We go faster without really thinking about what it means.  I type this without really thinking. My fingers work on automatic and I consider the screen in front of me as my friend – my guide to the universe – my safe haven.  But then I consider what it really is, as my fingers keep hitting keys on automatic:  through this device I am connected to a seamlessly endless  flow of rapidly accelerating impressions. We live in modern times – for good or bad.

1. Added Bytes PHP Cheat Sheet

This is probably the most well designed cheat sheet on our list. There is no clutter, the headers are great, and the organization allows your eyes to quickly find exactly what you’re looking for. The major flaw with this is that it misses a few essential functions (including object oriented references.) With all that being said, if you need a sheet to cover the simple functions that you use more than any others this is the best.
(Rating: 2.5/5. Well Designed but missing some essential info.)

2. PHP Security Checklist Cheat Sheet from Sk89q.com

No pictures here, and for good reason, this is important information. The security information on this cheat sheet is so invaluable that the lack of pictures or flashy design goes largely unnoticed. Great organization and clean headers make this sheet an easy read as well. Tidbits of information such as ‘Aware that Flash can bypass referrer checks to load images and sound files.’ make this sheet a cant miss.
(Rating: 4/5. Great information but no design at all)

3. Emezeta PHP Card Cheat Sheet

If you’re looking for the works, this is it. The full, comprehensive, all-inclusive cheat sheet is exactly what Emezeta has given us with this one. The only setback is that this sheet is so big and all-inclusive how can you fit it on your screen or print it. If you focus on this deluxe sheet in its smaller categories you can really appreciate its design and organization, but bigger isn’t always better.
(Rating: 3/5. Too large and awkward to look at en masse, but has all of the necessary info.)

4. Visibone PHP Skinny Sheet (2 Pages)

Visibone definitely has the right idea using a front and back page for their all-inclusive cheat sheet. Not only does it include all necessary functions, but the sheet’s size isn’t impossible to scale like Emezeta’s. The organization on this chart is a bit cluttered, but for the information presented, its well worth it.
(Rating: 4.5/5. Decently Designed. Slightly cluttered organization. All of the necessary information plus some.)

Thats all for day 1 folks. Thanks for helping us kick off Cheat Sheet Week by checking out our favorite PHP Cheat Sheets. If you have a favorite PHP Cheat Sheet that we have left out, comment below. Check back tomorrow for Day 2 where we will be looking at our favorite jQuery cheat sheets & reference charts.

Purely from a statistical basis, half of the people on the internet in this country right now are using IE8 or below (http://www.w3counter.com/trends). As most of you already know about IE, they’re not exactly receptive to change, so IE8 essentially doesn’t support html5 at all. With this being the browser almost all out of the box PC users have, its already an uphill battle.

Now that I sufficiently blamed IE8 and out of the box IE users, there enough blame to go around for why html5 wont universally be ready in 2011 either. Cross-browser support is an even larger issue than just IE8. We still live in a world where every browser isn’t the same and still doesn’t read every line the same. I dare you to find any browser right now that can support all of the components of css3 and html5, and then I dare you to find a large number of people using it (Safari is probably the closest to both premises at the moment). Although you can currently put css3 code into your css files (and some browsers will read it without affecting the ones who don’t) I doubt there is 1 browser that follows all of those rules. When we dive into the individual html5 tags such as <details> things can really get tricky, as you will either get a collapsible div or just simple paragraph text and you can never know which to expect (http://www.quackit.com/html_5/tags/html_details_tag.cfm).

So in conclusion, thanks to out of box IE8 users and lack of cross-browser support, now is not the time for html5 and 2011 probably wont be either. If you have any questions/comments/concerns about how I came to this conclusion, feel free to leave a comment.

PS: this is a great tool to test your current browser (http://html5test.com/)

Read More:

http://slyvisions.com/2010/06/04/apple-shows-off-html5-features/

http://doteduguru.com/id5998-heweb10-html5-design.html

http://blog.blogsthatfollow.com/2010/05/where-on-the-web-is-html5/