In this new tutorial Smashing Magazine shows you how to create a mini "Christmas List" application with PHP, HTML and CSS (and a little bit of database help) to display a list of what you or your family wants this holiday.

'Tis the season to be jolly, and how much jollier could we make it than with a helpful Christmas wish list crafted for your family to ensure that you get maximum presentage this holiday? In this article, we will focus on creating a very simple system that allows you to add gift ideas to a Web page, and for your family (or whoever) to view the list.

They walk you through the setup of the basic PHP file structure, the HTML template for the list output, CSS to make it look nice and the actual PHP backend - working with a MySQL database to pull out product information and use a simple login method.

In a new tutorial from PHPMaster.com Jason Pasnikowski takes a look at sending emails with PHP - an introduction to what the language offers and how it can be used to send an HTML version.

In most cases your installation of PHP will be capable of sending emails. If you are using a shared host, or if you installed PHP using a package management system like apt-get, more than likely you're all set. You'll really only need to worry about extra configuration if you're compiling PHP from source or if you're running it on Windows. In either case, there are plenty of resources available online to help you out. Because that's all beyond the scope of this article, I'll assume you're set. If not, Google will be your friend.

He starts with a simple example using the mail function but quickly moves on to sending a multi-part email with an attached zip file and HTML content. He includes the all code you'll need and explains each part in detail so you'll know exactly what's going on.

Script-Tutorials.com has a new article posted today showing you how to combine PHP, some CSS, a dash of SQL and some HTML (oh, and jQuery) to create your own commenting system from scratch that could be used anywhere from a simple blog to a more complex social site.

Today I prepared new interesting article - I will tell how you can create own commenting system (AJAX) for your items (any units at your website) with PHP. For our demonstration - I prepared two SQL tables: first table will keep records of our items. It contain several fields: title, description, time of adding and comments count. Another table will keep records of comments. We will use jQuery too (for better interface behavior). One of features will spam protection (we can post no more than one comment every 10 minutes)!

The tutorial includes all of the code, markup and styling you'll need to make the system work. If you'd like to get right into the code you can download it as a package or you can try out their demo.

In a new tutorial from NetTuts.com today they show you how to combine a CodeIgniter-based backend and a jQuery frontend to make a simple Ajax data grid of data pulled from a database.

In this lesson, we will create a CodeIgniter library that allows us to generate data grids automatically for managing any database table. I'll explain each step required to create this class; so you'll likely learn some new OOP techniques/concepts in the process! As a bonus, we'll proceed to write some jQuery code that will enable a user to update the data grid's content without having to wait for a page refresh.

The tutorial's broken up into a few different steps, each complete with descriptions and plenty of code ready for cut-and-paste:

• Build a Data Grid Generator Class (a helper in PHP)
• Testing the Datagrid Helper Class with a CodeIgniter Controller
• Implementing Ajax (jQuery to the Rescue!)
• Check All or Nothing!

You can also download the source for all of the scripts if you'd like to dive right into the code.

New from NetTuts.com today there's a tutorial for those using the CodeIgniter framework for their application. It shows how to upload files with Ajax and a simple form (with jQuery and AjaxFileUpload).

Uploading files asnychronously can be a pain at the best of times, but when coupled with CodeIgniter, it can be a particularly frustrating experience. I finally found a way that not only works consistently, but keeps to the MVC pattern.

They help you create a database table to store the file information in (filename and title), make the controller to handle the request and build the view (with the form). Also included is the javascript you'll need to get the AjaxFileUpload script working for your file upload field. They extend the controller to handle the file upload and make a model to handle the upload and fetching of file information. The tutorial is finished off with a simple "delete" action to remove any file that's been uploaded.

On PHPBuilder.com today there's a new tutorial from Vojislav Janjic about using a simple DOM parser in PHP to edit the markup even if it's not correctly W3C-formatted - the Simple HTML DOM Parser

Simple HTML DOM parser is a PHP 5+ class which helps you manipulate HTML elements. The class is not limited to valid HTML; it can also work with HTML code that did not pass W3C validation. Document objects can be found using selectors, similar to those in jQuery. You can find elements by ids, classes, tags, and much more. DOM elements can also be added, deleted or altered.

They help you get started using the parser, passing in the HTML content to be handled (either directly via a string or loading a file) and locating elements in the document either by ID, class or tag. Selectors similar to those in CSS are available. Finally, they show how to find an object and update its contents, either by adding more HTML inside or by appending a new object after it.

On PHPBuilder.com today there's a new post from Vojislav Janjic with three methods (sans-framework) that you can use to create a multilingual website - some a bit easier to maintain than others.

Fast internet growth has brought many opportunities in the global market. Businesses can reach their customers across many countries, and information sharing is not limited to a local area or country anymore. This is why there is an increasing tendency for multilingual websites. By having a website in multiple languages, you can target local markets more easily. Also, it is more convenient to use a website in your native language.

His three methods are all relatively simple, but they all have their good and bad points - making separate HTML/views for each language, creating XML files with different versions of the content or storing the translations in a MySQL database. He gives quick code snippets showing how to implement each of them, some basing the language on a cookie value, others on a GET variable passed to the page.

On the Tutorialzine.com site there's an interesting (though a bit older) tutorial showing you how to combine jQuery, PHP and some CSS+HTML to make a simple sticky note application complete with multiple note support and drag-and-drop abilities.

Today we are making an AJAX-enabled Sticky Note management system. It will give visitors the ability to create notes with a live preview, and move them around on the screen. Every movement is going to be sent to the back-end via AJAX and saved in the database.

They use the fancybox plugin for jQuery to make creating the notes a lot simpler. Included in the tutorial is all of the HTML, CSS, javascript and PHP you'll need to create the application (as well as plenty of description along the way). You can see a demo of it in action here or just download the source and dive right in.

Joris de Wit has a (very) quick post about a handy tip he found about switching layouts easily with Twig in his Symfony2-based application - a handy ternary sort of switch that can detect when something's an Ajax request.

I just learned about the 'app' global variable in twig. It's very handy for loading a special layout for ajax requests.

The "app" variable allows you get get back at some of the settings of your application and check on special things like the isXMLHttpRequest in his example. For more information about Twig and how you can add it to your application, check out Twig-Project.org. Using it's as simple as adding a phar.

David Stockton has a new tutorial posted to his blog - a technique he's found useful in his Zend Framework application to make the ErrorController work with Ajax calls to reduce the message you get back to just a JSON response.

If you've ever built a Zend Framework MVC app which makes AJAX calls, you may have noticed that if an error occurs, you'll get a chunk of JSON followed by the HTML for the error page. If you've built a layout, you'll get all of that back to. This is fine if your users hit the page in the browser but it can cause problems with your JavaScript being able to correctly decode your JSON.

The fix is pretty simple, though, and only requires that you add the error handling action to the Ajax context to force it to drop the layout and any other HTML that might come along with the view. He includes a bit more code to have the error handler include the exceptions and pass them out to be included in the JSON response.