7 ms·

PHP, the web’s most popular programming language, is coming to mobile

63 points by neya 14y ago

jstalin 14y ago
Heads are exploding all over Hacker News.
debacle 14y ago
PHP's killer app is the LAMP stack and $5 hosting. Unless you can replicate that familiarity on a phone, PHP wont find traction. There are far better programming languages out there with more backing, and I don't think not having PHP has been a major hurdle for mobile development PHP is the core web language because PHP devs (for the most part) are cheap, replaceable parts. You need to be smarter than that for mobile development, and anyone smart enough for mobile dev won't use PHP if they don't have to.
- bvdbijl 14y ago
  Why is mobile harder?
  - debacle 14y ago
    Different screen sizes, different capabilities of machines, more of an eye on performance, and persistent apps mean actually thinking about memory management. Unless Zend's idea is "bring localhost to your mobile phone," there are going to be a lot of hurdles to adoption.
    - kappaknight 14y ago
      The web has always had different screen sizes and very different capabilities of machines. Heck, having to code for IE6 should trump any difficulties faced in mobile.
- jemka 14y ago
  You had a valid point right up to your last sentence where you just had to take a dig at PHP devs.
  - debacle 14y ago
    Do I need to apologize for pointing out PHP's obvious flaws and that anyone who doesn't need to use PHP for hosting reasons or for library/framework reasons probably isn't using it? I use PHP to develop for the web every day. Thus far, the friction of PHP being a bad language hasn't outweighed the utility of it being easy, though as time goes on that utility is worth less and less.
    - jemka 14y ago
      You should apologize for insinuating a person's choice of a programming language is a reflection of their intelligence. I'm sure you're perfectly capable of writing marvelous code in PHP or any other language.
      - debacle 14y ago
        Most PHP programmers aren't choosing PHP from a toolbox of 5-10 languages that they know really well. They're choosing PHP from a toolbox of one language that they kind of know.
        dwj 14y ago
        I've written my own programming language and VM, and I mostly use php for web development because it's quick, easy and gets the job done. Your theory that php developers are lazy and stupid is just nuts. You can write bad code in any language if you want to. I think you've perhaps gotten into the trap of assuming that if a programmer doesn't use the latest cool language (Ruby, Coffeescript, etc.) they are dumb.
        chipotle_coyote 14y ago
        The comment you're replying to didn't assert that most PHP developers are lazy and stupid, but rather asserted that most PHP programmers are using PHP because it's the first "web" language they were introduced to and they haven't really learned anything else. And that's okay. But I'd strongly assert that "PHP is quick, easy and gets the job done" does not support the assertion "PHP is a well-designed language." From what I've seen, Laravel is as high-quality an MVC framework as anything you could find in another language. But if it's a truism that terrific coders can produce terrific code in any programming language -- and I think it is -- then "there is terrific code in PHP" is not a defense of PHP's language design.
- Alan01252 14y ago
  Sorry, but that last line sentence has really touched a nerve, maybe I'm being trolled, but here comes my 2 cents anyway. I personally use PHP all the time, I love it. I can code large, maintainable and secure applications with far more speed than any other language I've ever used ( and trust me I've used a lot ). It's my language of choice when I'm building web applications. Not only is it available everywhere! but it's been established for long enough that there are a wide range of top quality frameworks and libraries written for it. Oh and these have been written by developers who I'm certain are much smarter than us both. And why the hell is mobile development any harder than web development. It's just code, not arcane magic. Trust me I've seen, and will continue to see, just as much badly written/badly performing code for mobile applications as I do for web based ones. Just because you're using Objective C / Java as the tool of choice doesn't make you any better or smarter a developer. If there is a mobile offering coming up based around PHP, I'm looking forward to trying it. If it allows me the same benefits as the language does on the web then I'll be using it, regardless of how many people think that makes me "not smart".
  - Floopsy 14y ago
    Very well-written. I agree with you 100%. The PHP bashing has gotten really old. I too am looking forward to what this new mobile PHP project will entail.
  - mylittlepony 14y ago
    You are indeed being trolled. Through the years I have learned to avoid PHP haters all along. While they are wasting their time trying to prove they are better, you are probably getting things done or just enjoying your day because you have already finished.
