In this article we’ll take a look at the new methods that have been added to the 1.6+ release and some of the enhancements.

Using Swiftmailer with TLS now works as expected (thanks to the STARTTLS addition).

The full changelog is available here: https://raw.github.com/swiftmailer/swiftmailer/master/CHANGES

Install it as usual:

• download the archive
• use the PEAR channel
• use the Git repository

Here are the changes from the CHANGELOG:

• [33151] fixed usage of mb_strlen in tasks (closes #9940)
• [33149] added missing admin.delete_object event (closes #9943)
• [33137] fixed multiple database support in Propel plugin (for the generator and sfPropelData, closes #8345)
• [33125] fixed the possibility to include files included in an exclude rule in the deploy task (closes #9912)
• [33122] fixed include|get_component when sfPartialView class is customized (closes #9932)
• [33121] fixed protocol relative URL in the asset helper (closes #9936)
• [33053] fixed typo (closes #9927, based on a patch from pmallet)

The main change in this release is how Propel tasks work; this is actually the first version where the propel tasks work as advertized. By default, they do their work on the default propel connection. For projects that use another default connection name, or for projects using multiple connections, you must pass the correct connection you want to work with.

If you've checked out a copy of the tag from Subversion you can switch to the latest version:

$ svn switch http://svn.symfony-project.com/tags/RELEASE_1_4_15

If you are using the PEAR package you can update using the pear command:

$ pear upgrade symfony/symfony-1.4.15

And as always, don't forget to clear your cache after upgrading.

Upgrading your existing Drupal 7 sites is strongly recommended. There are no new features in these releases. For more information about the Drupal 7.x release series, consult the Drupal 7.0 release announcement.

Changelog

Drupal 7.9 is mainly a bug fix release. The full list of changes between the 7.8 and 7.9 releases can be found by reading the 7.9 release notes. A complete list of all bug fixes in the stable 7.x branch can be found in the git commit log.

Update notes

- Upon first upgrading to 7.9, there are reports of Panels Pages going missing at #1323162: Panels disappear after updating core to 7.9. Solution is to clear the cache.

Known issues

- Using drush si in Drush 5.x causes error #1314392: drush site-install on Drupal 7.9 fails with a fatal error "Call to undefined function cache_get()". The fix is to apply the patch at http://drupal.org/node/673020#comment-5106306 or update to the latest -dev release of D7.

The PHP development team is proud to announce the second beta release of PHP 5.4. PHP 5.4 includes new language features and removes several legacy (deprecated) behaviours. Windows binaries can be downloaded from the Windows QA site.

THIS IS A DEVELOPMENT PREVIEW - DO NOT USE IT IN PRODUCTION!

Please help us to identify bugs by testing new features and looking for unintended backward compatibility breaks, so we can fix the problems and fully document intended changes before PHP 5.4.0 is released. Report findings to the QA mailing list and/or the PHP bug tracker.

This release includes numerous bug fixes and improvements since the first beta release.

Read the NEWS file for a complete list of changes.

On its face it's a fairly simple patch; the new code in it is maybe a dozen lines. But it's an important part of a larger shift within Drupal to better embrace the modern web, on the server as well as the client.

Previously I showed you some of the cool stuff you can do when you’re working with canvas.  One area I touched on briefly was the video and audio tag and how to manipulate them from the canvas.

Aside from the canvas, the video and audio tags provide the developer with a rich UI without having to install third-party plug-ins like QuickTime, Flash or Silverlight.  This is because these tags are embedded directly into the webpage.

This in turn is a big deal because it can save you plenty of development time. Modern browsers like Chrome, Firefox, IE9 (and newcomer IE10) support a multitude of video and audio formats.

There are two big benefits to using video and audio tags:

1. Hardware acceleration.  Playing a video in a hardware accelerated browser will use significantly less CPU power than it would in another browser.  If you’re controlling these tags in JavaScript, this rendering can be offloaded to the GPU which helps in the responsiveness of the website.  This is important if you want the playback to be streamlined.
2. Plug-in free.  You don’t have to worry about users downloading the right plug-in or the complexities in supporting many of them.

 If you’re unfamiliar with HTML5, before diving into this article you might like to read Yes, You Can Use HTML5 Today! and HTML5 and Even Fancier Forms.

