Recent Blog Posts
Blogs ยป Archive for July, 2004
New article online: Single Signin
A new article is up online detailing how to build the basis of an adaptable distributed membership system.
It came about after struggling with migrating a userbase from an established site to a new portal. Giving users who have registered with you elsewhere the ability to sign in to your new site means you can both centralise your data and provide easy access to your existing membership.
Using web services, you can also build software applications that use your membership system, again, providing more opportunities.
Give it a whirl, and if you can see some enhancements, share them with everyone else by dropping a comment. Will be good to see what people do with the code! :)
Open Source Maturing
The religious wars between open source and closed source may have been provoked a bit by a dusty old memo surfaced this month. However, there are also signs of maturity in the open source community (business) as well, which includes two businesses that bode well for those in the web architecture and development worlds.
One of those companies, Specifix, was co-founded by former Red Hat executives Kim Knuttila and Eric Troan and will include others from the Linux and GNU atmosphere.
Specifix is interesting as it initially is focusing in on providing tools for managing a single code base across multiple configurations and systems running Linux. This includes changes to Linux distribution source code to meet a customized need in a web-based application.
Offerings of open source introducing stability and assurance could be central selling points for web firms looking to market open source platforms to customers, promoting a single manageable code base (not only OS code, but also the systems and software running solutions, like Apache, Tomcat, MySQL and others). While this may seem secondary to drawing interest to and selling web applications — IT managers look at the entire package, including hardware, software and system integration — even if that is …
CSS Design Tutorials
Veerle Pieters has published a tutorial series entitled “Designing a CSS Template”, which makes a refreshing change from many existing tutorials in concentrating on design first, and only discussing implementation using CSS towards the end. It’s available in four parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.
And speaking of design, I came across a great example of fresh CSS design today in the form of Bastiaan Terhorst’s Vivified. It’s striking to say the least. And to think that just a year ago people were still writing off CSS as resulting in design work that was boxy and uninspired. Times have certainly changed.
A Call for Great Websites
Polvero asked a question that, in the spirit of not-enough-caffeine (which some might call “laziness”), I thought would be best answered by all y’all: Do you have a list of personal favorites of websites that practice good design and usability hand-in-hand?
Part of why this question was overwhelming for me was thinking about how to define “usable.” If a web site strictly follows all the latest XHTML/CSS/etc. specs and recommendations, does that automatically make it “usable”? Not quite, in my opinion; you’d also want to take into account the actual interface design (i.e., if navigation is well-structured and easy to find, if the eyes are drawn to the places of most focus as intended….). Plus, there are so many things to consider (both within and without w3c specs)… file sizes of images/flash movies, technologies used, font size, colors….
So I guess what we’re looking for here is a list of “nearly perfect web sites.” Anyone want to contribute one that you think qualifies, and why?
One that I like: diveintomark.org. First, impressively clean HTML. Second, I like the clean, easy to navigate design.
Affiliate programs as a way to gain leverage
One of the keys to a successful business is finding ways to leverage your time, so that you aren’t trading time for dollars on a 1 for 1 exchange.
There are many ways to do this.
As many of you know, one way is to set up an affiliate program. This is easiest to do if you have products to offer (another excellent leverage strategy).
I’ve just set one up on my own website at http://www.itprosuccess.com, in case you want to see an example. My web designer (a frequent poster on Sitepoint) set it up for me for a couple hundred dollars, which will easily pay for itself in a couple of weeks. That’s because I set this up after a few people had asked me if they could be an affiliate, so the market has already told me this will work.
The example on my website is the do-it-yourself approach to setting up an affiliate program.
I also have a serious web publishing venture in process, where do-it-yourself is not an appropriate option. In this case, we will use a third-party company to manage affiliate programs. For an example of how this works, go to http://www.southbeachdiet.com and click the affiliate link at the bottom …
(rant) Bookstores . . .
. . . I just went to two MAJOR bookstores here in the Atlanta Suburb areas. Both of them had ColdFusion books, and both of them had them files under Internet Servers.
Yes I understand that ColdFusion is a Server & a programming language but they are grouping it with things like Apache, Dreamweaver, IIS etc. Not only that but the choices for CF books is slim to none right now and why is it that it always takes CF writers longer to publish a book when there are upgrades etc to frameworks, software etc.
We are into Fusebox 4 now and I can only find one book out there on the subject. Forget finding any books on Internet frameworks in general, they don’t exists.
It seems like to me that CF programmers are inundated with school, lectures and classes, while ASP / PHP etc developers get books galore to become self taught on subjects etc.
Am i the only one who realizes this? Am i missing something?
I guess it’s off to the major online retailers to satisfy my learning needs.
Mozilla Foundation looking for Web Developers (volunteers)
If you’ve got the spare time and looking for an interesting project for your portfolio (i.e. work for free) see here;
We are looking for three programmers who are proficient in Perl or other web apps languages and can volunteer their time and skill to help us build the tools we will need to make three upcoming community marketing campaigns successful. These are some of our most exciting campaigns yet and promise to net us hundreds of thousands of users if executed properly. The work that’s needed is simple and should be trivial for anyone skilled in perl or other web apps languages. Please send mail to blake at cs.stanford.edu if you are interested and would like more details.
PHP fits in that “other web apps languages” category ;)
Blackstone BETA!!!
Tim from the Blackstone development team just released a link to a survey for the Blackstone Beta…
See the post with link here.
For the Color-Palette-Impaired
I used to work with someone who would joke about how he wouldn’t know a good color palette if it hit him in the face. (Actually, like a lot of people, he could tell you if a color palette didn’t “work” for a particular site, but didn’t know how to pick a good one.) At the time, I didn’t really know how to explain to him how I picked colors for my site designs; the process was mostly intuition and experimentation.
But now, there are a lot of online tools that help those who are color-palette-impaired (and even those who aren’t!) to come up with a few colors that work together. Here are some that I like:
1. http://www.pixy.cz/apps/barvy/index-en.html
This extremely cool tool allows you to pick different colors to start with, define your color scheme (monochromatic, complementary, and more), and adjust as needed. One of the coolest parts of this site is that it takes into account various forms of colorblindness, and even allows you to “preview” your color scheme as if you were colorblind.
2. http://www.colormatch.dk/
This tool is nice and simplistic, ideal for “quick fixes” or ideas. Pick a color, and a color palette is generated for you — no need to …
Vector Graphics in .NET
VG.NET version 2.1 has been released today. Its a great bit of kit. With it you can produce vector graphics which you can display in WinForms or host on WebForms through Internet Explorer.
Have a look at an example of it in action on MyXaml.
Fully managed, and exportable to MyXaml files (not to be confused with Microsoft’s Xaml :)), design time designers, and now great Internet Explorer integration, its certainly worth a watch.
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