    - FuzzyDunlop 14y ago
      The reality of it is that it doesn't matter. People have their reasons for making their particular choices, neither of which are good or bad, or are worthy of avoiding or seeking out. I disliked PHP enough to move my career a different way; so fucking what? As such, you're basically wasting your own time trying to prove PHP haters are worse off.
- hrktb 14y ago
  I do mobile and PHP almost alternatively, and I don't know where it puts me in you definition. PHP is ugly, but ugliness is far from the first thing to care about when choosing a language. Mobile is hard, but good (PHP) server side devs are not cheap or somewhat less valuable either.
- jjtheblunt 14y ago
  Opinions aside, it's still true that native apps can do things that things generated by PHP fundamentally can not. Examples include spawn true threads, truly use multiple cores with no "global interpreter locks" of any sort other than those explicitly coded in the native app, get at hardware accelerators on a platform, etc.
- sbochins 14y ago
  Mobile dev being too hard for PHP devs is a naive idea. I think php is kind of a historic language, not many people would choose to use it if they weren't forced. There are obviously a lot of bad design decisions that went into the language. I think for those reasons, it won't catch on for mobile devs. Many of them had to tolerate php at some point and understand why there is no good reason to go back.
- masklinn 14y ago
  > PHP's killer app is the LAMP stack and $5 hosting. $5? Try $0, how many ISPs provided 20~100MB of hosting with PHP and a MySQL instance to any of their client for no additional charge? Around here, pretty much all of them did. Hell, just look at things like that: http://www.000webhost.com/ http://www.000webhost.com/ PHP, MySQL, 1.5GB space and 100GB/months bandwidth for $0. Want Ruby? Python? Perl? It'll be $5.
billpg 14y ago
Malaria, the world's most popular disease.
SG- 14y ago
PHP article yet the 'nice' image at the top seems to be OSX booting in verbose mode.
ljoshua 14y ago
The accessibility is a huge selling point, but also (and often overlooked) is the non-prescriptivist nature of PHP. For so many jobs (and yes, even in enterprise) you just need to get the project done and out there. It doesn't have to conform to perfect OO standards and doesn't have to follow certain architectural specifications. PHP is great for that. When you need to take it to the next level and establish a really good and efficient standard, there are extremely well-done frameworks to assist you. But when you just need to get something done, sometimes PHP's "do it anyway you can" nature is it's biggest feature. It will be interesting to see what mobile play Gutmans et. al. have. If they can bring that same "let's just get it done" mentality it may have a chance. Interested to see how it goes down.
- debacle 14y ago
  It's hard to write "do it any way you can" code when you're dealing with a GUI object model. PHP works because all you're doing is writing to stdout.
  - meritt 14y ago
    Your junior-level knowledge of web development is coming out in your overly negative and anti-PHP ranting today. The end result of any backend web service is quite simply "writing to stdout". That's how HTTP works. How exactly does the transport mechanism have any bearing on the platform? Let's not forget web development today consists of a substantial amount of both back-end and front-code, the latter of which operates in a fashion much like GUI object model.
    - debacle 14y ago
      > Your junior-level knowledge of web development Lets not make personal attacks here, okay?
      - sbarre 14y ago
        Your top-level comment's last statement was, in a way, a personal attack on every PHP developer on here.
Zak 14y ago
In other news, the world's largest manufacturer of hammers has announced a new model accepting hex-bit screwdriver tips in the end of its handle.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
bungle 14y ago
What PHP needs is the ability to run websockets natively without extra setup. Right in a mod_php or PHP-FPM. None of the current platforms have this right. You always have to run extra web servers in place of Apache or Nginx. Yes, this is also a thing that Apache, and Nginx have to figure out. Running node.js or Go web servers is too immature.
- j_baker 14y ago
  If you're afraid of immature technologies, why use websockets to begin with?
  - bungle 14y ago
    Good question. I see this more or less like chicken-egg situation. Right now it seems that client side is quite well maturing. Client side is the easier part of websockets. PHP's whole model is 'shared nothing', that's why it fits so poorly with websockets. 'Real-time' two-way communication with the server and the clients is getting more and more common in web apps, and even web sites. I'm not sure how the server side of the websockets are going to be solved. If PHP gets it right, it will probably have great future ahead. These days we need to revert to dual solution, main system behind Apache or Nginx, and websockets with for example custom node.js servers. It is far from optimal.