Markup for Video

The video tag is awesome because it gives you the power to embed video content straight into the webpage without needing a third-party plug-in.  To begin with, let’s take a look at the video tag and I’ll explain each attribute.

<video width="320"
        src="intro.mp4"
        height="240"
        poster="intro.jpg"
        autoplay
        controls
        loop
        autobuffer
        >
        This content appears if the video tag or the codec is not supported.
</video>

Here’s the breakdown of the attributes:

• width – sets the width of the video element in pixels.  If the width is omitted, the browser will use the default width of the video, if it’s available.
• height – sets the height of the video element.  If the height is omitted, the browser will use the default height of the video, if it’s available.
• src – sets the video file to be played.  For reach, you should supply video formats that are supported by the most popular browsers.
• poster – sets the image file that will be displayed while the video content is being loaded, or until the user plays the video.  If a poster file is omitted, the browser will show the first frame of the video.
• autoplay – instructs the browser to automatically play the video when the page is loaded.
• controls – displays the video controls to control the video playback.  The controls are visible when the user hovers over a video.  It’s also possible to tab through the controls.
• loop – instructs the browser to loop the media playback.
• autobuffer – used when autoplay is not used.  The video is downloaded in the background, so when the user does decide to watch the video, it starts immediately.

Let’s use IE9 as an example to represent modern browsers.  They’ll see the video playing:

If the user is using an old browser, for example IE6, 7 or 8, they’ll see this message.

The reason earlier versions of IE display this message is simple: they don’t support the video tag.  But what happens if the browser doesn’t support the video you’re trying to play?  To work around this issue you simply add multiple video sources.  The video tag supports child source elements.  Here’s what HTML looks like.

<video width="320"
        height="240"
        poster="intro.jpg"
        autoplay
        controls
        loop>
    This content appears if the video tag or the codec is not supported.
    <source src="intro.mp4" type="video/mp4" />
    <source src="intro.webm" type="video/webm" />
    <source src="intro.ogv" type="video/ogg" />
</video>

By adding multiple sources, the browser will work its way through the list from top to bottom until it finds a video source it can play.  Here’s a breakdown of the attributes.

• src – sets the video file to be played.  For reach, you should supply video formats that are supported by the most popular browsers.
• type – tells the browser what kind of container format is used.

It’s important to note the type attribute.  If this is omitted, the browser needs to download a small piece of each file to work out if it’s supported or not.  This is a complete waste of bandwidth and totally unnecessary.

In the code above we’ve removed the src attribute and replaced it with three source child elements.  The main reason for supplying multiple video sources is reach.  Not all browsers support the same codecs, so it’s important to create a video file and encode it with the correct codec that your target browser supports.

In this case, a modern browser would pick the first source and play its associated source file.  Also in the code above, the video will automatically play when the page is loaded.  This might not sit well with some of your users, so it’s a good option to turn this off and allow them to start the video when they want to.  To give them this ability we use JavaScript.

The video element supports play and pause methods, which gives you the ability to programmatically control the video.  The following example does just that.

<script type="text/javascript">
    var vid = function() {
        return {
        play: function() {
            var v = document.getElementById("myVideo");
            v.play();
        },
        pause: function() {
            var v = document.getElementById("myVideo");
            v.pause();
      }
    }
} ();
</script>
<body>
    <h1>Video and legacy browser fallback</h1>
    <video width="320"
            height="240"
            poster="intro.jpg"
            id="myVideo">
        This content appears if the video tag or the codec is not supported.
        <source src="intro.mp4" type="video/mp4" />
        <source src="intro.webm" type="video/webm" />
        <source src="intro.ogv" type="video/ogg" />
    </video>
    <br />
    <button onclick="vid.play();">Play</button>
    <button onclick="vid.pause();">Pause</button>
</body>

Here’s how the webpage will look with the play and pause buttons.

This is the best option as it gives the user the power to start the video playback when they decide.  You can even turn the volume up or down by using the volume method.  Here’s how to do that.

