It’s been a while since I’ve posted on here, I have been incredibly busy as of late but today at work I came across something I thought I would share as it may save some people quite a lot of trouble. I was helping a colleague produce a HTML driven e-mail which requires some absolute positioning, tested it in IE – no problems, so naturally I assumed it would be no issue in Outlook as Outlook uses IE’s engine to render HTML – wrong.

In Outlook 2007 Microsoft have found it a good idea to use Microsoft Word to render the HTML as opposed to a web browser, who’s purpose is to render HTML. As a result of this a lot of CSS support has been cut (including positioning).  So before you start doing any coding for HTML based e-mails that will be read via Outlook 2007 I would strongly recommend taking a look at the Word 2007 HTML and CSS Rendering Capabilities in Outlook 2007 article on MSDN as it contains a full reference as to what is now supported.

I also came across a very handy eBook by John Doub which contains some tips and tricks to work around the newly introduced limitations, Click Here to Download HTML e-Mail Rendering in Outlook 2007 by John Doub.

They say sometimes you have to take a step backwards to move forward, but this is one giant leap backwards as far as I’m concerned; hopefully Microsoft will bring back the HTML support that Outlook was once well known for.

This year my university decided to enter all the third year BSc computing students into a competition held by O’Reilly for the best and most original dissertation; my entry was of course phpAnalyzer. A couple of days ago along side the results of my degree, I got my prize in the mail as well as a little certificate – definitely a good way to end three years of higher education!

In addition to getting good results and winning the contest held by O’Reilly I also got a new job as a software developer, so now when I’m not at home programming, I’m at work programming! It’s been a bit tough making the transition from the life of a student to doing five full days of work every week but I can’t complain as I am doing something I love and I am working with nice people who are helping me get to grips with their way of doing things. As a result of starting my new job one of my new projects has been slowed down a bit, as well as the development of EDK (which is now nearly finished) but I’m slowly picking the pace back up as I get adjusted to working life. My new project is another Xbox LIVE game which I will also make available on the PC, I have managed to get quite a lot of people on board so far; at the moment the team consists of:

• One developer (myself as you can imagine)
• One artist
• Two graphics designers
• Five level designers
• Two audio engineers

The only thing really missing at the moment is someone to come up with a storyline, but if I fail to find anyone to come up with a plot I’ll just throw in more blood and violence – that is a suitable replacement for a good story isn’t it?

After many months of analysis, research, design, development and testing I have decided to open phpAnalyzer to the public. Up until this point I have been very secretive about the system as I produced it in partial fulfilment of my BSc and didn’t want anyone with more resources and time to be able to spring up a similar system overnight that voids the usefulness of my own; now however I can launch it and I hope that it will be of use to people and meet the goals it was originally designed to conquer.

Check out phpAnalyzer at: http://www.phpanalyzer.co.uk/

What is phpAnalyzer?

phpAnalyzer allows users to upload a script to the system, at which point it will scan the script for bad PHP development practise; once the file has been fully scanned a report will be displayed to the user which indicates what they need to revise and display possible solutions to the problems, which in most cases will contain links to the appropriate pages in the online PHP manual which will aid the user in implementing the updated and correct methods and or global objects.

Who is phpAnalyzer aimed at?

It is primarily aimed towards students / people learning PHP as with an ever growing number of students and freelance developers turning to online resources it is important that a tool be available that will allow the developer-to-be to ensure what they are reading about is indeed the way they should be tackling a given problem.

I recently ordered one of Apple’s new Aluminium Keyboards and as I expected I had some issues getting it fully working on a Windows machine, having never actually used an Apple keyboard before I was unaware that the alt keys on the Apple keyboards are actually where the Windows key would be on a regular keyboard, and the print screen and scroll lock keys are not present either, instead replaced by extra function buttons.

The only solution I came across was to extract the Windows drivers from Boot Camp however I didn’t want to fuss around trying to convert Apple’s DMG files to a format that can be mounted with any standard virtualisation software such as Daemon Tools.

Instead I made use of a tool called SharpKeys and re-mapped the appropriate keys, so now I can touch type as normal with my CTRL and ALT keys in the correct positions and use scroll lock and print screen, in addition I have also set F18 to lower the system volume and F19 to raise it.

If you are looking for the same functionality simply download This File, unzip the file inside and double click it, it will insert the appropriate values into your registry, after doing so you will need to restart your machine for the changes to become active.

Alternatively you can insert the following values yourself into the registry:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout]
“Scancode Map”=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,07,00,00,00,37,e0,64,00,46,00,65,00,\
5b,e0,38,00,38,00,5b,e0,2e,e0,69,00,30,e0,6a,00,00,00,00,00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout\DosKeybCodes]
“00040402″=”bg”
“00000c04″=”ch”
“00001004″=”ch”
“00001404″=”ch”
“0001041f”=”tr”
“0000041f”=”tr”
“00000412″=”ko”
“00000804″=”ch”
“00000425″=”et”
“00000426″=”us”
“00010426″=”us”
“00000427″=”us”
“00000411″=”jp”
“00000423″=”us”
“00000402″=”bg”
“00000419″=”ru”
“00010419″=”ru”
“00010c1a”=”us”
“00000c1a”=”us”
“00000422″=”us”
“00010402″=”us”
“00020402″=”bg”
“00030402″=”bg”
“00020422″=”us”
“0000041C”=”us”
“0000041a”=”yu”
“00000424″=”yu”
“00000405″=”cz”
“00010405″=”cz”
“0000040e”=”hu”
“0001040e”=”hu”
“00000415″=”pl”
“00010415″=”pl”
“00000418″=”ro”
“00010418″=”ro”
“00020418″=”ro”
“0000041b”=”sl”
“0001041b”=”sl”
“00000442″=”tk”
“00000813″=”be”
“0000080c”=”be”
“00001009″=”us”
“00010c0c”=”cf”
“00000c0c”=”cf”
“00000406″=”dk”
“00000413″=”nl”
“0000040b”=”su”
“0000040c”=”fr”
“00000407″=”gr”
“00010407″=”gr”
“0000040f”=”is”
“00001809″=”us”
“00000410″=”it”
“00010410″=”it”
“0000080a”=”la”
“00000414″=”no”
“00000816″=”po”
“00000416″=”br”
“0000040a”=”sp”
“0001040a”=”sp”
“0000041d”=”sv”
“0000100c”=”sf”
“00000807″=”sg”
“00000809″=”uk”
“00010409″=”dv”
“00030409″=”usl”
“00040409″=”usr”
“00020409″=”us”
“00000409″=”us”
“00000452″=”uk”
“0000046e”=”sf”
“00000408″=”gk”
“00010408″=”gk”
“00020408″=”gk”
“00050408″=”gk”
“00000404″=”ch”

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout\DosKeybIDs]
“0001041f”=”440″
“0000041f”=”179″
“00010415″=”214″
“00000442″=”440″
“00000410″=”141″
“00010410″=”142″
“00010408″=”220″
“00020408″=”319″

If this has helped you then please Digg It so that others may come across it too!