- astrodust 14y ago
  It'd be far easier to fix any problems you have with node.js than to extend PHP to make this practical.
error54 14y ago
<rant> The link intrigued me that PHP was coming to mobile but the only sentence in the entire thing that spoke to that was "But, he hinted to me, PHP and Zend will be providing client-side app-enabling tools." The rest of the article is just filler about the history of PHP. I mean really, this is the definition click bate: a bunch of filler and one tiny smidgen of information. </rant> Personally, while I'm not a huge fan of PHP it is one of the most useful languages I've learned so I think that mobile PHP is pretty exciting.
bagosm 14y ago
Coming from the .NET world, the single biggest problem I have seen with PHP developers is their lack of life cycle concept understanding. This will probably prove to be the most challenging part when PHP developers start to engage with singletons, IoC etc. For example any .NET developer would laugh/cry with this: http://www.slideshare.net/go_oh/singletons-in-php-why-they-are-bad-and-how-you-can-eliminate-them-from-your-applications http://www.slideshare.net/go_oh/singletons-in-php-why-they-a...
- bitcrusher 14y ago
  Interestingly, that's why a lot of my colleagues and I dropped .Net (and Java) like a bad habit... Singleton, IOC, Dependency injection, GoF hell. NOT that PHP is a good alternative; Only different perspectives on the same issues.
gcb 14y ago
This is wrong. PHP is awesome for webdev because it's almost a framework itself. while every other language treat HTTP and cookies and everything else as text streams php always had functions to deal with all that 'web stuff' moving it to mobile is just pointless. mobile need a PHP of its own. Something that incorporate all aspects of mobile in the language design... not sure what it would be
gary4gar 14y ago
This article is perfect example of PR Speak passed on as news. in the article head, it says "PHP, the web’s most popular programming language, is coming to mobile" but then nowhere in articles author mentions about this except in the end where it says "Coming soon"! WTH?
- protomyth 14y ago
  It's a press release (well really a comment made to the press) used as a nice link-bait filler news article. Drew Curtis of Fark.com fame wrote a great book with this and more examples of news industry behavior that is even more true in the link-bait world. http://www.amazon.com/Its-Not-News-Fark-Media/dp/1592403662/ http://www.amazon.com/Its-Not-News-Fark-Media/dp/1592403662/
lukifer 14y ago
PHP's core strength is that it is a DSL for serving websites. While it can be used for other things, I see zero benefit in bringing it to mobile.
- dasil003 14y ago
  Also, the philosophy of PHP is a batteries-included approach of bundling everything so you rarely need an external library. Both of these things seem fundamentally at odds with mobile development, but who knows, maybe they can chisel something out.
rexreed 14y ago
For an article whose title is about PHP moving to mobile, it's quite disappointing that they literally spent only 3 sentences on it... at the end. And didn't even say anything worth reporting. Link bait.
j_baker 14y ago
I'm skeptical that PHP is the "web's most popular programming language", and feel it serves no other purpose in the title than to be inflammatory. From the article: "Wikipedia says 75 percent of websites use PHP." From wikipedia: "PHP is used as the server-side programming language on 75% of all Web sites" However, that's not what its source says. From wikipedia's source[1]: "PHP is used by 78.1% of all the websites whose server-side programming language we know." And I'd be willing to bet that PHP (and the runner-up, ASP.net) are easy to identify considering the pages end with particular extension (which isn't the case with other technologies). The article gives no other proof save an unverified quote from Zend that states that PHP runs 35% of web requests. It even gives evidence to support the conclusion that PHP's popularity is declining. [1] http://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/programming_language/all http://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/programming_languag...
Joeboy 14y ago
I think this might be the angriest, most uncivil HN discussion I've seen so far.
- maratd 14y ago
  Is this your first PHP thread? Pretty much all of them turn into a "ha! ha! you use php!" and those of us who use it to build things justifying our decisions.
- protomyth 14y ago
  No, there are a few others recently, and at least a technical discussion might actually break out.
serialpreneur 14y ago
Why is this on front page? It is a total fluff piece with no real value. "But, he hinted to me, PHP and Zend will be providing client-side app-enabling tools." There are already bunch of client-side app-enabling tools thousands of devs are using with PHP already. Holy shit .. but .. Zend is coming up with some awesome batshit secret new sauce for client-side that will work with PHP! Mind = Blown! </rant>

