Most developers use PHP programs (WordPress, for example) on a daily basis and, for most of us, PHP is the language of choice for server side scripting.  HTML Goodies has assembled the following list of the top ten web developer questions about PHP:

1. What is PHP?
2. Is there online documentation and tutorials that can help me learn PHP?
3. Can I run PHP locally on my PC?
4. How do you upload images (or other files) using PHP?
5. How can I create a CMS (Content Management System) with PHP?
6. I get an error at line number X when I run my PHP script, but I don't see any problem on that line.
7. My script isn't working right, but I can't figure out why.
8. How can I ask a PHP question in a forum and get it answered?
9. How can I use PHP to create login-controlled web pages?
10.  How do I send e-mails   

    with PHP?

You will find answers to the questions here.

Finding an available domain name is getting harder and harder these days as domains are being registered by the millions by developers and domain speculators. In this article, written for web developers,  the author provides some tips to help find that valuable domain that hasn't been thought of–yet.  

Adobe CS5 Web Premium is expected to start shipping in mid-May.  You can preorder now for $1,799; the upgrade from CS4 Web Premium is $599. You can learn more about it here.

Jakob Nielsen started his "Top 10" list in 1996 and last updated it in 2007.  He says he hasn't updated the list since 2007 because Web designers are still making the same basic mistakes.

1. Bad Search – Stick to a simple box, which is what users look for, and make sure your search engine can handle typos and other common variants of search terms.
2. PDFs for online reading – They break users' flow and are hard to navigate. Save them for printing and convert your information to Web pages.
3. Not changing the color of links users have already visited – Users need to know where they've been.
4. Text that's hard to scan — Add subheds and bulleted lists, highlight keywords, and keep your paragraphs short and devoid of fluff.
5. Fixed font sizes – Let users resize them if needed.
6. Page titles that have low visibility in search engines – Start with the company name or other most relevant few words.
7. Any design that looks like an ad — Users will ignore it.
8. Lack of design consistency – Users should know what to expect.
9. Opening new browser windows – Users get confused (see 8).
10.  Not providing basic, up-to-date information, like your price lists or your menu — That's what users want most.      

For more information, visit his site.

HTML Goodies has an article titled "What's Coming in CSS 3.0: A Web Developer's Perspective."  Some of the new features are border-radius (rounded corners), word-wrap, and text-shadow.

I think many developers find it difficult to convert from table layouts to CSS positioning.  HTML Goodies has a short article on the subject and I think it explains CSS positioning very well.  You can read the article here.

You can download the platform preview of Internet Explorer 9 here. Try the demos of HTML5 and the hardware-accelerated performance with background compiled JavaScript.  They are impressive.

I have used various scripts to display calendars on websites, and the choice depends on the type of calendar being displayed.  On my business site I use a simple month-at-a-glance calendar that displays the office schedule so that clients will know when the office is closed. For the past several months I have been using a Google calendar to display the office schedule and I have been pleased with the appearance and ease of use.

Microsoft released a platform preview of IE9 at its annual MIX10 developers conference in Las Vegas.

"We saw how HTML5 enabled a whole new class of applications," Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of Microsoft's IE group, told attendees here Tuesday. "We quickly realized to do it right, which is our intent, our focus was more around designing what HTML5 apps will need so they will feel more like real apps than Web pages."

To make it happen, Microsoft is relying on high-performance graphics chips and other PC hardware to accelerate the delivery of graphics, video and text so developers can begin building the most powerful and rich applications possible in HTML5.

"Developers, raise your expectations," Hachamovitch said.

"We've built Internet Explorer 9 from the ground up on top of the Windows 7 platform," Steven Sinofsky, president of Microsoft's Windows division, said during a demo. "We're all in."

IE9 will have support for CSS3, the style sheet language used to describe presentation semantics of documents written in markup language, and for SVG 1.1 imagery inline.

Hachamovitch said Microsoft will update the browser code every eight weeks until it releases a beta version at some undetermined date down the road. It will include new Web standards such as plug-in-free video and a new JavaScript engine called Chakra that will compile data in the background to improve performance without changing pages or code.

Microsoft showed off the early iteration of IE9, running a series of graphics-rich demos that showed its new browser was faster than some of its competitors.

Speaking of competitors, Mike Shaver, vice president of engineering at Mozilla, was gracious enough to tweet some encouraging words during the keynote address, saying "IE9 looks great, very glad to see it."

You can read the full Internet.com article here.

In response to a complaint from Opera Software, a company in Norway that developed the Opera Web browser, Microsoft entered into a settlement agreement with the European Union (EU) that requires Microsoft to offer Windows users in Europe a choice of Web browsers.  Microsoft was to start offering the browser choice this month (March, 2010) and I just received an email from a friend in Europe who says:

The browser choice (Browser Ballot) update to Windows has arrived ! On start up I see a large window telling me how important it is that I choose my browser.  The only options are to select one (or more) for installation, or click "Remind me later". There is no "no thank you" button, no "don't ask me again" button, and no "close" button.  From what I read, "later" means "next time I boot", but so far that hasn't happened for me, so I don't know when I'll be given the choice again.

Finding themselves in the position where they had to offer a choice of browsers, I suspect that Microsoft has deliberately done it in the most clumsy and irritating way possible, so that they can blame any inconvenience on Opera and the EU. "Not us!", they'll say, "We were forced to do it".  Yes, maybe, but they could have complied in a far more user-friendly way. A choice during setup, and maybe a repeat offer of choice once a month, always with a "don't ask me again" option, would have been far more sensible.

A little research has given me the interesting fact that this particular Windows update cannot be uninstalled.  However, that same research also gave me a way to disable it :   http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/how-disable-browser-ballot-screen-windows   Take a look at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2019411

I understand this was not in the initial release, but so many system administrators complained that they would lose control of their networks if everyone had a free choice of browser, that this "get out" had to be made available.  

Those of us in the U. S. and other countries outside the EU may not be safe from the "Browser Ballot."  According to an article in Computerworld, "A lobbying group composed of Microsoft rivals today called on antitrust regulators worldwide to pressure the company into offering a browser ballot screen to their citizens."