Version 1.3 of BalfBar is now available to download and brings a general set of improvements and new features. I'm still working on the tidy up of BalfBar as a major project but that's for another update still to come which I'm looking forward to 🤪 . The joys of being a software developer all over again .
The new version of BalfBar brings in a new kind of menu which is known as the mobile pushmenu. You can see this below:
As you can see, this pushes the whole document across to the right. At present, much like the sidebar, it only comes from the left hand side.
Recently after an amount of thought, I have decided to finally make the switch from a sans font to a serif font. I am keeping the Roboto font on my website for things like the site links and masthead, but for the content, I have finally made the switch to Roboto Slab.
This is not necessarily going to stay, the thoughts of the readers and viewers are what determines what I do on my website, and whilst some have already expressed that they preferred the sans font, I am on the mindset that a serif font can also do the job well here.
I will revert this if the survey results do not show that people think this works well on my website.
I mentioned the other day that I would be updating Dash with the removal of Google Plus in the next few days. I will be doing this today, as well as improving several other dashboard features. I'm specifically interested in getting the poll system started so that you will be able to create polls - connecting them to posts and then accepting user input from them will come later.
Suggestions are greatly welcomed too, so if you've got an idea, use the contact form on my website to let me know what you think I could do to improve Dash.
ZPE has very recently made objects a staple part of the language. But did you know that all variables within an object are actually references? What I mean is that if you change a variable (property) within an object in ZPE it will actually update the object.
$o = {$x : 10} //Will print 10 print($o->$x) $o->$x = 50 //Will print 50 print($o->$x)
So what does this mean and just how can it be brought further into ZPE? Well this exact concept will be used in ZPE 1.6.8 (December 2018) to bring forward by reference variables. These variables have sort of existed since some version 1.5.x but have found very little use. They work on a different system to ordinary variables however and a system of trust between the function itself returning what is necessary.
Whether or not ZPE 1.6.8 completely adds support for by reference or not is dependent on how much I manage to get done with regards to it, but I can say for a fact that it will be very useful as both a learning tool and as a feature of the language when it is done.
The announcement by Google that Google+ will finally being getting shutdown is music to some peoples' ears - certainly to mine. But it also means a bit of work for me as Dash had added some integration with Google+. If you are using this integration, please be aware that by the end of the next version release cycle, Dash will remove this feature.
The next version of Dash will hopefully be out in December of this year.
ZPE 1.6.7 is definitely set to make an uproar in comparison to many of it's predecessors. That's because of the fact that it adds more than 5 new major features ranging from the TYPO system to quick lambda functions and changes to the way references expressions work.
But now another new feature has been added - a feature that will benefit the TYPO engine considerably but has also been requested since the early days of the language development. The addition of these new types of lists has had considerable implications on the language itself too, fixed size lists are often faster to work with.
The syntax for writing one of these new lists, let's say of type string and one of type integer, each with five elements, would be:
$strings = [""] * 5 $ints = [0] * 5
Some of my followers will know that the last two weeks have been my first two weeks as a teacher and I've got to say, I've had the best two weeks of my life!
I've never been in a job where every day I come in excited about what I'm going to do in the day and feeling like I want to go back in each and every day. I've also never had a job where my lunch break doesn't feel too short because I like going back to work afterward.
Nothing has ever excited me as much as being a teacher in secondary level education!
All of my existing tutorials are being updated over the next few weeks with some small but very nice changes.
These changes are all inspired by my own experience of teaching. Firstly, all articles within tutorials will now have learning outcomes - what you are expected to know by the end of the article. Secondly, I am adding an "Over to you" section to many tutorials that allows you to try out some tasks based on what has been covered in the article. Thirdly I am now working on actively adding downloadable versions of all code samples across my website - this will include tutorials as well as pages like ZPE. This, again, will take a while for me to finish.
TYPO is finally here in version 1.6.7 of ZPE. To be specific, TYPO has been in ZPE for a while but it's not been in use. Now ZPE is fully in support of TYPO. Take a look:
Variables can be declared (lines 8, 14, 17) using a type and then assigned with another value of that type (lines 11, 20). If you want to reuse the variable with a different type in it, you need to redeclare the variable (line 14). On top of that compilation errors are now thrown when a different type is assigned to a variable. Also, as seen on line 24, TYPO can evaluate internal methods for the return type and compare it to the type of the variable, hence why it will stop compiling at line 24.
This adds a bit more time to compilation, but helps in several ways:
- From a learning/teaching perspective, TYPO encourages use of typing in programming
- From a programmers view this is a good way to ensure that you are sticking to principles of programming
TYPO is by default turned off in all versions of ZPE but you can turn it on by changing the settings of the compiler. I recommend trying it out but do not suggest all programs written use typing! ZPE is primarily an untyped language and will likely always remain this way!
Categories have long been staple in Dash, even as far back as when it was called JBlogs. In BalfBlog 2.1 they got a major overhaul that meant that posts in categories could be easily located. Now in Dash 1.0 they've been promoted.
When I say promoted I mean they have gone from being just attached to a post to being a separate entity. Categories are now numbers and have names and now have their own table in the database. This doesn't mean a huge amount but it does mean you no longer add categories from the new post page but from the dedicated category management page. Overall this improves performance when listing all categories.
