Why mysql_result()?

[zetetic]

Last night I was working on making it possible to display the total smilie count on forumhome, and I came up with this code:

PHP Code:

$totalsmilies = $DB_site->query("SELECT COUNT(*) FROM smilie"); 


But when I put $totalsmilies on FORUMHOME I got: "Resource id #62" instead of the number of smilies.

Eventually, I figured out that I had to change it to this...

PHP Code:

$totalsmilies = $DB_site->query("SELECT COUNT(*) FROM smilie");
$totalsmilies = mysql_result($totalsmilies,0); 


...for it to work. Why did I have to do that and is there a better way?