<script type="text/javascript">
    var vid = function() {
        return {
            increase: function() {
                var v = document.getElementById("myVideo");
                v.volume += 0.2;
            },
            decrease: function() {
                var v = document.getElementById("myVideo");
                v.volume -= 0.2;
            }
        }
    } ();
</script>
<body>
    <h1>Video and legacy browser fallback</h1>
    <video width="320"
            height="240"
            poster="intro.jpg"
            id="myVideo"
            >
        This content appears if the video tag or the codec is not supported.
        <source src="intro.mp4" type="video/mp4" />
        <source src="intro.webm" type="video/webm" />
        <source src="intro.ogv" type="video/ogg" />
    </video>
    <br />
    <button onclick="vid.increase();">Volumne Up</button>
    <button onclick="vid.decrease();">Volumne Down</button>
</body>

A complete list of all the methods and events you can use with the video tag can be found here.

Multiple Video Formats

At the end of the day, you need to have the correct video codec for the browser, otherwise the video won’t play.  It doesn’t get much simpler than that.  The hard thing to get your head around is which format is supported by which browser.  Here are the popular video formats:

• mp4
• H.264
• Baseline
• Main
• AAC
• WebM
• VP8 (if the codec is installed)

Because the HTML 5 specification is unfinished, the video codecs mentioned above may expand or decrease in size.  Early drafts of the specification mandated that browsers should have built-in support for multimedia in two codecs; Ogg Vorbis for audio and Ogg Theora for video.  The result is that the specification makes no reference to what codecs should be supported by the browser.

Google announced they’re open-sourcing a video codec called VP8.  IE9 supports this codec if it’s installed.  If you’d like to install VP8 for IE9, you can download it here.

Markup for Audio

Like the video tag, the audio tag is fantastic because it gives you the power to embed audio content into the webpage without needing a third-party plug-in.  Let’s take a look at the audio tag and I’ll explain each attribute.

<audio src="elvis.mp3"
        preload="auto"
        controls
        autoplay
        loop
        autobuffer
        muted
        crossorigin
        >
    This content appears if the audio tag or the codec is not supported.
</audio>

Here’s the breakdown of the attributes:

• src – sets the audio file to be played.  For reach, you should supply audio formats that are supported by the most popular browsers
• preload – none / metadata / auto – where metadata means preload just the metadata and auto leaves the browser to decide whether to preload the whole file
• controls – displays the video controls to control the video playback.  The controls are visible when the user hovers over a video.  It’s also possible to tab through the controls
• autoplay – instructs the browser to automatically play the video when the page is loaded
• loop – instructs the browser to loop the media playback.
• autobuffer – used when autoplay is not used.  The video is downloaded in the background, so when the user does decide to watch the video, it starts immediately.
• muted – sets the default audio output.
• crossorigin – a CORS settings attribute.

If the user is using a modern browser, they’ll hear the audio playing.

If the user is using an old browser, for example IE6, 7 or 8, they’ll see the following comments.

If the browser supports the audio tag, but not the audio codec, the user will see the following output.

To work around these issues you simply add multiple audio sources.  The audio tag supports child source elements.  Here’s what HTML looks like.

<audio preload="auto"
        loop
        autobuffer
        controls
        >
    This content appears if the audio tag or the codec is not supported.
    <source src="elvis.ogg" type="audio/ogg" />
    <source src="elvis.mp3" type="audio/mpeg" />
</audio>

By adding multiple sources, the browser will work its way through the list from top to bottom until it finds an audio source it can play.  Here’s a breakdown of the attributes.

• src – sets the audio file to be played.  For reach, you should supply audio formats that are supported by the most popular browsers.
• type – tells the browser what kind of container format is used.

As with the video tag, it’s important to specify the type attribute.  If this is omitted, the browser needs to download a small piece of each file to work out if it’s supported or not.  The audio tag will run from the top source until it finds an audio file it can play.

The audio tag is available through JavaScript, so it’s possible to create some more aesthetic buttons to allow the user to play and pause the audio.  For this example I’m using border-radius that’s available in CSS3 to give me some rounded div tags.  Here’s the code.

