Simon Willison’s Weblog

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Thursday, 25th July 2002

Warp factor PHP

I’ve been working on a PHP application that can take an XTM formatted Topic Map and convert it in to relational data in MySQL, run queries on it and convert it back to an XTM later. My work on the initial parser has involved some pretty heavy duty processing, and the speed with which PHP and MySQL are handling the data I’m throwing at them is phenomenal. The classic Italian Opera Topic Map example weighs in over a megabyte of XML, but PHP is munching it up and spitting out (and executing) over 13,000 SQL queries in less than seven seconds.

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Admirably prompt response from KPMG

A member of KPMG’s web team responded to my query about Mozilla support (sent via their online contact form using IE because the site was unusable in Mozilla) and informed me that a new site is on the way. You never know, they might even embrace web standards ;)

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Blog Hot or Not

Blog Hot or Not. I’m surprised no one had thought of this before—it’s clever idea, well implemented. When adding my own blog I was asked to come up with some keywords to describe it, so here they are for posterity and my own future reference:

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How browsers load images

From the stuff-I-never-knew department: Bill Posters explains how browsers load images simultaneously on the SitePoint forums, in response to a question about getting images to load in a specific order.

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Another rubbish site

Why is it that badly designed high profile sites that completely fall apart in Mozilla never have a “contact our web team” or “send us feedback” link anywhere? You would expect better from a company that provides web technology and customer management consultancy services (well if you’re a cynic like me you wouldn’t, but that’s beside the point).

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