I was working on a site recently and a client wanted an image linked to a feedback form. But everytime I linked an image, it gave a nasty blue border around it! Check below the break for the simple tip!

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Skip the boring stuff, and figure out how to make ringtones here.

A few years ago when my friend got some fancy smart phone, I was immediately jealous of the fact that he could easily use his MP3′s as ringtones. As a (barely) post adolescent with a need for musically identification, the ringtone market for phones sucked. I was lucky enough to have M.O.P.’s “Ante up” as my ringtone for a few years. It generated a lot of dirty looks, but I was never able to find another ringtone that was quite as obnoxious. The jealousy incurred upon hearing my friend’s phone play 2Pac’s “I aint mad at ya” was depressing to say the least.

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Update – check out the post at AmpTools, if you’re using a copy of Zend Framework version 1.7.8 or above – the below code may not work for you.

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Recently on a project I was developing using the Zend Framework, I needed to validate a form using a CAPTCHA image.

CAPTCHA example image

For those who don’t know, CAPTCHA stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. Ever been to a website and seen an image like the one to the right? Basically, it’s a way to make sure a human is filling out the form and not just some robot. How? Robots can’t decifer what words *might* be from an image – only a human can.

Zend Framework has a set of great classes included to take away a lot of the headaches involved with setting up a CAPTCHA system. The one I use is Zend_Captcha_Image, which creates an image for you and sets up a Session so you will be able to validate all information appropriately. Problem is, there’s little documentation out there on this.

The best example I found was on Robert Basic’s Blog. My only gripe about it was that it used Zend_Form.

Zend_Form is a great class and all, but if you’re like me, you don’t like using it because you give up the control you get over Form creation + validation. It’s a great way to skip writing HTML for a form – but what if your client wants a very specific design attached to their form? Then Zend_Form becomes a hassle to design to a specification. And yes, Zend_Form makes validation easy, but what if your client wants to set up very specific validation messages? Again, Zend_Form becomes more trouble than it’s worth. Yes, it is flexible enough as a class to edit it any way you want, but I feel NOT using Zend_Form will ultimately make your forms more flexible.

So, beyond the break, I’ll show you everything you need to know to use Zend_Captcha_Image WITHOUT Zend_Form! If you’d like to learn the implementation using Zend_Form, please visit Robert Basic’s Blog.

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