Over the years, since my dad first was messing with DOS in 1995, when I was 6, I have used a lot of operating systems, having had both stressful and wonderful times with them all. 

Since 2007, when I started uni doing IT and venturing outside the Microsoft world, I have always become annoyed with my current operating system, and wanted to switch – then repeat this cycle. 

Here is an overview of my experiences and conclusions about the various operating systems.

Windows

Being the default installed on most computers, and being the most widely available, this is what I started with, and what I fall back on when things go wrong.

I wish I didn’t have to use it, but from my experience, pretty much all programs I need work on it, and it has Adobe Creative Suite – which I use a lot, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premier Pro, After Effects… 

Ubuntu Linux

If I could use any operating system, it would be Linux, for ethical and philosophical reasons, however I have had many frustrating experiences with it, perhaps because I’m not so well versed in it all. 

Going on from above – if Adobe Creative Suite was available, or there were replacement programs as good/ easy to use – I would probably only use Linux.

Apple Mac

I used a MacBook for a while, and it was shiny good. There were bugs and hoops to jump through, but I thought it was ok.

Chrome OS

I haven’t used it, but for a netbook type computer, I would really love it. Since 2007 uni times, more and more I’ve been moving house into the cloud. It all started when our uni Microsoft Word was having some terrible issues, maybe it was on an application server or something, but it was slow as hell, and a friend noticed/ mentioned that Google Docs was much faster, so I stated using it – backed up all my documents to the unlimited G-Cloud – and have never looked back since. Then with YouTube’s unlimited Blue Ray quality video uploads and Google Plus’s unimited 2048 pixel photo uploads, things got more and more off my hard drive and into the cloud. 

There are two pieces of code – the one which will display your email form, and a block of code to add into your “mailer” page – a page dedicated to sending the messages and displaying confirmations and errors.

Feel free to edit or tweak the code, download the images to your own server and use however you wish.

The form

<!-- email box ~ -->
<div style="width:400px;text-align:right;padding:0px 0px 0px 0px; margin:0px 0px 0px 0px;">
<form action="send.php" method="post" style="padding:0px 0px 0px 0px; margin:0px 0px 0px 0px;">
<p style="padding:0px 0px 0px 0px; margin:0px 0px 0px 0px;">
Name: <input type="text" name="email_name" size=20><br>
Email: <input type="text" name="email_email" size=20>
<?php
$one = 1;
$two = 0;
$three = 0;
$four = 0;
while ($one % 2) $one = rand (10000,99999);
while (!($two % 2)) $two = rand (10000,99999);
while (!($three % 2)) $three = rand (10000,99999);
while (!($four % 2)) $four = rand (10000,99999);
?>
<br>Are you a human or internet virus?
<br>Choose the odd one out:
</p>
<div style="padding:0px 0px 0px 0px; margin:0px 0px 0px 0px;">
<input type="radio" name="email_valid" value="<?php echo $four ?>" Checked=1> <img src="https://pushka.com/p/i/sys/lion.png" alt="This is a public domain image"> 
<input type="radio" name="email_valid" value="<?php echo $two ?>"> <img src="https://pushka.com/p/i/sys/elephant.png" alt="This is a public domain image">
<input type="radio" name="email_valid" value="<?php echo $one ?>"> <img src="https://pushka.com/p/i/sys/lifter.png" alt="This is a public domain image">
<input type="radio" name="email_valid" value="<?php echo $three ?>"> <img src="https://pushka.com/p/i/sys/penguin.png" alt="This is a public domain image"> 
</div>
<p style="width:200; text-align:left;padding-bottom:0px; margin:0px 0px 0px 0px;padding-top:0px; padding-left:150px;">Message:</p>
<textarea rows="7" cols="30" name="email_msg" style="padding:0px 0px 0px 0px; margin:0px 0px 0px 0px;">
</textarea><br>
<input type="submit" value="Send">
</form>
</div>

The sender and confirmation message generator (should be in the main text region of your regular website theme)

<div title="main"><h1>Send</h1>
<div style="width:400px;"><br /><br />
<?php 
$name = $_POST["email_name"]; 
$email = $_POST["email_email"]; 
$valid = $_POST["email_valid"]; 
$message = $_POST["email_msg"]; 
$error = 0;
if (strlen($email) == 0) {
 echo "<img src='https://pushka.com/p/i/sys/cross.png'> Please enter an email<br>";
 $error =1;}
elseif (strpos($email,"@") === false | strlen($email) < 6){
 echo "<img src='https://pushka.com/p/i/sys/cross.png'> Please enter a valid email in the form X@X.XX<br>";
 $error=1;}
if (strlen($message)==0){
 echo "<img src='https://pushka.com/p/i/sys/cross.png'> Please enter a message<br>";
 $error=1;}
if ($valid%2){
 echo "<img src='https://pushka.com/p/i/sys/cross.png'> There was an error with the image validation, please select the odd one out.<br>";
 $error=1;}
if (strlen($name) == 0) $name = $email;
$message = "This message was sent from pushka.com/p - from " . $name . " \n ---------------------------- \n \n " . $message . " \n \n ---------------------------- \n \n \n";
if ($error==0){
 echo "<img src='https://pushka.com/p/i/sys/tick.png'> Email Sent<br><br><FORM><INPUT TYPE='button' VALUE='Back' onClick='history.go(-1);return true;'> </FORM> <br>";
 $to = 'you@mail.com';
$subject = 'Message from pushka.com/p';
$headers = 'From: ' . $email . " \r\n" .
 'Reply-To: ' . $email . " \r\n" .
 'X-Mailer: PHP/' . phpversion();
mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers);
}
else{
 echo "<br><FORM><INPUT TYPE='button' VALUE='Back' onClick='history.go(-1);return true;'> </FORM> <br>";
}
?>
<br><br>
</div>
</div>

 Here is an example

The emails are sent to the Cosmic Owl, who may or may not ever respond to you

[widgets_on_pages id=”PHPemailForm”]

You can have both blocks of code on the same page if you have action=””

For PHP multi-line strings:

$var = "some text";
$text = <<<EOT
 Place your text between the EOT. It's
 the delimiter that ends the text
 of your multiline string.
 $var
EOT;

An alternative that may not always work with every PHP version/ server configuration:

<?php
echo '
Hello World!
This is some text.
';
?>