Five years ago, people used a specific piece of software because it did what they needed. Even if the interface was miserable, it was the only thing out there that did the job, so they learned to suck it up. These days, there are so many pieces of software that do the same – or virtually the same – things, that the user actually has a *choice* – and the winner will almost always be the one that’s easiest to use.

The Pencil Project is a Firefox addon that takes much of the hassle out of GUI development, with an easy-to-use drop-and-drop interface with text editing and a library of shapes and form widgets.

From the Pencil Project website:

The Pencil Project’s unique mission is to build a free and opensource tool for making diagrams and GUI prototyping that everyone can use.

Top features:

• Built-in stencils for diagraming and prototyping
• Multi-page document with background page
• On-screen text editing with rich-text supports
• PNG rasterizing
• Undo/redo supports
• Installing user-defined stencils
• Standard drawing operations: aligning, z-ordering, scaling, rotating…
• Cross-platforms
• Adding external objects
• And much more…

Pencil will always be free as it is released under the GPL version 2 and is available for virtually all platforms that Firefox 3 can run. The first version of Pencil is tested against GNU/Linux 2.6 with GTK+, Windows XP and Windows Vista.

Obviously, if you’re a crappy GUI designer, or if you don’t take the time to test your designs, The Pencil Project isn’t going to save your hide, but for developers who care about GUI design, it can shave quite a bit of time off that design process. Assuming you’re the latter instead of the former, visit the Pencil Project website to learn more and download it now.

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[source lang='php']
/* OUTSIDE of the SQL loop, set a zero value for the rowcolor
* variable, which is basically just our row counter.
*/
$rowcolor = 0;

/* Set values for your two different CSS styles here */
$report_class = ($rowcolor % 2) ? ‘resultline’ : ‘resultlinealt’;

/* Loop through the database results and print out
* the table rows – this example query assums we have
* executed a query asking for the name and address within a
* given table */
while (list($name, $address) = mysql_fetch_row($resultt)){
echo ‘
‘.$name.’

‘;
$rowcolor++;
}
[/source]

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<?php
/* ---------------------------------------------- */
/* ------------ BEGIN PHP SNIPPET ----------------*/
/* ---------------------------------------------- */
// $this_cat_id: the current category id number
// $flarn: just a counter, call it as 0 in your
// function call and forget about it
// $keep_cat_id: the cat id number again - so that
// it can decide whether to make a
// category a link at the top while you're in the
// "product" page

function get_crumbs($this_cat_id, $flarn, $keep_cat_id) {

$link_to_page=$_SERVER['PHP_SELF'];
if (!isset($this_cat_id)) {
// if we are already “home”, dont make home a link
$this_cat_id =“0″;
echo “Home << “;
}
// get the info and parent id for whatever category
// we’re currently in

$sql = “SELECT id, parent_id, name from categories “;
$sql .=“where id = $this_cat_id”;

$show_crumb_trail = mysql_query($sql);
$num_crumbs = mysql_num_rows($show_crumb_trail);

// if we actually have some results….
if ($num_crumbs > 0) {
list($cat_id, $cat_parent, $cat_name) = mysql_fetch_row($show_crumb_trail);
$cat_id_array[$flarn] = $cat_id;
$cat_parent_id_array[$flarn] = $cat_parent;
$cat_name_array[$flarn] = $cat_name;
if ($cat_id_array[$flarn] > 0) {
mysql_free_result($show_crumb_trail);
// increment $next by one
$next = $flarn+1;
if ($flarn == 0 ) {
echo “Home << “;
}
// now lets call the function again to loop through
// the other categories
// until we’re left with none
get_crumbs($cat_parent_id_array[$flarn], $next, $keep_cat_id);

// Since $keep_cat_id is the id number of original
// category we’re in,
// now we check to see whether or not we have to
// make the real category
// name a link or not
// (If we’re looking at the main category display,
// we wouldn’t have to,
// since we’re already *in* the category.  This is
// more useful for when you have a product
// display page, that way the link back to the
// category that item or  product lives in
// will be created
if ($keep_cat_id==$cat_id_array[$flarn]) {
echo $cat_name_array[$flarn];
} else {
echo “$cat_name_array[$flarn] << “;
}
}
}
}
?>

You would call the function using something like this:

<php get_crumbs($_REQUEST['cat_id'], "0", $_REQUEST['cat_id']; ?>

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