<head>
<style type="text/css">
    div
    {
        height: 1.5em;
        width: 5em;
        -moz-border-radius: 15px;
        border-radius: 15px;
        font-family: verdana;
        font-size: 0.8em;
        background-color: #e0e0e0;
        text-align: center;
        text-shadow: 0 -1px 1px #222;
        float: left;
    }
</style>
<script type="text/javascript">
    var aud = function () {
        return {
            play: function () {
                var v = document.getElementById("myAudio");
                v.play();
            },
            pause: function () {
                var v = document.getElementById("myAudio");
                v.pause();
            },
            init: function () {
                var play = document.getElementById("play");
                var pause = document.getElementById("pause");
                play.addEventListener("click", aud.play);
                pause.addEventListener("click", aud.pause);
            }
        }
    } ();
    window.onload = aud.init;
</script>
</head>
<body>
    <h1>
        Audio and legacy browser fallback</h1>
    <audio preload="auto"
        loop
        autobuffer
        id="myAudio">
        This content appears if the audio tag or the codec is not supported.
        <source src="elvis.ogg" type="audio/ogg">
        <source src="elvis.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
    </audio>
    <div id="play">
        Play
    </div>
    <div id="pause">
        Pause
    </div>
</body>
</html>

And the rounded play and pause buttons can be seen below.

I’ve shown you only two functions available through JavaScript.  Rest assured there are many more for your to work with through JavaScript.  A full list of them can be found here.

Supported Formats

The audio tag is only as good as the files you supply, so you need to be aware of which codecs are supported.  Here are the popular audio formats:

• MP3
• AAC
• Again, iP4
• WAV

It’s important to remember that because the HTML5 specification is a work in progress, the audio codecs mentioned above may expand or decrease over time, but it’s a safe bet MP3 will be there when the specification is finally completed.

Further Reading

To learn more about HTML5  video and audio, check out these links:

• Unlocking the Power of HTML5 <audio>
• 5 Things You Need to Know to Start Using <video> and <audio> Today
• HTML5 Guide for Developers – video and audio Elements

One face detection library I found is Face Detection by Jay Salvat and Liu Liu. This is a standard jQuery plugin that receives an image and returns an array of coordinates of faces found within the image. Let's have a look at how to use it!

Il s'agit très clairement d'une version de consolidation car elle n'apporte que des corrections de bugs et des améliorations cosmétiques, ainsi qu'une optimisation au niveau des performances de l'opérateur ternaire.

PHP 5.4 ß 2 ne contient donc aucune nouvelle fonctionnalité et nous sommes donc maintenant très clairement entré dans le processus de consolidation qui mènera à la sortie de la version définitive, prévue pour avant la fin de l'année.

Pour autant, la lecture du fichier NEWS n'est pas totalement inintéressante.

On y apprend notamment que l'optimisation de performance concerne l'opérateur ternaire, qui avait jusqu'à maintenant la mauvaise habitude de faire une copie de ses second et troisième arguments, au lieu de les renvoyer par référence.

Si cela n'avait pas un impact sur des variables de type simple, il n'en était pas de même dans le cas de type complexe comme les tableaux ou les objets et cela pouvait avoir des conséquences relativement importante.

La modification de Arnaud Leblanc fait que l'opérateur ternaire essaye dorénavant dans la mesure du possible de retourner ses arguments par référence, ce qui élimine dans la plupart des cas son impact négatif sur les performances.

Vu l'utilisation assez récurrente de l'opérateur ternaire par les développeur, c'est donc une optimisation plus que bienvenue qui va encore augmenter les performances de PHP 5.4, très nettement en hausse par rapport à PHP 5.3, aussi bien au niveau de la rapidité que de l'utilisation de la mémoire.

C'est une bonne nouvelle, mais j'avoue être resté sur ma faim, d'autant que l'électro-encéphalogramme du dépôt de PHP n'a pas arrêté de jouer aux montagnes russes depuis un mois et que le nombre moyen de modifications n'a pas cessé d'augmenter, et j'avais donc l'impression qu'un gros travail avait été effectué.

J'ai donc décidé d'aller regarder un peu plus dans le détails les modifications qui ont été effectuées par les développeurs du langage entre les deux versions ß.

Et mon impression a été confirmé, puisqu'il y a eu plus de 110 modifications réalisées sur le code durant cette période, dont 42 corrections de bug, alors que NEWS en annonce environs une vingtaine.

J'ai également appris que la demande #52569 a été implémentée, ce qui signifie qu'il est maintenant possible de démarrer FPM sans que ce dernier ne crée de sous-processus et ne le fasse qu'à la demande, ce qui peut être très intéressant dans certain contexte d'utilisation.

