP as described above. Then when you are ready to upgrade your app, change the core path again and start testing. If you run into issues with the latest version, it is really easy to switch back.

So far we have one app authenticating against the other. This can be very useful if you have a central user database, and don’t want to maintain users across every application you create. We used XML as the transport, so this could easily be used for applications that aren’t written in CakePHP. You can get all the details in Jesse’s article: Authenticating a CakePHP App Against a CakePHP Webservice.

We hope to extend it and allow standardized CRUD functionality across the applications. During that time, we may move the code into a datasource. But who knows.

Basically you do the following:

1. Create an INT field on the parent table called <childmodelname>_count
2. In the $belongsTo array of the child model, add “‘counterCache’ => true” to the parent array
3. Enjoy!

This works great for new installations. However, if you want to add it to an existing site, you’ll need to run through all the records and save the current count. Here is a sample method for doing just that.

function admin_update_counters() {
$this->Category->recursive = 0;
$categories = $this->Category->find('all');
foreach ($categories as $category) {
$question_count = $this->Category->Question->find('count', array('conditions' => array('Question.category_id' => $category['Category']['id'])));
if ($question_count) {
$this->Category->create();
$this->Category->id = $category['Category']['id'];
$this->Category->saveField('question_count', $question_count);
}
}

echo "Counters updated"; exit;
}