Chapter 14: Communicating with Users

Overview

The Web is a simple method of communication when you come right down to it. The end user requests a page, things happens in the background, and the Web server fires back some content in response. Repeat ad infinitum. But if you limit yourself simply to talking to users through their Web browsers, you're missing out on a very big part of what makes a truly impressive user interface.

In this chapter, you learn about the building blocks of user communication and how it translates into an extraordinarily natural PHP object hierarchy. You'll see how you can extend and develop this hierarchy to support virtually any form of electronic communication. You'll also see practical examples of implementing some functionality that PHP doesn't provide and that you may find useful in your day-to-day development.

Perhaps most important, you'll learn why you should communicate with your users in the first place.