In symfony 1 it is possible to have different layouts for an application. But they all have to be put into the directory ‘myproject/apps/frontend/templates/’. But what if you want to use a layout from another location?

Assume you make a plugin with a specific layout, it would be nice to load the layout from the plugin directory, and not to have to copy the file to the global directory.

Here is how you can achieve this:

$template = $this->getContext()->getConfiguration()->getTemplateDir('MODULE', 'LAYOUT_FILE.php');
$this->setLayout($template . '/LAYOUT_FILE');

Let’s say you have the following:

my_project/
  plugins/
    my_plugin/
      modules/
        MyUser/
          actions/
            actions.php
          templates/
            indexSuccess.php
            MyUserLayout.php

The actions.php class could be something like this:

class MyUserAction extends sfActions {

  public function preExecute() {
    $template = $this->getContext()->getConfiguration()->getTemplateDir('MyUser', 'MyUserLayout.php');

    $this->setLayout($template . '/MyUserLayout');
  }

  public function executeIndex() {

  }
}

Have fun!

This is super cool!!!!

9Elements created a completely html page containing nothing more then Javascript and some of the tags that are created in the new HTML version.

This is really amazing as it is really the first time that I see a website that does some things I thought could only be done with Flash. I m overwhelmed with it an I suggest you take a look at it!! Be sure to look at it in an advanced browser ( Google Chrome 3.0, Safari 4 or the latest Firefox 3.5 version).

LOOK AT IT NOW

Brushes and Patterns

A few of the patterns and brushes i play with are those from our friends at Brusheezy. After a few years of working with Photoshop you’ll become quite handy in working with the brush tool, but for those just started out with Photoshop, these video tutorials might be very helpful.

• Make Your Brushes Glow
  
  In this photoshop tutorial video Eric shows us a simple way to create those glowing wispy lines with your photoshop brushes. Free free to comment and let us know if you know similar ways to create the same effect.
• How to Colorize Photoshop Brushes
  
  This Photoshop tutorial shows you two quick and easy methods for coloring your Adobe Photoshop brushes. Please leave a comment and let us know what you think!
• How to Create, Save & Upload Photoshop Patterns
  
  In this Photoshop tutorial, Eric shows us how to create photoshop patterns and upload them to Brusheezy!
• How to Download, Install & Use Photoshop Patterns!
  
  Learn step by step how to Download Photoshop Patterns from Brusheezy and then install them on your computer use them for your designs!
• How to Make Photoshop Brushes
  
  This helpful video will walk you through the steps you need to create your very own Photoshop Brush and then upload it to the site!
• How to Download and Install Photoshop Brushes
  
  Learn how to download and install all these beautiful photoshop brushes!

Make Your Brushes Glow

How to Colorize Photoshop Brushes

How to Create, Save & Upload Photoshop Patterns

How to Download, Install & Use Photoshop Patterns!

How to Make Photoshop Brushes

How to Download and Install Photoshop Brushes

All these videos came from Brusheezy.com.

One of my favorite blogs is that of jQuery 4 Designers and this time he created a cool tutorial on how to create one with jQuery.

It has always been a struggle to create a nice carousel but i think this guy managed to create a real cool one. Also one of the most interesting things about this website is that all the code he writes in jQuery also works after disabling JavaScript. Try it!

for more information and other cool tutorials you can visit his website: jQuery4Designers

The Type Tool:

A Comprehensive Introduction to the Type Tool written on Tutsplus is a great way to learn about this tool. It is in general, one of the first tools that everybody seems to try out and also one of the easiest to use. But using it means not that you are able to work with it. You might want to read and try out this tutorial to get a more in depth view on the type tool itself and how it works together with other things in Photoshop like shapes, paths and mask tools. The cool thing is that when you are going through this tutorial you have tons of examples that show you the result you should get and what you should start from.

One of the things I always intend to do on Tutsplus is reading the comments of the users; they often link to other tutorials that cover similar content.

go to the tutorial

The Pen Tool

I was always struggling with the pen tool in the first few months of my Photoshop adventure until I found this tutorial. As we all know the best way to learn Photoshop is by trying and creating things with it and this tutorial does that all the way.
Actually there is no reading involved in learning about the Pen tool; you just have to download their psd exercise file and get busy. Follow the guidelines and when you reach the end of the psd you’ll be able to do all basic things you should know. Try it out! And if that isn’t enough, you can always find the explanation in this tutorial too as it covers all functions, shortcuts, cursor types, options and keyboard controls.

go to the tutorial

Try these 2 tuts, you’ll see they are a big help, even after a few months and forgetting some functionalities, these tutorials will be a great help. Enjoy

Writing css code isn’t that hard, it’s easy, clean but can be a pain in the ass to keep it readable when you have hundreds or maybe thousands of lines of code.

