On PHPMaster.com today David Shirey is back with the third part of his series looking at using PHP on the IBM i (formerly the Series i) platform. In his previous articles he's introduced the platform and shown what knowledge you'll need to get started. In this latest post, he talks about some implementation ideas to keep in mind.

No one ever talks about how to create quality pages, what they should look like, how should they be structured, and so on. The reason for that is simple: we don't need no stinkin' instructions for that! Everyone knows how to design good screens (opps, pages). That's the easy part, right? Well, maybe not. [...] Of course, business pages are different from the pages that we may develop for a blog or website.

He goes on to talk about things like the number of "switches" (shifts in context between just using the keyboard vs using the mouse as well) and how you should "mirror the task" not the database that lives behind it. He also makes a recommendation about keeping the important things "above the fold". He notes that, unlike some of the usual sites out on the web, business applications are a bit more about usefulness and less about style.