Image via Wikipedia

After playing with the latest version of the Firefox web browser, it seems a bit more impressive than it’s earlier versions. Some things that struck me after using it for a few hours were:

1. I’m probably most impressed that I used Google Webmaster tools and Gmail about 4 times and the browser didn’t crash….which already makes it 50% better than Firefox version 2.
2. The new address bar is a nice addition. When typing an address the browser shows you both address suggestions (as usual), but also the site’s favicon and the the title of the corresponding page. It’s just a small addition, but it makes the browser more usable for those who frequently type addresses into the browser rather than relying on search engines.
3. The quick bookmarking function is also a nice addition. To bookmark a page it’s just a matter of clicking a star in the address bar. It’s a similar idea to “starring” emails in Gmail or Thunderbird, or RSS stories in Google Reader.

On the downside, there are a number of addons that I haven’t been able to install.  While this is (hopefully) because of the amount of people trying to upgrade their browsers at the same time, it’s still a problem. In particular, not having the FireBug Web Development extension is slowing things down as I’m in the middle of working on an AJAX based web application.

There also seems to be a problem with the inline spellchecker that I’ve been using doesn’t seem to be working (so apologies for any typos). Again, I don’t know if this is because of the Addon service being overloaded.

More information can be found at www.spreadfirefox.com.

To try and save you a few hours you’ll never get back, here’s how I managed to get Apache / PHP / Zend up and running:

1. Download the Apache installer (the .msi file)
2. Install Apache using the installer and fill in the options you need
3. Modify the httpd.conf file as follows:
   1. To get it to work with IIS you need to change the port to something other than 80 (which is the one IIS listens to by default). To do this you can search for Listen, and change the line to:
      Listen 8080 (This means that the web root document on the Apache server is accessed through http://127.0.0.1:8080).
   2. Search for rewrite_module and uncomment the line:
      LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so
      (This module is used by the Zend Framework to rewrite URLs)
   3. At the end of the LoadModule statements, add the line:
      LoadModule php5_module "C:/Program Files/PHP/php5apache2_2.dll"
   4. Search for DirectoryIndex and change it to:
      DirectoryIndex index.html index.html.var index.php
   5. At the end of the AddType statements, add in the lines:
      AddType application/x-httpd-php .php AddType application/x-httpd-php .phtml

It was around here that I ran into problems….

It seems obvious now (!), but even though you have PHP installed for IIS, it won’t work on Apache unless you reinstall the parts you need (…as I said, a novice). When I originally installed PHP, I downloaded a .msi file (php-5.2.3-win32-installer.msi) – so go back to where that’s saved, double click on it, and select “Next”, then “Change” and you see four collapsible lists.

From here, go into “Extensions” and select “PDO” (PHP Data Objects Support – which Zend uses)… that was figured out after some time searching for an error that said: “Uncaught exception ‘Zend_Db_Adapter_Exception’ with message ‘The PDO extension is required for this adapter but the extension is not loaded’.

Under the “Web Server Setup” list choose the Apache Version that you need (I had the most recent version, so I selected “Apache 2.2.x”).

I found that when viewing the site in Firefox, I got a “Cannot Connect to Server” when trying to view PHP files or sub-directories before the installation was set up correctly. You can also use the “Start Apache in Console” command in the Start Menu (Start >> All Programs >> Apache HTTP Server >> Control Apache >> Start Apache in Console) to see if there are errors; if there aren’t, you’ll get a blank screen, otherwise the error will be displayed.

After this, it was just a matter of following the Zend Framework installation instructions, and it was up and running…

Some tutorials that saved me even more time doing this were:
http://tanguay.info/web/tutorial.php?idCode=phpDevelopment

If there are any updates to the configuration as I experiment with Zend, I’ll add them in here, or drop them into a new post….