63 points by neya 14y ago

Heads are exploding all over Hacker News.

PHP's killer app is the LAMP stack and $5 hosting. Unless you can replicate that familiarity on a phone, PHP wont find traction. There are far better programming languages out there with more backing, and I don't think not having PHP has been a major hurdle for mobile development PHP is the core web language because PHP devs (for the most part) are cheap, replaceable parts. You need to be smarter than that for mobile development, and anyone smart enough for mobile dev won't use PHP if they don't have to.

bvdbijl 14y ago
Why is mobile harder?
- debacle 14y ago
  Different screen sizes, different capabilities of machines, more of an eye on performance, and persistent apps mean actually thinking about memory management. Unless Zend's idea is "bring localhost to your mobile phone," there are going to be a lot of hurdles to adoption.
  - kappaknight 14y ago
    The web has always had different screen sizes and very different capabilities of machines. Heck, having to code for IE6 should trump any difficulties faced in mobile.
jemka 14y ago
You had a valid point right up to your last sentence where you just had to take a dig at PHP devs.
- debacle 14y ago
  Do I need to apologize for pointing out PHP's obvious flaws and that anyone who doesn't need to use PHP for hosting reasons or for library/framework reasons probably isn't using it? I use PHP to develop for the web every day. Thus far, the friction of PHP being a bad language hasn't outweighed the utility of it being easy, though as time goes on that utility is worth less and less.
  - jemka 14y ago
    You should apologize for insinuating a person's choice of a programming language is a reflection of their intelligence. I'm sure you're perfectly capable of writing marvelous code in PHP or any other language.
    - debacle 14y ago
      Most PHP programmers aren't choosing PHP from a toolbox of 5-10 languages that they know really well. They're choosing PHP from a toolbox of one language that they kind of know.
      - dwj 14y ago
        I've written my own programming language and VM, and I mostly use php for web development because it's quick, easy and gets the job done. Your theory that php developers are lazy and stupid is just nuts. You can write bad code in any language if you want to. I think you've perhaps gotten into the trap of assuming that if a programmer doesn't use the latest cool language (Ruby, Coffeescript, etc.) they are dumb.
        chipotle_coyote 14y ago
        The comment you're replying to didn't assert that most PHP developers are lazy and stupid, but rather asserted that most PHP programmers are using PHP because it's the first "web" language they were introduced to and they haven't really learned anything else. And that's okay. But I'd strongly assert that "PHP is quick, easy and gets the job done" does not support the assertion "PHP is a well-designed language." From what I've seen, Laravel is as high-quality an MVC framework as anything you could find in another language. But if it's a truism that terrific coders can produce terrific code in any programming language -- and I think it is -- then "there is terrific code in PHP" is not a defense of PHP's language design.
Alan01252 14y ago
Sorry, but that last line sentence has really touched a nerve, maybe I'm being trolled, but here comes my 2 cents anyway. I personally use PHP all the time, I love it. I can code large, maintainable and secure applications with far more speed than any other language I've ever used ( and trust me I've used a lot ). It's my language of choice when I'm building web applications. Not only is it available everywhere! but it's been established for long enough that there are a wide range of top quality frameworks and libraries written for it. Oh and these have been written by developers who I'm certain are much smarter than us both. And why the hell is mobile development any harder than web development. It's just code, not arcane magic. Trust me I've seen, and will continue to see, just as much badly written/badly performing code for mobile applications as I do for web based ones. Just because you're using Objective C / Java as the tool of choice doesn't make you any better or smarter a developer. If there is a mobile offering coming up based around PHP, I'm looking forward to trying it. If it allows me the same benefits as the language does on the web then I'll be using it, regardless of how many people think that makes me "not smart".
- Floopsy 14y ago
  Very well-written. I agree with you 100%. The PHP bashing has gotten really old. I too am looking forward to what this new mobile PHP project will entail.
- mylittlepony 14y ago
  You are indeed being trolled. Through the years I have learned to avoid PHP haters all along. While they are wasting their time trying to prove they are better, you are probably getting things done or just enjoying your day because you have already finished.
  - FuzzyDunlop 14y ago
    The reality of it is that it doesn't matter. People have their reasons for making their particular choices, neither of which are good or bad, or are worthy of avoiding or seeking out. I disliked PHP enough to move my career a different way; so fucking what? As such, you're basically wasting your own time trying to prove PHP haters are worse off.
hrktb 14y ago
I do mobile and PHP almost alternatively, and I don't know where it puts me in you definition. PHP is ugly, but ugliness is far from the first thing to care about when choosing a language. Mobile is hard, but good (PHP) server side devs are not cheap or somewhat less valuable either.
jjtheblunt 14y ago
Opinions aside, it's still true that native apps can do things that things generated by PHP fundamentally can not. Examples include spawn true threads, truly use multiple cores with no "global interpreter locks" of any sort other than those explicitly coded in the native app, get at hardware accelerators on a platform, etc.
sbochins 14y ago
Mobile dev being too hard for PHP devs is a naive idea. I think php is kind of a historic language, not many people would choose to use it if they weren't forced. There are obviously a lot of bad design decisions that went into the language. I think for those reasons, it won't catch on for mobile devs. Many of them had to tolerate php at some point and understand why there is no good reason to go back.
masklinn 14y ago
> PHP's killer app is the LAMP stack and $5 hosting. $5? Try $0, how many ISPs provided 20~100MB of hosting with PHP and a MySQL instance to any of their client for no additional charge? Around here, pretty much all of them did. Hell, just look at things like that: http://www.000webhost.com/ http://www.000webhost.com/ PHP, MySQL, 1.5GB space and 100GB/months bandwidth for $0. Want Ruby? Python? Perl? It'll be $5.