Pour autant, je n'ai rien eu d'autre d'un peu croustillant à me mettre sous la dent, le reste des modifications étant des corrections mineures, du nettoyage de code ou de l'optimisation ou de la correction de tests unitaires.

Il n'y a donc vraiment rien de transcendent à attendre de cette nouvelle version ß mais cela ne veut nullement dire qu'il ne faut pas la tester, bien au contraire, puisque plus elle sera utilisée, testée, torturée et maltraitée, plus la version finale sera de grande qualité.

Je ne peux donc que très fortement vous encourager à la télécharger, à jouer les sadiques et à remonter tous les bugs que vous trouverez d'ici la sortie de la version Release Candidate qui devrait survenir aux environs du 10 novembre 2011.

Dans l'intervalle, ceux qui se rendront au PHP Tour 2011 auront la possibilité d'obtenir des informations supplémentaires au sujet de PHP 5.4 en général et de sa feuille de route en particulier directement à la source, puisque  David Soria Parra y fera une conférence sur le sujet.

Pour conclure, une version spécifique à Windows est comme d'habitude disponible, et même si un gros travail a été effectué, cette version n'est toujours qu'une ß et il donc est très fortement déconseillé de l'utiliser en production.

Stability is getting better with each release as we add new unit tests each time we fix a bug. As a matter of fact, since the 2.0.0 release at the end of July, we have added 59 new tests and more than 180 assertions in our test suite.

The CHANGELOG has all the details about the changes and you can even have a look at the full diff.

If you are starting a new project, you can get the Symfony Standard Edition distribution on the download page.

If you already have a project based on the Symfony Standard Edition 2.0.x, you can easily upgrade to 2.0.4 by getting the new deps and deps.lock files.

Then, run the vendors script:

$ ./bin/vendors install

And don't forget to clear your cache:

$ php ./app/console cache:clear

You can get the beta from the jQuery CDN:

• http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.7b1.js

Please help us by dropping this code into your existing application and letting us know if anything no longer works. Please file a bug ticket and be sure to mention that you’re testing against jQuery 1.7 BETA 1.

Also be sure to explore all the new features and see if your favorite pet-peeve bug has been fixed. If you wait until the final release to do your testing it will be too late!

As always, we want to encourage everyone from the community to try and get involved in contributing back to jQuery core. We’ve set up a full page of information dedicated towards becoming more involved with the team. The team is here and ready to help you help us!

Oh, you probably want to know what changed, right? Addy Osmani has made a great start with his recent post, so let’s cover the stuff that isn’t on his list.

New Event APIs: .on() and .off()

Over time, jQuery has evolved three ways to attach events to elements: .bind() , .live(), and .delegate(). Underneath it all, though, the three event APIs call the browser’s event system; that can lead to surprising interactions. For example, $(document).unbind("click") will remove all .live("click", ...) events, since those delegated events are attached to document. (This is also why you should use event namespaces.)

Our current event APIs aren’t going away soon, but to address the inconsistencies we’ve introduced a new and simple pair of event methods that can do the work of all three:

    $(elems).on(events, selector, data, fn);
    $(elems).off(events, selector, fn);

If a selector is provided, it’s a delegated event; otherwise it’s directly bound. All the features of the old APIs are there; for example events can be a space-separated string of event names and/or namespaces, or it can be an object where the keys are events and the values are event handler functions. Here are some examples of how the old methods map into the new ones:

Form Change and Submit Events in IE 6/7/8

These old Internet Explorer versions are likely to be haunting us for some time, so we’ve spent a while trying to improve their behavior. Event delivery performance has been greatly improved for them, but the biggest change is that we are using a different approach to fix their non-bubbling and broken form events. As a result we were able to greatly simplify and shorten the special events code. These events should work without any problems–even better than before, since we closed about a half-dozen related bugs–but please keep your eyes open for any unusual behavior.

Animation Improvements

Before version 1.7, if you stopped an animation before it completed it could create a situation where the element being animated would never return to its full size; it would essentially be stuck at the height that it was when the animation was stopped. We’ve fixed that by remembering the original dimensions before the animation starts so that they can be used later. This eliminates a major annoyance in using certain animations, particularly toggling ones.

