NetTuts.com has posted their list of what they think should be New Year's resolutions for every developer:

In less than a week, we'll be in 2012. I know it's a cliché, but where has the year gone? Naturally, we're now at the time of year when folks set goals for the new year. While you might have some goals for your "real" life, how about a few resolutions for your developer life?

Suggestions include:

• Get Better At What You Know
• Engage the Community
• Take Better Care Of Yourself
• Use Better Programming Practices
• Take a Break

On DZone.com today there's a new post written up by Mike Bernat about making web test cases for CakePHP applications with SimpleTest.

Most of the applications I work on have very straight-forward components and not a lot of complex functions/methods. I would only be testing whether or not they worked at all, rather than if they worked in a wide-array of situations. [...] For example, unit-testing a simple news list and detail page is probably overkill. Sure, you can test your classes by simple instantiating them but that only goes so far. My new method involves using SimpleTest's Scriptable Browser to actually crawl webpages and ensure that the proper data is being displayed.

He includes a few snippets of code to show how to implement SimpleTest's web test functionality - one that just checks a HTTP response values, another that checks for text on the page, one testing for a login on an admin page and a test for add/edit pages to ensure valid loading based on URLs/links.

In a recent post to his blog Rob Diana has posted a summary he's created of Indeed.com and SimplyHired.

August is one of the months that I devote to job trends. Last week I focused on the Python, PHP, JavaScript, Flex and Groovy.

According to the results on Indeed Javascript is in huge demand right now, completely overshadowing the others on the list. PHP came in second here. The results from SimplyHired show a similar story, but the gap between Javascript and second place - Flex - is a bit smaller. PHP came in third here.

On his blog Martin Sikora shares a solution that many a Symfony developer out there might find handy for running their application in a shared hosting environment:

Some time ago (actually when I was making this blog) I posted on stackoveflow.com a question on how to configure Symfony to run on shared webservers where you can't change your website's document root. I solved it but forgot that I was asking and left it without any answer.

The main problem is that the DOCUMENT_ROOT for the hosting service can't be changed by the users of the shared host. To solve this he modified his routing rules (sfPatternRouting class) and changed his .htaccess file to rewrite things over from just "/page" to "/web/page" instead. A simple solution, but it might be evasive if you've never configured it before.

On the Techie Talks blog today there's a post from Idrish Laxmidhar with a few simple reminders of things you can do to help with the basic security of your PHP applications, mostly surrounding filtering and escaping.

The list includes some of the basics like:

• Avoiding $_REQUEST when possible because of the ambiguity of where the information could come from
• Keep register_globals off (thankfully a default!)
• Checking values for specific data types before using them
• Filtering user input
• Disabling the error output (turning down the reporting levels) on a production environment

For some more good recommendations on good security practices in PHP applications, check out this list or some of the recommendations from the PHP manual itself.

In this new post to his blog Robert Basic has a review of a book from php|architect (by Matthew Turland), "Guide to Web Scraping with PHP".

It took me a while to grab myself a copy of Matthew Turland's "Guide to Web Scraping with PHP", but a few weeks ago a copy finally arrived and I had the pleasure of reading it. [...] My overall impression of the book is that it was worth the time and I'm really glad that I bought it. Matthew did a great job explaining all the tools we have at our disposal for writing web scrapers and how to use them.

He talks about the content of a few specific chapters (the HTTP protocol, client libraries you can use and how to prepare documents for parsing) and notes that there's not much bad he can think of about the book:

It is a guide, clear and straight-to-the-point, explaining what tools are there, which one to use and how for writing scrapers and that's exactly what I wanted to know.

NetTuts.com has posted what they call the ACBs of Web Development, a list of technologies - one for each letter of the alphabet - that you as a web developer would do well to learn at least a little about.

Web development can often be an utterly perplexing affair. Today, aimed at beginners, I'd like to introduce you to twenty six concepts or technologies, each mapping to a letter of the alphabet. Sounds wonky? It probably is!

Technologies in their list include:

• Ajax
• Firebug
• Keyword Optimization
• Node.js
• Source Control
• WordPress

For each letter they've also included a few links to some related reading on the subject.

If you're looking to take that next step in expanding your development/design knowledge outside of your local area, you might consider attending one of the many conferences out there on a wide range of topics. Finding them may not be the easiest thing, though, so Smashing Magazine has posted this huge list of conferences yet to come in 2010.

Using the contents of [last year's] list along with some other sources, we've compiled a list of web design and development-related conferences and events that will be taking place in the next six to eight months. As always, there is no way for us to be able to include every possible event here, but we'll be glad to update the list if you provide a comment to an upcoming event that you feel would be of interest to graphic designers or web developers.

The list is huge but they have it broken up into monthly chunks to make it a bit easier to digest with events like:

• An Event Apart D.C.
• Web Directions USA
• Blackberry Developer Conference
• Future of Web Apps
• International PHP Conference
• Front-Trends Conference
• Brooklyn Beta

The Pique Web podcast has released their third episode with a special guest, Chris Shiflett, joining hosts Paul Reinheimer and Sean Coates.

n this episode, Chris Shiflett joins hosts Paul Reinhimer and Sean Coates to talk about user accounts, sessions and best practices for modern web applications. Sean also had the opportunity to speak with Lee Fernandes, the creator of the PHP Anthem, and we attached the conversation (and the song) to the end of this episode.

Things mentioned in this episode include BrooklynBeta, 1Password, Weak Web of Trust and the lyrics to the PHP Anthem. You can either directly download this latest mp3 or subscribe to their feed for this and other episodes.