billpg 14y ago

Malaria, the world's most popular disease.

SG- 14y ago

PHP article yet the 'nice' image at the top seems to be OSX booting in verbose mode.

ljoshua 14y ago

The accessibility is a huge selling point, but also (and often overlooked) is the non-prescriptivist nature of PHP. For so many jobs (and yes, even in enterprise) you just need to get the project done and out there. It doesn't have to conform to perfect OO standards and doesn't have to follow certain architectural specifications. PHP is great for that. When you need to take it to the next level and establish a really good and efficient standard, there are extremely well-done frameworks to assist you. But when you just need to get something done, sometimes PHP's "do it anyway you can" nature is it's biggest feature. It will be interesting to see what mobile play Gutmans et. al. have. If they can bring that same "let's just get it done" mentality it may have a chance. Interested to see how it goes down.

debacle 14y ago
It's hard to write "do it any way you can" code when you're dealing with a GUI object model. PHP works because all you're doing is writing to stdout.
- meritt 14y ago
  Your junior-level knowledge of web development is coming out in your overly negative and anti-PHP ranting today. The end result of any backend web service is quite simply "writing to stdout". That's how HTTP works. How exactly does the transport mechanism have any bearing on the platform? Let's not forget web development today consists of a substantial amount of both back-end and front-code, the latter of which operates in a fashion much like GUI object model.
  - debacle 14y ago
    > Your junior-level knowledge of web development Lets not make personal attacks here, okay?
    - sbarre 14y ago
      Your top-level comment's last statement was, in a way, a personal attack on every PHP developer on here.

Zak 14y ago

In other news, the world's largest manufacturer of hammers has announced a new model accepting hex-bit screwdriver tips in the end of its handle.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

bungle 14y ago

What PHP needs is the ability to run websockets natively without extra setup. Right in a mod_php or PHP-FPM. None of the current platforms have this right. You always have to run extra web servers in place of Apache or Nginx. Yes, this is also a thing that Apache, and Nginx have to figure out. Running node.js or Go web servers is too immature.

j_baker 14y ago
If you're afraid of immature technologies, why use websockets to begin with?
- bungle 14y ago
  Good question. I see this more or less like chicken-egg situation. Right now it seems that client side is quite well maturing. Client side is the easier part of websockets. PHP's whole model is 'shared nothing', that's why it fits so poorly with websockets. 'Real-time' two-way communication with the server and the clients is getting more and more common in web apps, and even web sites. I'm not sure how the server side of the websockets are going to be solved. If PHP gets it right, it will probably have great future ahead. These days we need to revert to dual solution, main system behind Apache or Nginx, and websockets with for example custom node.js servers. It is far from optimal.
astrodust 14y ago
It'd be far easier to fix any problems you have with node.js than to extend PHP to make this practical.