When sticking to specific rules it can all be made a bit more readable:

• always use a reset of some sort
• alphabetize
• write comment
• consistency
• start in the right place
• Understanding Class and ID
• Power of li
• CSS Debugging Tools

read the full text to enhance your css code

5 Ways to Instantly Write Better CSS (click here )

20 Useful CSS Tips (click here)

Ever heard of ‘less is more’? This is, more than ever, a standard that every developer should follow while designing his new website. Why the f* would I start talking about that, you can ask yourself. Well, the answer is quite simple, as I was going to the toilet earlier this day and was in deep thoughts with the question: why isn’t everything designed and created as simple as a toilet room?

This is one of the only rooms and spaces in the world where you only find exactly what you need for the job and nothing else. No rubbish, no extra stupid information, just 3 simple things: a toilet, toilet paper and a little sink to wash your hands. These 3 things can easily be compared to 3 actions: brew, act, finish.

The same structure should be kept in mind when creating a website. Each page should contain only the information exactly needed without mixing up different parts together to one big pile of sh*t. Users don’t find the good or simplest way to the data they need. You would think that this is a very simple rule, but a lot of designers and organizations seem to forget this, so please, take your time while designing.

How can you do that?

A good idea doesn’t mean that your site will be a great success; you have to think it trough. You can start by taking your time to do a good analysis of the idea, work out the big lines before thinking of the details. Write down the major goals of the site and use them along the way to stay on the correct path. Split your site up into 5-6 major pieces as they will be the menu of your site, and be sure that this is a good structure. There is nothing more annoying for a developer then changing of big parts as they are in code named the same way.

For example, if one part of your site is called ‘Contact’, and after 3 months of development you decide to call this part of the site ‘About’, all code that the viewer doesn’t see will still be referred to as Contact.
2 options for a developer in this case, you can stop bothering yourself and don’t do any changes or change all contact to about, spend a lot of time doing this, but get a better result. I guess you see the picture why this is important.

In the frontend (for designers) this is actually the same story. Try to create a view (without design) where you should place every part, and be sure about the positioning, as this is very frustrating for a designer if this changes after designing the layout. A template and/or layout is often created for or in function of specific parts on each page, so if they are replaced, your page could easily get another layout and impression.

Try to put only the necessary content on each page, the only thing that can be put in a page besides the data are links to other parts of the site. Don’t put products on about pages; don’t put contact information on a product page. If I wanted the contact information, I would’ve clicked the contact button.

Try to keep these things in mind as they will ease up the path to a simple, clean website and only correct data will be displayed because: less is more!!!

How is it possible that my emails are blocked by spam filters?

I got this question from a few friends and a client and this are the things you can do:

Check your newsletter/email on a spam checker tool
Programmers heaven spamchecker
Lyris contentchecker

The problem for the client was the subject line, in order to get a correct and acceptable subject you need to think carefully about it.
A spam filter recognizes capitals and exclamation marks and blocks your mail on them, so try to avoid that.
Make sure your mail/subject doesn’t contain the words on the list you can find here
And also a few others:

• Try not to use attachments
• Avoid bcc (blind copy) to send your mail
• Don’t create an all image email, this big email, that contains all the text in your email, will probably be blocked. Another important issue is that a firewall sometimes removes images from emails so your recipient gets a blank email.
• So try to create a text-based email. Best thing to do is to provide an html AND text based version of the email.

Good luck.

A lot of programmers seem to hate the layout part of the job. Well if you work in a big company you probably won’t do the two jobs, but in some cases, or when you work in a small company (ex 1-5 employees) you have to do them both (layout and programming). And for those guys, it isn’t always easy to have inspiration right away, well there is a solution.

Here are a few sites that have a huge portfolio with nice layout sites. You can grab the css in some cases, and that’s the interesting part of it.

Take a look at them.
cssmania
cssremix/
cssimport
designsnack
Anyone got a better idea to get inspiration? Feel free to add your way of working in the comments.

A lot of people create easy forms but don’t think it trough before designing the page. I listed 5 useful attributes/elements a lot of people intend to forget or simply don’t know why they are using it.

Use get or post to send a form

Get will append the form data to the URL that is set in the action attribute of the form and is used when the form is idempotent. For example on search forms.
Post will not append it to the URL but sent it in the body of the form. It should be used when we are modifying a database or doing a subscription.

What is enctype?

This attribute is used to submit the form to the server; it is only needed when using post. Whenever you use a file field in your form you should set the enctype value to multipart/form-data, otherwise it uses the default value application/x-www-form-urlencoded.

Use tabindex

This creates an order when going from one field to the next using your tab button. When creating complex forms, this might come in quite handy. It creates the opportunity for the developer to indicate the order the form needs to be completed. Every field in the form gets a ‘tabindex’ value starting from 0 with a maximum of 32767.

Connect a label to a field

It’s always handy to have a label for each input field, so you can click on the label and the cursor automatically gets positioned in the input field. The only thing to do is put a ‘for’ attribute in the label and give it the id of the corresponding field as value. Easy and Handy for users

Fieldset and legend

This allows you to thematically group your form elements. The ‘legend’ element gives you the opportunity to create a title on each fieldset and has to be put in between the fieldset tags. Use css styling to create a nice design for the fieldset.

Greetings K.