.removeData() Enhancements

Addy mentioned this one as well, but the .removeData() API now lets you pass either a space-separated string of names or an array of names to be removed. Since spaces were previously allowed in data names, the code first checks for the exact name as you specified it before splitting the string on spaces. That way, no existing code should break as a result of this enhancement.

jQuery 1.7 BETA 1 Change Log

Here is a complete list of changes made for the 1.7 BETA 1 release.

Ajax

• #9399: Deprecate jqXHR.success and jqXHR.error

Attributes

• #5479: removeAttr: remove multiple attributes
• #10278: checkboxEl.attr(‘checked’) returns stale value after checkboxEl.click()

Core

• #6485: Solution for HTML5 in IE
• #7102: Register jQuery as a CommonjS async module
• #9453: $.inArray does not support fromIndex

Css

• #10267: IE8 and window is(‘:visible’) crashes

Data

• #7323: Allow removing multiple data keys at once with $.fn.removeData
• #8909: $(element).data() will scan all attributes more than needed.
• #8921: jQuery private data should stay private

Deferred

• #8856: Request: deferred.isUnresolved()
• #9033: try{ } finally{ } error in IE8
• #9398: Proposal for Improved Deferreds

Effects

• #5684: Effects: exception in animation callback causes endless loop
• #6150: .stop sometimes doesn’t clear .delay
• #6641: Calling stop() within animation finished callback causes other animations to freeze
• #8685: Animations should keep track of animation state in order to properly address stacked animations
• #9280: Allow multiple effect queues for animate()
• #9548: animate does not work with fill-opacity css property for svg elements

Event

• #3368: event.metaKey should be assigned to event.ctrlKey on Non-Mac only
• #6170: jQuery(window).scroll(); causes IE* to scroll to 0,0
• #6319: Regression: stopPropagation inside change handlers in IE is incorrectly applied to keydown event
• #6386: support data argument for live events via “event.special.live.add”
• #6593: IE8: DOM 0 event handler called twice when a separate handler is attached via jQuery
• #6667: submit event doesn’t delegate in IE* under certain conditions
• #6705: focus() causes focus event to be handled twice in IE8
• #6903: special events need a way to determine whether they are being bound with .bind vs .live/.delegate
• #6942: JQuery.event.fix causes unnecessary reflows in IE when handling key events
• #7139: “hover” event alias should work for .bind as well as .live
• #7161: Submit event on a form element not unbound properly in IE
• #7444: Submitting form with “Enter” instead of button click on ie8 or ie7 triggers live submit event twice.
• #8157: Focusing an already focused text field will prevent the change event from firing in IE
• #8728: Event ‘mouseenter’ not firing when the element being left is removed on leaving
• #8789: Meta: Event Property Hooks
• #8858: Special events – _default method doesn’t have access to the `data` argument of the trigger method
• #8866: IE8 input[type=file] delegated change event files only on blur
• #8982: bind(“unload someOther”) => on unload, handler is not executed only once.
• #9069: when hover over a child of an element, mouseleave fires when using live or delegate
• #9279: delegate() bind does not handle mouseover/mouseout and mouseenter/mouseout correctly for selected elements
• #9393: Unify and DRY out event system
• #9593: Delegated submit event is not instanceof jQuery.Event in IE
• #9724: Infinite loop in trigger function when window.parentNode is a DOM element
• #9901: event.handleObj.namespace incorrect when using .delegate
• #9933: jQuery.fn.toggle() should store state in private data object
• #9951: Wrong order in .trigger() when DOM is modified in a handler

Manipulation

• #6782: carefully allow more strings to use innerHTML
• #7037: Duplicate mouseover and mouseout events added to cloned element.

Selector

• #5637: Boolean (and Empty) Attribute Selectors Fail
• #7128: attribute selector is inconsistent between qSA and Sizzle due to use of DOM properties
• #9261: Has Attribute not working in filter/children/siblings
• #9570: Selector $(‘form[name=".."]‘) returns zero elements in IE8 under some conditions
• #10178: $(window).is(“a”) >> Uncaught TypeError: Cannot call method ‘toLowerCase’ of undefined
• #10315: Sizzle ignores seed argument when using positional selectors

Support

• #6809: Add jQuery.support.fixedPosition