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php vs. coldfusion?

Posted: Wed Mar 29, 2006 3:06 am
by abinsf
apologies upfront if this is a dumb Q but i need some guidance please.

i'm designing a pretty basic site (hint: am designer so be gentle) that gathers user info from a series of text fields + then spits it back in a flash movie. key element is ability to make basic formatting changes (choose font, color - pretty much what you can do here).

users may also opt to paste their stories from word doc.

the process has to be warm + fuzzy enough for your mom or a 13 year old girl to feel at home with....so no html.

i was all set to employ PHP and ignore it's "e-comm aftertaste"...untili found this example, which turned me on to coldfusion:

http://www.wowresume.com/resume.cfm?task=3

of course all the CF folks tell me it's the way to go....but i want to hear both sides.

i'm contracting someone to build the app - so i can easily go eaither way.

thanks for help!


:roll: :roll: :roll: :roll:

Posted: Wed Mar 29, 2006 3:57 am
by patrikG

Posted: Wed Mar 29, 2006 5:43 am
by onion2k
That resume site would be trivial in Coldfusion, PHP, ASP, Perl, JSP.. whatever. It's just a series of basic forms and a flash movie.. If it took someone more than a few hours to build the code side of things then they were awfully slow.

If thats the sort of functionality you're after then it really doesn't matter what language you use.
i was all set to employ PHP and ignore it's "e-comm aftertaste"
What "e-comm aftertaste"?

Here's a few examples of my PHP things.. there's nothing e-commerce about them:

http://www.ooer.com/onionraster/
http://www.ooer.com/mosaic/
http://www.ooer.com/yahoobattle/
http://www.ooer.com/phphoto/ (Unfinished..)
http://www.ooer.com/spirograph/
http://www.ooer.com/automondrian/

Other members of this forum have much more impressive work.

Posted: Wed Mar 29, 2006 9:52 am
by pickle
onion2k wrote:Other members of this forum have much more impressive work.
....doubt it ;)


Anyway, as ~onion2k said, this is a pretty trivial task so any web language should be able to handle it. I'd recommend PHP though because it's way more popular. So... down the road if you need something changed/updated, it'll be easier to find someone that has the knowledge.

Re: php vs. coldfusion?

Posted: Wed Mar 29, 2006 11:22 am
by Christopher
abinsf wrote:i was all set to employ PHP and ignore it's "e-comm aftertaste"...untili found this example, which turned me on to coldfusion:

http://www.wowresume.com/resume.cfm?task=3

of course all the CF folks tell me it's the way to go....but i want to hear both sides.
Not sure what "e-comm aftertaste" means (I think of CF as more of a hosting company e-commerce thing), but the use of Coldfusion or PHP on that page does not really matter because the form is done in Flash. So whoever is telling you it is the "way to go" is not giving you very complete information. The truth is that either Coldfusion or PHP would be fine for a page like that.

PS - There are also several Javascript based text editors like that (even more powerful) that would not require a Flash plugin.

Posted: Wed Mar 29, 2006 11:26 am
by abinsf
thanks for the info...though i still have a Q:

can someone show me a warm+fuzzy example of php interface?

i get that, functionally, PHP falls just a bit short of pure alchemy....but since we all agree that
what i need to accomplish is "trivial" i at least want it to look nice. maybe i've just been unlucky,
but the presentation layers of most PHP sites i've seen smack of amazon.com

this is great if you've amazon.com but if you're encouraging 9 year old girls carry out a creative task, you want it to be a bit
warm + fuzzy. well, at least i do.

i don't know PHPs limitations on design (repeat: my knowledge stops at HTML).
but i *do* know i've seen what i want done in CF with a very non-technical look + feel...
and i *have* seen what i want done in PHP and it looked, well, like this page.

not that it's BAD. it isn't. but *visually*, it does have that 'e-comm' aftertaste.

this isn't about about what PHP can DO (ie; onion2k's php art) but what it LOOKS LIKE to users while doing it.


thnx again for filling gap between what i don't know + what i want to do.

Posted: Wed Mar 29, 2006 11:33 am
by feyd
The way it looks entirely depends on what you tell PHP to output. There are no absolute controls that PHP will always generate the same across all instances. PHP is a templating language (programmer oriented) that is built to integrate within HTML. It's not limited to generating just HTML, but that is the default (as output by the headers) which can be altered in a multitude of ways.

So how your pages look is entirely up to you. PHP doesn't care in any one direction over another.

Posted: Wed Mar 29, 2006 11:35 am
by Christopher
Server side languages like PHP or Coldfusion have nothing to do with how the page looks. The page you showed is all HTML and Flash. The values it submits are sent to the server to be processed and that processing is pretty much identical in PHP or Coldfusion.

Posted: Wed Mar 29, 2006 11:36 am
by Roja
abinsf wrote:can someone show me a warm+fuzzy example of php interface?
PHP doesn't have an "interface". It can output anything at all, from XHTML, to PDF's, to Flash, to images.. the list goes on!

There is no preset limitation on what the output can be. *Any* design is possible.

I know its hard to accept, but its literally as wide as any page on the net today. By way of example, Flickr and Yahoo finance are powered by PHP. But it doesn't stop there.. you can make ANY output you want.

Posted: Fri Apr 07, 2006 12:27 am
by abinsf
thanks all for clearing up my confusion.

PHP has been officially un-crucified.

Posted: Fri Apr 07, 2006 2:26 am
by RobertGonzalez
Wait til you use it. You might even elevate it above CF. 8)

Posted: Fri Apr 07, 2006 2:36 am
by abinsf
oh - i'm only a developer groupie....i don't go beyond HTML (and even that is dubious) ;)

having said that --- i am looking to hire someone to build this thing for me.

bueller? anyone??

thanks

Posted: Fri Apr 07, 2006 3:07 am
by Christopher
abinsf wrote:thanks all for clearing up my confusion.

PHP has been officially un-crucified.
Good to hear. All of the major web development languages are really excellent. Whether it's C#, ColdFusion, Java, Perl, PHP, Python or Ruby (and others) they are all very capable systems with more than enough features for building most web sites. Those that tell you otherwise are either hyping the language they know or are ignorant -- not sure which one is worse. Doing business with people who are honest and experienced is always the best choice.

Posted: Fri Apr 07, 2006 8:44 am
by RobertGonzalez
abinsf wrote:oh - i'm only a developer groupie....i don't go beyond HTML (and even that is dubious) ;)

having said that --- i am looking to hire someone to build this thing for me.

bueller? anyone??

thanks
Post your requirements in the For Hire forum and see what you get. You never, there may be a few of us around here that would take a project a like this.