error54 14y ago

<rant> The link intrigued me that PHP was coming to mobile but the only sentence in the entire thing that spoke to that was "But, he hinted to me, PHP and Zend will be providing client-side app-enabling tools." The rest of the article is just filler about the history of PHP. I mean really, this is the definition click bate: a bunch of filler and one tiny smidgen of information. </rant> Personally, while I'm not a huge fan of PHP it is one of the most useful languages I've learned so I think that mobile PHP is pretty exciting.

bagosm 14y ago

Coming from the .NET world, the single biggest problem I have seen with PHP developers is their lack of life cycle concept understanding. This will probably prove to be the most challenging part when PHP developers start to engage with singletons, IoC etc. For example any .NET developer would laugh/cry with this: http://www.slideshare.net/go_oh/singletons-in-php-why-they-are-bad-and-how-you-can-eliminate-them-from-your-applications http://www.slideshare.net/go_oh/singletons-in-php-why-they-a...

bitcrusher 14y ago
Interestingly, that's why a lot of my colleagues and I dropped .Net (and Java) like a bad habit... Singleton, IOC, Dependency injection, GoF hell. NOT that PHP is a good alternative; Only different perspectives on the same issues.

gcb 14y ago

This is wrong. PHP is awesome for webdev because it's almost a framework itself. while every other language treat HTTP and cookies and everything else as text streams php always had functions to deal with all that 'web stuff' moving it to mobile is just pointless. mobile need a PHP of its own. Something that incorporate all aspects of mobile in the language design... not sure what it would be

gary4gar 14y ago

This article is perfect example of PR Speak passed on as news. in the article head, it says "PHP, the web’s most popular programming language, is coming to mobile" but then nowhere in articles author mentions about this except in the end where it says "Coming soon"! WTH?

protomyth 14y ago
It's a press release (well really a comment made to the press) used as a nice link-bait filler news article. Drew Curtis of Fark.com fame wrote a great book with this and more examples of news industry behavior that is even more true in the link-bait world. http://www.amazon.com/Its-Not-News-Fark-Media/dp/1592403662/ http://www.amazon.com/Its-Not-News-Fark-Media/dp/1592403662/

lukifer 14y ago

PHP's core strength is that it is a DSL for serving websites. While it can be used for other things, I see zero benefit in bringing it to mobile.

dasil003 14y ago
Also, the philosophy of PHP is a batteries-included approach of bundling everything so you rarely need an external library. Both of these things seem fundamentally at odds with mobile development, but who knows, maybe they can chisel something out.

rexreed 14y ago

For an article whose title is about PHP moving to mobile, it's quite disappointing that they literally spent only 3 sentences on it... at the end. And didn't even say anything worth reporting. Link bait.

j_baker 14y ago

I'm skeptical that PHP is the "web's most popular programming language", and feel it serves no other purpose in the title than to be inflammatory. From the article: "Wikipedia says 75 percent of websites use PHP." From wikipedia: "PHP is used as the server-side programming language on 75% of all Web sites" However, that's not what its source says. From wikipedia's source[1]: "PHP is used by 78.1% of all the websites whose server-side programming language we know." And I'd be willing to bet that PHP (and the runner-up, ASP.net) are easy to identify considering the pages end with particular extension (which isn't the case with other technologies). The article gives no other proof save an unverified quote from Zend that states that PHP runs 35% of web requests. It even gives evidence to support the conclusion that PHP's popularity is declining. [1] http://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/programming_language/all http://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/programming_languag...

Joeboy 14y ago

I think this might be the angriest, most uncivil HN discussion I've seen so far.

maratd 14y ago
Is this your first PHP thread? Pretty much all of them turn into a "ha! ha! you use php!" and those of us who use it to build things justifying our decisions.
protomyth 14y ago
No, there are a few others recently, and at least a technical discussion might actually break out.

serialpreneur 14y ago

Why is this on front page? It is a total fluff piece with no real value. "But, he hinted to me, PHP and Zend will be providing client-side app-enabling tools." There are already bunch of client-side app-enabling tools thousands of devs are using with PHP already. Holy shit .. but .. Zend is coming up with some awesome batshit secret new sauce for client-side that will work with PHP! Mind = Blown! </rant>