Jon Lebensold » Screencasts

WordPress: Make Your Own Template Screencasts

jon — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 19:07:21 +0000

A lot of my work these days has been creating customized WordPress templates and installations. I thought it would be useful to people to do a series of videos that would highlight some of the WordPress code snippets that make a template come to life. The screencasts were done for Stefan Mischook's KillerPHP video learning portal.

The first couple WordPress screencasts are free and if you're serious about writing templates, the remaining videos are a bargain.

How to Build a Simple PHP Shopping Cart with PayPal Support

jon — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 17:19:39 +0000

Stefan Mischook just posted a series of video tutorials that I made for beginners trying to get a handle on PHP and PayPal.

If you're new to PHP or are interested in building a simple shopping cart with PayPal support, this set might be worth watching.

I cover some basic OOP, working with XML in PHP and creating simple templates procedurally.

Listing of PHP / AJAX / CSS Video Tutorials

jon — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 05:02:10 +0000

So I've decided to keep track of ... hopefully there will be more to come when I can come up with a topic worth yapping about.

Screencast: Simple AJAX with the Prototype Javascript Framework

jon — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 06:46:04 +0000

This is part two of my introductory Javascript videos. I cover how more about using Event Listeners in with the prototype javascript framework. I also try and answer the question: "What is an Event Listener?" and try and provide a simple example of doing an asynchronous call.

Unlike most AJAX samples, this example doesn't require any server-side scripting or even a webserver.

Two notes about the video;
- It's not necessary to capture elements in Event.observe using $()
e.g. Event.observe('myHelloLink' ...) instead of Event.observe($('myHelloLink') ... );

- Instead of using innerHTML, you can also use .update("text changed on Load");

Enjoy!

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Screencast: Introduction to Javascript using Prototype

jon — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 06:51:05 +0000

I've been meaning to do some introductory Javascript screencasts for awhile. In this short (15-minute) video, I cover basic usage of Prototype and some key best-practices for writing javascript code. There's a bit of fumbling since I'm still new to this. Comments are greatly appreciated.

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Zend MVC Screencasts: Zend Layout, Controller, View and Db

jon — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 21:34:36 +0000

I've put together a couple of Zend screencasts in an effort to explain some core concepts in Zend. I've entitled the series of three videos Working With Zend MVC and it's available free on Idea22. I've also included a sample project to get you started which you can also download.

Topics Covered:

Zend Framework Folder Structure
Zend_View and it's relationship to Zend_Controller
Zend_Controller and the management of form postbacks
Zend_Db Insert and Fetching rows
using Zend_Layout to build headers and footers using the Zend MVC model

I've posted the first video here. Comments are much appreciated!

Working on Video Tutorials

jon — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 22:07:57 +0000

Lately, I've been recording myself as I'm playing with the soon-to-be-released 1.5 version of the Zend Framework. I'd like to get a handful of tutorials up by next week that will cover:

Setting up a development environment under mac os x
Building a Zend Framework project from scratch using PDT
Handling parameters and PostBack using Zend_Controller
Working with Zend_Layout: using placeholders for just-in-time content injection