We haven't been resting...
We got some questions about the features that will become available in version 3.1. And as we can imagine that most of our users want to know, we will start by making posts about the features available in this upcoming version. But not before I have said a big thanks to all of you for your input, wishes, requests, remarks, and mostly positive feedback. It is highly appreciated! We try hard to keep up and to perform the best in our response to you. We honestly believe that it is not the art of finding new customers but keeping your current. Too many companies focus on finding new customers and forget their current user pool when the current users should be the ambassador for your product. And to appreciate your work, we have a bounty program. If you are a customer of PHsPeed with a license that is at least 6 months old, then you will get two months free for each customer you bring in.
But what about 3.1?
First of all, and as usual, we fixed a few issues.
Most of the fixed issues can be found in our bug tracker. Yes, I know. It doesn't look fine while we are on PHP 8.1. But we will replace the FireSpray bug tracker with a PHsPeed build version soon. And the good news is, it will also be available for our customers as a sample application.
Then the new features, and we're excited to share these. I will not go into detail yet but will do it in the following posts.
I can imagine that some of these items are a bit unclear. But in the next weeks, we will go over the enhancements. The current status is that we are finishing some of the features before we will start with our alpha testing.
Happy coding!
Do we do vulnerability testing?
The short answer is yes, but the real question is, is that enough? After all, you, as a developer, create software with the help of our tool and add your code, so eventually, the absolute safety of the application is a combination of both. PHsPeed has a lot of protection built in. There are several tokens, like CSRF, and there is protection against XSS and SQL injection. We try to keep up with the libraries we use to avoid introducing vulnerabilities.
Automated vulnerability tools of commercial parties can scan your website. Some parties can scan your code, and you pay per line of code. That makes it quite expensive, and it never replaces the work of a real ethical hacker. But there are ways that you can use to verify the created project for vulnerabilities, and I like to show you the results of ZAP, an open source and free tool from the OWASP community. This tool is able to scan your project and I will explain the result of one of our applications here.
This is the customer portal that you find on our website. In the next screenshot you see the result of a ZAP scan:
If you want to do something similar then download ZAP from the OWASP website, and use localhost:8010/your application to scan. So what does the scan tell us?
There are 18 notifications. So let's look into them one by one:
Conclusion. The application we tested has no High-risk items, a few medium risks (due to the fact that the web server used is configured for development and testing and a library with a newer version), and a few low-risk items. Considering the result, updating the libraries fixes all issues here.
The main question is now, is the application safe? Well, to a certain extent. No application is 100% safe, and this is an automated test. It is helpful, but an actual penetration test by an ethical hacker is always advised, especially if you manage critical data. But it is obvious that we do our checks often and are continuously aware of threats. But in the end, you, as a user, are creating applications. Therefore you have your own responsibility to verify the quality of the result. No 2 applications will be the same; therefore, ALWAYS do your own testing! If you have vulnerabilities that you believe are the result of some mishap in our code, report these, and we will do our utmost best to fix them with #1 priority.
Happy coding!
The release of PHP 8.2 is prosponed until half of December, and PHsPeed 3.0 is getting mature for release.
As we already support PHP 8.2, it is not an official PHP release yet. But you can use it for testing purposes, and we recently upgraded our runtime to replace some deprecated functions. The official support for PHP 8.2 within PHsPeed will be PHsPeed version 3.0. This version is currently under test and is planned for release in early 2023. But if you write your application for PHP 8.2, then deploying should not bring issues.
We are working hard on our 3.0 release, which brings a new ribbon-based user interface among some cool new features. In this post, we will mention the most important. With a small disclaimer, it is always possible that we have to skip a feature if our test procedure brings issues. But, so far so good.
To start with the new user interface, look at the next screenshot.
The new ribbon is context-sensitive and will change depending on the action you select and replaces all (sub) menus. Some items have been relocated, and the double functions removed. Our internal developers are quite enthusiastic as they believe that the user interface is more modern, and clean, and functions are more easily found. We hope that you will have the same experience.
The form reveals one of the new features you can expect, an N:M lookup. In this sample, we have a few tables containing persons, pets, and persons with pets. By defining a master-detail between the persons and persons with pets, you can define a lookup on pets. Here we use a multi-select. PHsPeed will apply the changes to the detail record depending on the checkboxes. In this case, you do not need a dedicated toolbar for the detail, as you can define the component to 'listen' to the master data source. You can do similar things with a double-select box.
The definition is done the same way, this is only a different component.
Another feature that is in high demand is an editable grid. Currently we are still building on this, but we expect to be able to release this feature in version 3.0, but for sure in version 3.1.
This feature is implemented as a new feature within the database grid. It also allows the user to add several records at the same time. We are excited about these new features as we close the gap(s) that many of our users reported and were the highest in demand. But please inform us what features you miss and would like to see implemented in release 3.1.
Then a small notice about some questions we got from a few potential users. As you can find elsewhere on our website, we do not provide promotions. If we did so, for instance, around black Friday, we would annoy customers who might have bought the product for a higher price. Or prevent customers from buying and waiting for a better bargain. We want to provide the best product for a fair price, and we need the revenues that PHsPeed brings us. No surprises. When you buy PHsPeed, you know what you are buying and how much it costs. For now and in the years to follow. We believe it is not the art of finding new customers but keeping them!