You’re probably wondering what I’m talking about here, but to clarify it’s database speak and a DBA is a database administrator :-) So why do you need to concern yourself with such jargon? Well if you’ve deployed a PHP/MySQL (or other scripting language or database) web application, then you need a basic understanding of this stuff.
You need to keep in mind when installing anything on your website or blog that you are working in a secured environment and must be vigilant.
I regularly develop and also install PHP/MySQL scripts for clients, which perform a wide range of functions and I am often asked to “clean up the mess”. I want to share a mistake that I regularly see because it’s very important and could threaten your website or blog’s security.
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When I develop websites or blogs, I always test my work on a number of different browsers and resolutions. Currently I load them in Internet Explorer 7.0, Firefox 2, Google Chrome and Apple Safari. This has always seemed a good selection and to date has served me well.
Recently I discovered Browsershots an excellent free service which makes screenshots of your web design in different browsers, enabling you to test your website or blog in almost 50 different browsers (less for Unix or Apple platform) and no that’s not a typo!
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I regularly tidy up web pages containing html errors and one of the most common is the lack of doctype information, which is supposed to be the first element on the page, prior to the opening tag. It’s the stuff that looks like this …
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd“>
<html xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml“>
So what is this for and do you need it?
Well the good news is that leaving out this information will not cause your page to fail to load or fall apart in a heap, but the bad news is that you are likely to get unpredictable results with different browsers.
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